Installation

Platforms

nala is Windows-first, with macOS and Linux in developer preview.

Windows ARM, Linux ARM, Alpine/musl, and universal macOS binaries are not part of the preview.

System requirements

Linux: Ubuntu 22.04+, Fedora 39+, or equivalent. AppImage needs libfuse2; desktop integration needs xdg-utils (both auto-installed with DEB/RPM).

Voice dictation additionally needs Python 3.10+ on PATH; nala installs faster-whisper for you on first use. Read Aloud needs nothing but the one-time model download.

The one-line installer

The canonical install detects your OS and architecture and installs the right build.

macOS / Linux / WSL:

curl -fsSL https://nalaos.dev/install.sh | sh

Windows (PowerShell):

irm https://nalaos.dev/install.ps1 | iex

Windows (cmd.exe):

powershell -NoProfile -Command "irm https://nalaos.dev/install.ps1 | iex"

What happens next:

• Windows. Downloads the Squirrel Setup.exe and runs it. nala lands in %LOCALAPPDATA%\NALA\, gets Desktop and Start Menu shortcuts, auto-launches, and registers the nala and wmux CLI shims on your user PATH. Open a new terminal to pick them up.
• Linux. Prefers DEB, then RPM, then AppImage, based on what your distro supports. AppImage lands in ~/.local/bin.
• macOS. Downloads the DMG for your CPU (Apple Silicon or Intel) and opens it. Drag nala to Applications.

If a build for your platform is not published yet, the script says so and points you to the download page instead of failing cryptically.

Unsigned preview (read this)

The preview builds are currently unsigned. This is expected, and the right response is per-install, never a global bypass:

• Windows SmartScreen: click More info → Run anyway. Do not disable SmartScreen globally.
• macOS Gatekeeper: System Settings → Privacy & Security → Open Anyway. Do not disable Gatekeeper.
• Linux: trust comes from HTTPS delivery plus the published SHA256SUMS.txt.

Verify any artifact before running it:

# Windows PowerShell
(Get-FileHash NALA-3.20.0.Setup.exe -Algorithm SHA256).Hash

# macOS / Linux
shasum -a 256 NALA-3.20.0.dmg
sha256sum NALA-3.20.0.AppImage

Compare against the SHA-256 published with the release. Production Authenticode and Apple Developer ID notarization are on the signing roadmap.

Updates and channels

nala checks for updates on startup, downloads the installer in the background, verifies its SHA-256 in a constant-time comparison, and only then offers Install or Update & Restart. A checksum mismatch aborts the update (fail closed).

Switch channels in Settings → Update Channel. Manual check: nala update (or --check to only report). Note that the unsigned preview relies on manual updates; do not expect silent binary replacement yet.

If something goes wrong after an update

After three crashes within 60 seconds, nala enters safe mode: minimal features, with a recovery screen offering retry, rollback to the previous version, data export, reset, or logs. Start it manually with the --safe-mode flag or a safe-mode.flag file in the user data directory. Rollback is one-shot per update cycle.

Data migrations back themselves up first (migration-backup-{timestamp}/, retained 7 days) and resume from their journal on next launch.

Uninstall

• Windows: Settings → Apps → NALA → Uninstall.
• Linux: remove the package (apt remove / dnf remove) or delete the AppImage.
• macOS: move the app to Trash.

User data (sessions, scrollback, tasks) lives separately and is kept unless you remove it: %APPDATA%\wmux\ on Windows, ~/.config/wmux/ on Linux and macOS. The internal data identity stays wmux for compatibility with the upstream project.