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Developing a Desktop Viewer

The application is built using Vite, and scaffolded using degit.

Setup

  • Install necessary prerequisites.
  • From a terminal, npx degit iTwin/viewer/packages/templates/desktop#master your-app-name
    • This will generate a new application based on the iTwin Viewer React component in the your-app-name directory.
  • Open the your-app-name directory in VS Code and run npm install (or pnpm install). This will install all the dependencies listed in your package.json.
  • Follow these steps to obtain a new OIDC client to use in your viewer application:
    1. Go to https://developer.bentley.com
    2. Click the Sign In button and sign-in using your Bentley account credentials
      • If you have not already registered, click Register now and complete the registration process
    3. Navigate to the My Apps page
    4. Click the Register New button
    5. Give your application a Name
    6. Select Native as the Application Type
    7. Select the itwin-platform scope
    8. Set the Redirect URL to http://localhost:3001/signin-callback
    9. Set the Post logout redirect URIs to http://localhost:3001
    10. Click the Save button

Once your new application is saved and a client ID is generated, add the client ID and redirect uri to the following variables in the .env file within the application's root directory: ITWIN_VIEWER_CLIENT_ID and ITWIN_VIEWER_REDIRECT_URI.

  • From a terminal at your application's root directory, npm start. This will serve the application with live reloading.

Note: The live reloading is for the frontend only. The backend would need to be re-built on each change using npm run build:backend.

Build

From a terminal at your application's root directory, run npm run build. This will create both the frontend in the "dist" folder and backend in the "lib" folder within the application's root directory. You may run npm run preview to start the Electron app and serve the frontend from a local static server. It is not necessary to build the frontend during development.

The app will open a pre-packaged offline snapshot iModel.

Desktop apps can also open cloud hosted iModels. If you do not have access to one, follow one of our tutorials to create an online iModel. Then open your online iModel by selecting "Open Online iModel" and logging in.

Useful Links

Next Steps

Last Updated: 29 July, 2025