Introduction

electron-messageport-trpc is a transport layer that connects tRPC v11 with Electron’s MessagePort API. It enables type-safe IPC between Electron processes using tRPC’s familiar patterns.

Why MessagePort + tRPC?

Traditional Electron IPC using ipcMain / ipcRenderer has limitations:

• Star topology — all communication must pass through the main process
• No type safety — channel names are plain strings with no compile-time checks
• JSON serialization — Date, Map, Set, and other complex types are lost

This library solves all three problems:

Feature	ipcMain/ipcRenderer	electron-messageport-trpc
Topology	Star (main as hub)	Flexible (renderer-to-main, main-to-utility, renderer-to-utility)
Type safety	None	Full end-to-end via tRPC
Serialization	JSON.stringify	Structured Clone (native Date, Map, Set)
Subscriptions	Manual event listeners	tRPC subscriptions (async iterables)

How It Works

The library uses Electron’s MessageChannelMain to establish direct MessagePort connections between processes. A lightweight message protocol carries tRPC requests and responses over these ports.

Renderer                Main Process
  |                         |
  |  MessagePort (port1)    |
  |<========================>|
  |  tRPC requests/results  |
  |                         |

1. The main process creates a MessageChannelMain and sends one port to the renderer via webContents.postMessage.
2. The preload script receives the port and exposes it to the renderer via contextBridge.
3. The renderer uses the port as a tRPC link, gaining full type-safe RPC with subscriptions.

Tip

Because MessagePort uses the Structured Clone algorithm, values like Date, Map, Set, ArrayBuffer, and Error are transferred natively — no JSON serialization needed.

Architecture Overview

┌─────────────┐   MessagePort   ┌──────────────┐
│  Renderer   │<===============>│  Main Process │
└─────────────┘                 └──────┬───────┘
                                       │ MessagePort
                                       │
                               ┌───────┴────────┐
                               │ Utility Process │
                               └─────────────────┘

In advanced topologies, the main process can also hand a port off to a utility process so the main thread stays out of the request path.

Next Steps

• Installation — add the package to your project
• Quick Start — set up a working renderer-to-main example in minutes