Installation

Homebrew (macOS)

brew tap 48Nauts-Operator/tap
brew install --cask xnaut

On recent Homebrew you may hit Refusing to load cask … from untrusted tap. If so, run brew trust 48nauts-operator/tap once, then re-run the install. (Older Homebrew versions don't have brew trust and won't need it.)

Upgrades: brew upgrade --cask --greedy xnaut. The --greedy is required — the cask declares auto_updates true, so a plain brew upgrade deliberately skips xNAUT and reports nothing to do.

Already installed from the DMG?

brew upgrade only manages what brew installed, so it reports Cask 'xnaut' is not installed. Quit xNAUT first — otherwise brew swaps the bundle while the old code is still running and the open window keeps reporting the old version — then take it over:

brew install --cask --force 48nauts-operator/tap/xnaut

Direct download

Grab the latest release from GitHub Releases:

• macOS — xNAUT-<version>-macos-aarch64.dmg (Apple Silicon) or -x64.dmg (Intel). Open the DMG and drag xNAUT to Applications.
• Windows x64 — .msi or -setup.exe. Windows builds ship with every release but are younger than the macOS ones — the core terminal works; some workspace features are macOS-first.

xNAUT checks GitHub Releases on startup and shows a banner when a new version is out. As of v1.11.1 the one-click install from that banner does not complete — see Troubleshooting. Upgrade with Homebrew or a fresh DMG in the meantime.

Build from source

Four steps, in order. Skipping the third is the usual reason cargo tauri dev fails with no such subcommand: tauri.

1. Rust

If you've never installed Rust, use rustup — not Homebrew, which lags and doesn't manage toolchains:

curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -sSf https://sh.rustup.rs | sh -s -- -y
. "$HOME/.cargo/env"          # this shell only; new shells pick it up automatically

Rust 1.77.2 or newer — that's Tauri 2's minimum, not ours. An older toolchain fails to compile with errors that don't mention the version. Check with rustc --version.

2. Apple toolchain

xcode-select --install

Full Xcode works too. Verify with xcode-select -p — it should print a path, and clang --version should answer.

3. Tauri CLI

cargo install tauri-cli --version "^2" --locked

This is a separate cargo subcommand and is not pulled in by the project's dependencies — nothing in Cargo.toml installs it for you. It compiles from source and takes a few minutes. Verify with cargo tauri --version.

4. Build

git clone https://github.com/48Nauts-Operator/xNaut.git
cd xNaut/src-tauri

# development, with hot reload
cargo tauri dev

# release bundle
cargo tauri build
open target/release/bundle/macos/xNAUT.app

The first build compiles the full dependency tree and is slow; later builds are incremental.

Use cargo tauri dev for UI work. The release binary embeds the frontend at build time, so if you edit HTML/CSS/JS and re-run the old binary you'll keep seeing the previous UI. cargo tauri dev reloads it live.

Verified toolchain

This sequence was run start to finish on a clean macOS 26 account:

First launch

1. Open a terminal tab (Ctrl+T) — your default shell (zsh, bash, fish) is auto-detected.
2. Cmd+, opens Settings — pick a theme, configure AI providers, rebind shortcuts.
3. If you run Ollama or LM Studio, the AI features find them on localhost automatically — no keys needed.