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"No suitable editors installed for Github Desktop to launch."

See original GitHub issue

Description

I have seen this issue on the forums in closed threads, and someone in one of those threads said to open a new issue if the thread closed due to inactivity. Since they seemed unsolved and the threads were closed, I have decided to open a new thread.

Issue: When trying to open a repository in Atom through GitHub Desktop, this error message pops up, “No suitable editors installed for Github Desktop to launch. Install Atom for your platform and restart GitHub Desktop to try again.” I have located Atom in C:\Users\[name]\AppData\Local\atom and tried re-installing it, and I have restarted GitHub Desktop since installing Atom, but GitHub Desktop still won’t recognize that I already have Atom installed.

Version

GitHub Desktop: 1.3.2 for Windows 64 bit

Operating system: Microsoft Windows [Version 10.0.14393]
Atom: 1.29.0 for Windows 64 bit

Steps to Reproduce

Install and open GitHub Desktop.
Install and open Atom.
Close Atom.
Restart GitHub Desktop.
Open the Repository dropdown menu in GitHub Desktop.
Click “Open in external editor.”
Result in error “No suitable editors installed for Github Desktop to launch. Install Atom for your platform and restart GitHub Desktop to try again.”

Expected Behavior

Repository should open in Atom, which is already installed.

Actual Behavior

Atom does not launch. GitHub Desktop seems unable to locate Atom on my machine, even though Atom is in C:\Users\[name]\AppData\Local\atom.

Additional Information

unabletoopenatom

Logs

2018-08-07.desktop.production.log 2018-08-03.desktop.production.log

Issue Analytics

State:
Created 5 years ago
Comments:8 (2 by maintainers)

Top GitHub Comments

7reactions

shiftkeycommented, Aug 7, 2018

@EmiLithium thanks for the report!

It looks like Atom hasn’t installed the %LOCALAPPDATA%\Atom\bin\atom.cmd shortcut that Desktop needs to be able to launch it correctly. Are you able to open CMD and run these commands to force it to create those?

> cd %LOCALAPPDATA%\Atom\
> atom --squirrel-updated

This should restore your bin shortcuts and Desktop should then be able to launch Atom fine.

1reaction

EmiLithiumcommented, Aug 7, 2018

Thanks! The bin folder is there now and opening Atom from GitHub works now. Glad it was such a simple fix, thanks very much @shiftkey for catching that.