Pokerogue-App: an Electron window for Pokerogue.net

A desktop shell around a live web game, not a private server

The project description says it plainly: an app to play Pokerogue.net in an app window. Nothing in the tree suggests a server, a proxy, a packet editor or a mod loader. The runtime dependencies explain the shape instead. cross-fetch handles talking to the network, adm-zip unpacks downloaded game files, @cliqz/adblocker-electron filters requests, discord-rpc reports presence to Discord, and electron-localshortcut plus electron-progressbar manage the window and its download bar. All of that is client-side work. The game itself is still served by Pokerogue.net, and this shell does not change the rules it wraps. That distinction matters when you are deciding whether to install it. If your goal is a different game experience, a different economy or a way to play without a site policy, this repository is the wrong tool. If your goal is a window with its own hotkeys and an offline copy of the assets, it is the right size.

Offline play needs a file download and a settings switch

Online mode is the default when the app opens. The route to offline play is two steps in the menus: file, then download, which pulls the newest game files, and settings, then offline, which switches the running session over. The download is the slow part and the switch afterwards is free, so the order matters if you are on a metered connection. The same set of instructions also warns that the offline extraction can take a very long time when antivirus software inspects each small file, and that a not responding message is normal on Windows. The project keeps every cookie-related file under %AppData%/Pokerogue, and deleting that whole directory is the documented way to make the game forget your login, your settings and your offline saves together. That is a blunt instrument. There is no separate reset for just the session, so treat the directory as the unit of account state on this machine.

Hotkeys come from a keymap.json you can edit by hand

The most useful customisation is the modified hotkeys setting, backed by a keymap.json in the resources folder that the build copies in as an extra resource. Its format is a JSON object written as Old and New pairs, and several old keys can point at the same new key when you want the same action on more than one physical button. The documentation is candid about the limits: this is not a complete remapping, because the hold behavior is off. If you are coming from a layout where a modifier is held down while you press the action key, that will not translate cleanly. Valid key names follow the Electron accelerator list, so unusual keys are the main source of a binding that silently does nothing. The same menu that opens on Alt carries a utility set, and the shortcuts are listed in the documentation: Ctrl+R or F5 for a soft reset that behaves like a relaunch, F11 for fullscreen, F12 for the developer console, Ctrl+T for pkmn.help, Ctrl+Y for the type chart, Ctrl+H for the horizontal type chart on small screens, Ctrl+B for the team builder, Ctrl+W for the PokeRogue wiki, Ctrl+D for the RogueDex, and Ctrl+S for Smogon.

Building from source needs NodeJS and three npm scripts

The build path is short. Clone the repository or take the source as a zip, install NodeJS, open a command prompt in that directory, then install dependencies and start the app:

npm install
npm start

The packaged target is chosen through electron-builder, and the script names map to platforms directly. The published application id is com.example.pokerogue, the product name is PokeRogue, releases are published to GitHub, and output lands in the dist directory. One constraint is easy to miss: each version has to be built from its own operating system for it to work properly once zipped, because of Electron. A Linux build produced on macOS is not a Linux build in practice, so a cross-compiled pipeline would need per-OS runners. After a successful build the unpacked binary sits at dist/platform-unpacked/PokeRogue.exe on Windows.

Steam Deck Gaming mode needs a non-Steam entry and --no-sandbox

The one platform-specific instruction is for the Steam Deck. To play in Gaming mode you add the pokerogue file, with no file extension, as a non-Steam game, then add --no-sandbox as a launch option. The documentation states that this is enough to make it work, with one caveat: the touch screen is required for the top menu items, so a Deck user without touch input loses access to the utilities menu. On Linux the app is available as a binary AUR package named pokerogue-app-bin, which an AUR helper such as yay installs in a single command:

yay -S pokerogue-app-bin

After installation you launch it from the application menu or by running pokerogue from the terminal. Nix users are covered by a flake in the repository, with flake.nix, flake.lock and release.nix at the top level, so the package can be added to a flake input:

inputs.pokerogue-app.url = "github:Admiral-Billy/Pokerogue-App";

and then pulled into home-manager from the same flake.

Windows install paths and antivirus can make a slow extraction look broken

On Windows, macOS and non-Arch Linux, installing means extracting the game zip somewhere and running the executable. Windows also has an installer, and the documentation warns about where you put it: installing under something like Program Files can create permission issues that need the app run as administrator to resolve. That is a predictable Windows trap rather than a bug in the shell. The bigger risk on that platform is the antivirus interaction mentioned earlier. If offline file extraction seems to be taking a very long time, such as more than a minute, the diagnosis offered in the documentation is that antivirus such as Windows Defender is scanning every small file individually, and the suggested response is an exception or a temporary disable. Treat that as a diagnostic step, not a permanent setting. A not responding message on Windows is expected during the extraction, so a frozen window is not by itself evidence of a broken build.

MIT in the README, ISC in package.json, and releases three months apart

Licensing deserves a closer look before you build this yourself and redistribute the result. The project is described as MIT licensed, while the license field inside package.json says ISC. The MIT identifier in the README and the ISC string in the build configuration are not the same grant, so confirm which one you are shipping under before publishing binaries of your own build. The licence terms themselves are short and permissive in both cases, but permissive is not the same as identical, and this is not legal advice. On maintenance, the repository is not archived and the last push was on 2026-09-07, which matches the v2.4.6f release named for dated removals. Before that, v2.4.6e shipped on 2025-12-30 and v2.4.6d on 2025-05-15, so the tags are spread across a year and a half rather than following a fixed cadence. Upgrading therefore means checking the release notes for a game client whose compatibility with live site assets is the part most likely to change.

Editorial conclusion

Adopt Pokerogue-App if you want PokeRogue in a standalone window on Steam Deck, Arch or Nix and you value a single Alt key for every utility. Skip it if you expected a private server, a sandboxed session or a licence-clean fork, and check the ISC versus MIT mismatch in package.json before shipping the build yourself.

Frequently asked questions

Official sources

1. Admiral-Billy/Pokerogue-App on GitHub
2. Issues
3. License: MIT
4. README
5. Releases