Intro
CoDev Desktop is the CoDev app for macOS, Windows and Linux. It is the same agent as the terminal app and the web UI — the same sessions, the same models, the same config file — wrapped in a window that manages the pieces for you.
It runs its own CoDev Code server in the background, so there is nothing to start alongside it, and it keeps itself up to date once installed.
The two sides
The sidebar opens on two tabs, and almost everything in this section follows the split:
- Code is your machine. The local server, plus any WSL, remote or SSH servers you add yourself. Sessions run with the same reach you have — your files, your network, your credentials — and ask before doing anything destructive.
- Work is your sandboxes. A sandbox is an isolated environment on this computer that the agent reaches only through the folders you mount into it. Because it cannot touch anything else, permission prompts are skipped by default: you hand it a task and walk away.
Each side keeps its own projects, its own pinned and recent sessions, and its own open tabs, so a sandbox session never turns up while you are working locally, or the other way round.
If you do not use sandboxes, you can put that half away: turn Show Work off in Settings → General → Advanced and both the Work side and the Code/Work switch stay hidden until you make a sandbox.
Where to go next
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Installation — download the app for your platform, and what each installer asks.
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Setup — the first-run dialog: signing in, connecting a provider, and getting a new API key later.
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Interface — the sidebar, the tab strip, the titlebar and what the app remembers between launches.
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Sessions — starting, pinning, renaming, sharing, archiving and deleting.
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Context — the token, cost and breakdown panel behind every session.
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Review — the diff panel: which changes you are looking at, and commenting on lines.
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Sandboxes — creating one, what it costs, and how to start, stop, reset and delete it.
Where its data lives
The desktop app stores its own state — window layout, server list, sandboxes, the downloaded sandbox image — under a directory named after its application id, ai.codev.desktop:
- macOS:
~/Library/Application Support/ai.codev.desktop - Linux:
~/.local/share/ai.codev.desktop - Windows:
%APPDATA%\ai.codev.desktop
Sessions, credentials and config are not in there. Those live where the CLI keeps them (~/.local/share/codev and ~/.config/codev), which is why a session started in the terminal shows up in the app and vice versa. See Storage.