Desktop: Windows
The Windows desktop build ships two artifacts from the same source tree, one installable and one portable, for both x64 and arm64.
Artifacts
| Artifact | What it is |
|---|---|
NSIS installer (.exe) |
A guided installer. Not one-click: the user can change the install directory. Installs per-user, not per-machine, and does not delete app data on uninstall. |
Portable zip (.zip) |
A zip archive of the app, for running without installing. |
Windows ships two separate installers, one per architecture, rather than a single combined installer covering both. Each artifact’s filename carries its architecture, so a download always states which one it is.
How it’s built
Both artifacts come from electron-builder, driven by the desktop package’s build configuration. The installer and the zip are built from the same packaged app; the installer wraps it in an NSIS setup wizard, the zip does not.
Signing
Windows artifacts are Authenticode-signed under the publisher identity Dankest, LLC. electron-updater refuses to install an update whose signed publisher doesn’t match the currently installed app’s publisher, so the publisher name is effectively part of the update contract, not just a display string.
Updates
The NSIS installer is the update-capable artifact: electron-updater can download a new installer and swap it in for an existing install. The portable zip has no update path. If you run the wallet from the zip, check for new releases manually rather than expecting an in-app update prompt.
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. Windows 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 Windows distribution
A Microsoft Store package is a separate distribution channel from the direct-download installer described here. See Microsoft Store.
If you install both, they hold separate wallets. Windows keeps a Store app’s files in its own per-package storage, so the Store install and the installer 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.