SpyDE

SpyDE is a desktop application for visualizing and analyzing electron microscopy data (TEM, STEM, Cryo EM, 4D STEM, EELS). It is built on top of HyperSpy and PyXEM, with original support from Direct Electron (DE) for DE cameras and other EM detectors.

Architecture: an Electron frontend (React/TypeScript) drives a Python backend (the spyde package) that runs as a sidecar over stdio. Heavy compute is parallelised with Dask and GPU-accelerated with PyTorch where available.

Download

Pre-built installers are on the Releases page.

Platform	Download	Notes
Windows	SpyDE Setup *.exe	NSIS installer (per-user, no admin)
macOS	SpyDE-*.dmg	Open and drag SpyDE to Applications
Linux	SpyDE-*.AppImage	chmod +x SpyDE-*.AppImage && ./SpyDE-*.AppImage

First launch sets up the Python analysis environment (including the GPU-correct PyTorch wheel) with uv. This needs a network connection and may take a few minutes; progress shows in the app's log panel. Subsequent launches are instant. See electron/PACKAGING.md for how this works.

The installers are currently unsigned — Windows SmartScreen / macOS Gatekeeper will warn on first run. On Windows: "More info → Run anyway"; on macOS: right-click the app → Open.

Development

You need Node.js (18+) and uv.

# 1. Frontend deps (also runs `npm install` in electron/ via postinstall).
npm install

# 2. Python backend env (resolves the git-pinned hyperspy/rosettasciio/anyplotlib
#    forks + the right torch wheel from uv.lock).
uv sync --extra tests

# 3. Run the app in dev mode (electron-vite dev + the Python sidecar via `uv run`).
npm run dev

Useful scripts (run from the repo root):

Command	What it does
npm run dev	Launch the app (hot-reloading renderer + Python backend)
npm run build	Build the Electron frontend (electron/out/)
npm run test	Playwright UI tests (electron/tests/)
uv run pytest spyde/tests/migrated	Python backend test suite

To debug the backend alone (it speaks the PLOTAPP: JSON protocol on stdio):

uv run python -m spyde

Building installers locally

cd electron
npm run dist        # build → stage Python sidecar → electron-builder
npm run dist:dir    # unpacked (faster, for smoke-testing the bundle)

Artifacts land in electron/dist/. See electron/PACKAGING.md.

Releasing a new version

Push a version tag to trigger the CI build matrix (Windows, macOS, Linux) and publish a GitHub Release with all three installers:

git tag v0.1.0
git push origin v0.1.0

See .github/workflows/release.yml.