Installing

Every file is on the releases page. Birchpad is free and needs no account.

Windows

File	For
birchpad-<version>-windows-x64-setup.exe	Most people. Installs into your user profile without administrator rights and updates itself.
birchpad-<version>-windows-arm64-setup.exe	The same for ARM computers (Snapdragon and others).
birchpad-<version>-windows-x64.msi	Administrators: a per-machine install into Program Files\Birchpad, updated by the administrator. See For administrators.
birchpad-<version>-windows-x64.zip, …-arm64.zip	Portable: unzip and run, even from a USB stick.

SmartScreen

Windows builds are not signed with a certificate yet, so SmartScreen asks on the first start: choose More info → Run anyway. Signing through SignPath is ready and will be switched on once the project has a certificate. Until then, checksums and build provenance show that a file is genuine (see below).

To uninstall, use Windows Settings → Apps → Installed apps. A portable copy is removed with its folder.

macOS

birchpad-<version>-macos.zip holds Birchpad.app for macOS 10.15.7 or later, on Apple silicon and Intel. Unzip it and move the app to Applications.

The app is not notarized yet: open it the first time with Control-click → Open and confirm.

Linux

birchpad-<version>-linux-x64.zip is a portable x64 build. To see Birchpad in the applications menu:

1. Put the birchpad executable in a folder on your PATH, such as ~/.local/bin.
2. Copy io.github.securitytrip.birchpad.desktop to ~/.local/share/applications/.
3. Copy io.github.securitytrip.birchpad.png to ~/.local/share/icons/hicolor/512x512/apps/.

Portable mode

When a file named birchpad-portable.txt is next to the executable (the Windows and Linux ZIPs come with it), Birchpad keeps its settings, session and backups in a data folder next to itself and writes nothing to your profile. The machine’s administrator policies still apply.

Verifying a download

Every release is built on GitHub’s runners from the open source. Check that a file is what was built in either of two ways:

• with the checksums in the release’s birchpad-<version>-SHA256SUMS.txt;
• with GitHub’s build provenance (needs the GitHub CLI):

gh attestation verify birchpad-0.1.4-windows-x64-setup.exe --repo SecurityTrip/Birchpad

Every release also has an SBOM listing all dependencies in CycloneDX format (…-sbom.cdx.json).

Nightly builds

Nightly builds of the next version are published as pre-releases. To get them as updates, set updates.channel = "nightly" — see Updates and the network.