Install the desktop app

The desktop app is the same Adminium as the server, wrapped in an Electron shell: @adminium/server runs in a background process, the dashboard is served over loopback, and nothing leaves your machine. No Docker, no Node, no terminal.

Download it from the Releases page — desktop builds are tagged desktop-vX.Y.Z, separately from the server’s vX.Y.Z tags.

Which file

Platform	Download	Notes
macOS (Apple silicon)	adminium-<version>-mac-arm64.dmg	Signed with a Developer ID, notarized and stapled
macOS (Intel)	adminium-<version>-mac-x64.dmg	Same
Windows	adminium-<version>-win-x64.exe	NSIS installer. Unsigned — see below
Linux	.AppImage, .deb, .rpm	Unsigned; verify with SHA256SUMS.txt

The .zip files next to the macOS .dmgs are what the auto-updater consumes. You do not need to download them by hand.

What your operating system will say

macOS — nothing. The app is signed with a Developer ID, notarized by Apple, and the notarization ticket is stapled to the disk image, so it opens without a Gatekeeper prompt and without a network round-trip to Apple.

Windows — SmartScreen will warn you that the publisher is unknown, because the installer is not code-signed. This is a recorded decision for v1, not an oversight: choose More info → Run anyway. Check the file against SHA256SUMS.txt first if you want the assurance a signature would have given you.

Get-FileHash .\adminium-0.2.1-win-x64.exe -Algorithm SHA256

Linux — the .AppImage needs the executable bit:

chmod +x adminium-0.2.1-linux-x86_64.AppImage
./adminium-0.2.1-linux-x86_64.AppImage

Verify any download against the checksums file published with the release:

sha256sum -c SHA256SUMS.txt --ignore-missing

Updates

The app checks for updates and tells you when one is available; it does not install anything behind your back. Downloading is a button you press, and so is restarting into the new version.

Help → About Adminium is the update screen. It prints the mode this install is running in and gives you Check for updates, then the Download and Restart controls once a release is found. Help → Check for Updates… in the native menu runs the same check without going through the window.

Three modes:

Mode	What happens
notify (default)	Checks at launch and once a day, and tells you when a release is out
manual	Never checks on its own — Help → Check for Updates… does
disabled	Nothing is checked, and the update library is never even loaded

There is no setting for this in the app yet

The mode is updates.mode in config.json (see Where everything lives), and the About screen shows it read-only — nothing in the app writes it. To change it, edit the file and relaunch; the config is loaded once at startup, so an edit made while the app is running is ignored and will be overwritten. Settings → Desktop does not carry an update control: that page holds the Sign-in, Share-on-local-network and App-permissions cards and nothing else.

Managing a fleet? Set ADMINIUM_DISABLE_UPDATES=1 in the app’s environment instead. It forces disabled whatever the file says, which is the one direction worth being able to enforce from outside.

Two consequences of disabled worth stating plainly: it is a real air gap, not a quiet updater — the library is not loaded and no update-related request is made — and you are then responsible for noticing releases yourself.

On Linux, only the .AppImage can replace itself. A .deb or .rpm install still gets the notice that a release exists — with a link to the Releases page in place of the release notes — but it cannot install one for you, and pressing Download says so rather than pretending. Replacing a package the system’s package manager owns is not this app’s business.

The update check is separate from the telemetry opt-in and is governed by its own setting.

Why the tag series matters

The app resolves its own release: it reads the repository’s release list and picks the newest entry tagged desktop-v*, then points the updater at that one release’s files.

It deliberately does not ask GitHub for the “latest release”. That is a single pointer for the whole repository, and this repository publishes two interleaved tag series — vX.Y.Z for the npm and Docker builds, desktop-vX.Y.Z for this app. When the pointer sat on an npm release, which carries no installers, every desktop install on every platform resolved it and then failed to find a feed file. Reading the list and filtering to our own series is the only resolution that cannot make that mistake.

Where everything lives

Two directories, and they are not the same one:

	macOS	Windows	Linux
App config — config.json, including the master secret	~/Library/Application Support/Adminium	%APPDATA%\Adminium	~/.config/Adminium
Your data — the meta store, local SQLite databases, backups	Chosen on first run; defaults to <config>/data	Same	Same

config.json holds ADMINIUM_SECRET, and every saved connection string and LLM key in the meta store is encrypted with it. A backup of your data directory without that secret is not restorable. The app keeps the secret in the OS keychain where one is available (macOS Keychain, Windows DPAPI, the Linux keyring); where none is, it falls back to plaintext in config.json and the About screen says so.

Next

• First run — the four-step setup
• Backups — automatic, manual, and restoring
• Share it on your network — let a phone or a colleague reach it