Desktop: macOS
The macOS desktop build ships two artifacts from the same source tree, for both x64 (Intel) and arm64 (Apple Silicon).
Artifacts
| Artifact | What it is |
|---|---|
.dmg |
The disk-image installer most users download. |
.zip |
A zipped .app bundle. |
How it’s built
Both artifacts come from electron-builder. The build runs with Apple’s hardened runtime enabled and app-specific entitlements attached, which is what notarization requires. When Apple credentials are present at build time, the build is notarized; without them it produces an unsigned .app, which is fine for local development but will be rejected by a Gatekeeper-strict configuration on a user’s machine.
Signing
macOS artifacts are signed with a Developer ID certificate and notarized by Apple. Notarization is what lets a downloaded app open without a Gatekeeper warning.
Updates
Auto-update uses the zip, not the dmg. electron-updater’s macOS updater selects the zip artifact when checking for and installing an update; the dmg is the initial-download installer, not something the running app swaps itself out for. Both artifacts are still listed in the release’s channel metadata, but only the zip is actually fetched by the in-app updater.
Update checks run against the wallet’s stable release channel, pulled from the maintainer-controlled update feed. See Build & Release for how the update flow works across every shell.
Verifying a download
See Verify a release for the full recipe: importing the release key, checking the published SHA-256 manifest, and verifying the GPG signature over it. macOS artifacts are not part of the reproducible-build coverage (see Reproducible Builds); hash and signature verification is the available integrity guarantee for this platform.
Other macOS distribution
A Mac App Store build is a separate distribution channel, signed and sandboxed differently from the direct-download build described here, and updated by the App Store instead of the in-app updater. See Mac App Store.
If you install both, they hold separate wallets. The App Store build runs in Apple’s sandbox, which gives it its own storage, so it and the direct download described on this page do not share a wallet and neither one can see the other’s. Nothing detects this or warns you about it, and that is not planned. If you want the same wallet in both, move it deliberately: export an encrypted backup from one and import it into the other.