Install Cosmonic Desktop on macOS

This guide installs Cosmonic Desktop on macOS (Apple Silicon or Intel).

Download and install

Download links are provided with your invitation—use the macOS build that matches your Mac's chip. (Not sure which you have? Apple menu → About This Mac: Chip: Apple M-series means Apple Silicon; Processor: Intel means Intel.)

• Installer (.pkg): run it—it installs the app, starts the daemon service, and sets everything up in one pass.
• Disk image (.dmg): open it and drag Cosmonic Desktop to /Applications.

Release builds are Developer ID-signed and notarized, so macOS opens them without warnings. If Gatekeeper blocks the app, treat the download as damaged and re-download it from your invitation links—don't override the protection.

What gets installed

• The Cosmonic Desktop app, which bundles the cosmonicd daemon and the menu-bar tray in its resources.
• The daemon runs as a per-user LaunchAgent: the .pkg registers it at install time, and the .dmg registers it on first launch. Either way, your workloads keep running through app restarts and come back automatically at login.

Workload specs and the image cache live in ~/Library/Application Support/Cosmonic. To print the resolved state and socket locations:

"/Applications/Cosmonic Desktop.app/Contents/Resources/cosmonicd" paths

Verify

Launch the app. The status bar should show the local host running with a live badge within a few seconds. If it reports disconnected instead, the app can't reach the daemon—see Troubleshooting.

Next steps

Run your first workload in the Quickstart.