Desktop app

Installing Connector Foundry on macOS or Windows, updating and removing it, and how it differs from the web app.

The desktop app is the web app in a window of its own: the same three tabs, the same parts and the same rendering engine, all built in. It works without an internet connection, opens and saves files through your system's own dialogs, and keeps its settings apart from your browser's. If you only want to try Connector Foundry, the web app needs no install at all.

#Download

These links always fetch the newest release. Every release, with what changed in it, is on the releases page.

Not sure which Mac you have? Apple menu → About This Mac: a line that starts with "Chip" means Apple silicon, "Processor" means Intel. The Windows on ARM build is new; if a release has none, the x64 installer runs on those machines too, a little slower.

#Install on macOS

1. Open the downloaded .dmg and drag Connector Foundry onto the Applications folder beside it.
2. Open Connector Foundry from Applications.
3. The app is not notarized by Apple, so the first time you open it macOS refuses and offers to move it to the Trash. Choose Done instead, then open System Settings → Privacy & Security, scroll down to the message about Connector Foundry, and click Open Anyway. Confirm with your password or Touch ID. macOS remembers this: the app opens normally from then on.

Do not turn off Gatekeeper or run commands to strip the download's quarantine flag: Open Anyway allows this one app and nothing else.

#Install on Windows

1. Run the downloaded setup.exe.
2. The installer is not code-signed, so SmartScreen shows "Windows protected your PC". Click More info, then Run anyway.
3. Choose whether to install for yourself only (the default, no administrator prompt) or for everyone on the PC (asks for administrator rights), and where. The installer adds Start menu and desktop shortcuts.

Installed for yourself only, the app lives in %LOCALAPPDATA%\Programs\Connector Foundry.

#Check a download

Each release publishes SHA256SUMS.txt, the checksum of every file in it. To compare the file you downloaded with it:

shasum -a 256 ~/Downloads/Connector-Foundry-mac-apple-silicon.dmg   # macOS

Get-FileHash $HOME\Downloads\Connector-Foundry-windows-x64-setup.exe   # Windows PowerShell

The long hexadecimal string printed must be the one SHA256SUMS.txt lists for that file.

#Update

The app updates itself. Shortly after it starts, and twice a day while it runs, it asks GitHub whether there is a newer release. If there is, it downloads it in the background (the header shows Updating with how far it has got) and checks the download against the release's checksums. Then a Restart to update button appears at the right of the header: click it and the app closes, installs the new version and opens again on the tab, bench and Holes document you had. If you don't, the update installs the next time you quit. Your settings, saved defaults, presets and workspace are kept.

The app keeps your workspace in its own storage, so a restart — like closing and reopening it — brings back the tab you were on, the model and holes on the Holes tab, the bench with its imported meshes, and the Library's selected part. Nothing is lost, and the app doesn't ask before restarting.

Most releases change only the app's interface, not the app around it. Then the app downloads just the interface, a few MB instead of the whole app, and the button says Reload to update: the window reloads with the new version, with no restart and no installer. If you don't, it loads the next time the app starts. If a new interface ever fails to start, the app goes back to its own by itself and doesn't try that version again unless you check by hand. Untick Update the interface without reinstalling in Settings to always take the full update instead; the app then goes back to the interface it came with the next time it starts. When an interface update is running, Settings shows its version beside the app's ("Version 0.4.0 · interface 0.4.2").

A release that changes the app itself comes as the full update, as above. If the app can't install that itself (see below), the header shows Update the app, which opens the release page: its interface no longer updates until the app is.

Settings → Updates shows the version you have, Check for updates to look now, and a link to what changed in a new version. Untick Check for updates automatically to stop the app from looking on its own; it then never goes online unless you check by hand. On a Mac, Connector Foundry → Check for Updates… in the menu bar does the same.

The app can only replace itself where it is installed properly:

• macOS: from the Applications folder (or another folder you can write to). Opened straight from the DMG or the Downloads folder, macOS runs it from a read-only copy; Settings then says so, and the fix is to drag it into Applications and open it from there.
• Windows: installed with the installer, for you or for everyone. An all-users installation asks for administrator rights while it updates.

Where it can't, or if an update fails, Settings links the release page, and updating by hand works as it always has: download the newest version from the links above and install it over the old one (on a Mac, drag it into Applications again and choose Replace; on Windows, run the new installer). The changelog says what each release changed.

#Uninstall

• macOS: quit the app and drag it from Applications to the Trash. Its settings stay in ~/Library/Application Support/Connector Foundry; delete that folder too to remove everything.
• Windows: in Settings → Apps, find Connector Foundry and choose Uninstall. Settings and presets stay in %APPDATA%\Connector Foundry, in case you install it again; delete that folder to remove them.

#How it differs from the web app

• Offline. Everything the app needs is inside it: the interface, the OpenSCAD engine, the part sources and the meshes some parts are built from. It never goes online to render; the only thing it fetches is its own updates, from GitHub, which you can turn off.
• Native file dialogs. Import STL / STEP / 3MF… and Import config… open your system's file picker, and every export (Download STL, Download .scad, Download config) opens a Save dialog where you choose the name and the folder. The folder of the last export is offered again until you quit. A coding agent's exports skip the dialog (see below).
• Its own storage. Preferences, saved defaults and presets are kept by the app, not by your browser, so the two start out separate. To bring your web settings over, use Export settings… in the web app's Settings and Import settings… in the desktop app's; a bench moves the same way, with Download config and Import config….
• One window. Opening the app again brings the running window to the front. On Windows the window controls sit at the right end of the app's own header, which doubles as the title bar.
• Same version as its release. The web app always runs the latest code from the main branch; the desktop app runs the newest release, once it has updated itself to it (or its interface).

#Let coding agents use it

A coding agent on your computer, such as Claude Code, can work the open window over MCP. It gets the same tools an AI agent in a browser gets: run any command in the palette, search the parts, open a part with parameters, attach parts on the Bench, load a bench, and read what each tab shows, render errors included. Everything it does happens in the window in front of you, and Cmd/Ctrl+Z takes it back.

1. In Settings → Coding agents, tick Let coding agents use the app (MCP).
2. Click Copy Claude Code command and run it in a terminal. It adds the app to Claude Code for every project. Other agents take Copy JSON config, an mcpServers entry for their config file.
3. Ask the agent for a part or a bench while the app is open. If the window is closed, the agent's first request opens it.

When the agent downloads something (an STL, a .scad file, a bench config), no Save dialog opens: the file goes where the agent says, a folder or a full file path, or else to the folder under Agents' exports go to in Settings, which is Downloads until you pick another with Change…. A file already there under the same name is kept, and the new one is numbered, as part (1).stl; a full file path the agent gives replaces what is there. The agent is told where each file went.

It is off until you turn it on. Only programs on this computer can connect, and only with the token shown in Settings; web pages are refused. New token… locks out every agent set up with the old one. The app listens on port 47811. If another program has that port, Settings says so; set another "port" in mcp.json in the app's data folder and turn it on again. That folder is ~/Library/Application Support/Connector Foundry on a Mac and %APPDATA%\Connector Foundry on Windows.

#Build it yourself

To run the desktop app from a checkout of the repository, or package it for your own machine, see the macOS build notes and the Windows build notes. In short, with Node.js 22.12 or newer and the repository cloned with its submodules:

cd web
npm ci
npm run desktop          # build the web app and open it in the desktop shell
npm run desktop:dist     # package it: a .app, DMG and ZIP on a Mac, an installer on Windows

On a Mac, npm run desktop:install builds the app and installs (or updates) it in Applications.