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Before this article, I've always thought Spotify was an electron app (or something of the sort), so never bothered installing it. I was wondering why you didn't

Before this article, I've always thought Spotify was an electron app (or something of the sort), so never bothered installing it. I was wondering why you didn't just open a Dev console and inject some JS :). Regarding the Apple code signing requirement: is it the case then for all hooks of this sort that one is effectively required to be in the Developer program? So I was curious if LD_PRELOAD is prevented from working, but seems there's a simple work around: > On macOS there is an additional problem. Newer versions of macOS have a security subsystem called System Integrity Protection. For our purposes the problem is that it prevents injecting code via DYLD_INSERT_LIBRARIES (the macOS equivalent of LD_PRELOAD) into any binary in /bin, /sbin, /usr/bin and /usr/sbin. > Luckily, there’s an easy workaround. Just create a new directory, copy all the binaries from /bin, /sbin, /usr/bin and /usr/sbin into that directory, and then add it to the start of your $PATH environment variable. Once the binaries are out of those special directories code injection works just fine, and since they’re only 100MB copying them is quite fast. From https://www.datawire.io/code-injection-on-linux-and-macos/ https://www.datawire.io/code-injection-on-linux-and-macos/

auscompgeek 7y ago
From my understanding, Spotify uses the Chromium Embedded Framework. I'm not sure which parts are rendered with CEF, but since Spotify is using CEF directly rather than Electron, it seems likely they have a fair bit of native code as well.
- saagarjha 7y ago
  Last I checked, they use Chromium Embedded for most of the UI, and native code to interact with platform-specific features such as the Touch Bar.
  - barbecue_sauce 7y ago
    Any idea if Chromium Embedded has the same memory footprint as Electron? (That seems to be the main complaint about Electron that I've seen).
    - saagarjha 7y ago
      No idea. I personally have little tolerance for the amount of resources that Chrome uses, so I stay far away from its derivatives, which I have found to not be meaningful improvements.
    - coldtea 7y ago
      Electron is not anything much different than Chromium Embedded plus some native API hooks, so it's not the Electron parts that eat the resources, it's Chromium (and basically, it's the fact that the app is basically a web app that needs a whole layered and bloated rendering engine -DOM- and a slower runtime - js - compared to native).
      - testvox 7y ago
        Doesn't electron include the nodejs runtime as well?
        coldtea 7y ago
        Yes, which is just v8 + some system interfacing libs, not something that is slow/memory hungry by itself anymore than v8 alone is.
    - 2-m3m3n70 7y ago
      It would be slightly less since it is just Chromium versus Chromium + Node.js (as in Electron).
saagarjha 7y ago
The issue in the article is due to Library Validation, not SIP. The issue goes away if you unsign the binary; no need to be part of the developer program.

auscompgeek 7y ago

From my understanding, Spotify uses the Chromium Embedded Framework. I'm not sure which parts are rendered with CEF, but since Spotify is using CEF directly rather than Electron, it seems likely they have a fair bit of native code as well.

saagarjha 7y ago
Last I checked, they use Chromium Embedded for most of the UI, and native code to interact with platform-specific features such as the Touch Bar.
- barbecue_sauce 7y ago
  Any idea if Chromium Embedded has the same memory footprint as Electron? (That seems to be the main complaint about Electron that I've seen).
  - saagarjha 7y ago
    No idea. I personally have little tolerance for the amount of resources that Chrome uses, so I stay far away from its derivatives, which I have found to not be meaningful improvements.
  - coldtea 7y ago
    Electron is not anything much different than Chromium Embedded plus some native API hooks, so it's not the Electron parts that eat the resources, it's Chromium (and basically, it's the fact that the app is basically a web app that needs a whole layered and bloated rendering engine -DOM- and a slower runtime - js - compared to native).
    - testvox 7y ago
      Doesn't electron include the nodejs runtime as well?
      - coldtea 7y ago
        Yes, which is just v8 + some system interfacing libs, not something that is slow/memory hungry by itself anymore than v8 alone is.
  - 2-m3m3n70 7y ago
    It would be slightly less since it is just Chromium versus Chromium + Node.js (as in Electron).

saagarjha 7y ago

The issue in the article is due to Library Validation, not SIP. The issue goes away if you unsign the binary; no need to be part of the developer program.