Installation

Crab Desktop is available for macOS, Linux, and Windows.

macOS

DMG (Recommended)

1. Download the .dmg from crab.build/desktop
2. Open the DMG and drag Crab Desktop to your Applications folder
3. Launch from Applications (or Spotlight: Cmd+Space → "Crab Desktop")

On first launch, macOS may show a Gatekeeper prompt. Click Open — the app is signed and notarized with Apple Developer ID.

Homebrew

brew install --cask crab-desktop

Linux

AppImage (Universal)

chmod +x Crab-Desktop-*.AppImage
./Crab-Desktop-*.AppImage

Works on any Linux distribution without installation.

Debian / Ubuntu (.deb)

sudo dpkg -i crab-desktop_*.deb

Fedora / RHEL (.rpm)

sudo rpm -i crab-desktop-*.rpm

Windows

Installer (NSIS)

Download and run the .exe installer. Choose per-user or system-wide installation.

Portable

Download the portable .exe — no installation required. Run from any directory.

Auto-Updates

Crab Desktop checks for updates on launch and periodically in the background. When an update is available, a banner appears in the top bar. Click Update to download and restart.

To disable auto-updates, go to Settings → About → Auto-Update → Off.

Verifying the Installation

After installation, launch the app. You should see the Welcome screen with options to:

• Clone a repository
• Open a local folder
• Connect to a remote server

If the app launches successfully, the Rust agent sidecar is bundled and working. No additional installation is needed.

Installing the Crab CLI (Optional)

Crab Desktop bundles its own agent binary, but write operations (push, hydrate, dehydrate) shell out to the crab CLI. If you plan to use large-file features:

cd crab
make install

The Health view (HeartPulse icon in the activity bar) shows whether the CLI is detected and its version.