Electron is a stripped down Chromium web-browser used as a component in an unfortunate amount of modern software. Since it's a tiny web-browser, it gives the developers the ability to deploy their websites as pieces of software installable locally. Hopefully locally. Since it's a small browser, you can't know for sure what parts are local. Electron apps are something in between web-sites and real software. But they feel like real software to the user. One more problem with Electron is that most of the times developing a native application using a native way of rendering it will result in much, much more optimized experience. Electron apps usually eat a lot of resources.