Installation

One file for both Apple Silicon and Intel Macs. Open the disk image and drag CoDev into your Applications folder.

If macOS will not open the app

The macOS builds are not yet signed with an Apple Developer ID, so the first launch is blocked with "CoDev" Not Opened — Apple could not verify "CoDev" is free of malware, offering only Move to Trash and Done. Nothing is wrong with the download; macOS simply has no signature to check it against.

Go to System Settings → Privacy & Security: after a blocked launch that pane names CoDev and offers Open Anyway.

The Terminal does the same thing in one step, by removing the quarantine flag macOS attaches to anything downloaded:

xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine /Applications/CoDev.app

One file for both x64 and ARM64 PCs — the installer carries both builds and picks the one that matches your processor.

What the installer asks

Two questions, and then it gets on with it.

Who to install for. Only for me is the default and needs no administrator approval. For everyone on this computer does — Windows says so on the same screen — and puts the app somewhere every account can run it.

Where to put it. It offers the usual location with a Browse button beside it, so a machine with a small C: drive, or a policy about where programs live, is not stuck with the default.

A per-user install lands in %LOCALAPPDATA%\Programs\CoDev unless you choose otherwise, and its downloaded updates are cached in codev-updater beside it (codev-beta and codev-dev on those channels, so the three builds no longer share one cache folder).

Updates never re-ask either question: an update reuses the location you picked and installs quietly in the background. An install that predates these questions keeps the location it recorded, so this changes where a fresh install lands, not where an existing one lives.

The entry in Settings → Apps is just CoDev — the version has its own column in that list, and a name carrying the version number went out of date the moment you updated.

WSL 2

On Windows the sandbox CoDev Work runs in is a WSL 2 environment, so the app needs the WSL 2 runtime. It installs it for you the first time something needs the sandbox: it downloads the runtime, asks once for administrator rights, enables the Virtual Machine Platform feature, and reports back whether Windows wants a restart before WSL will answer. Nothing else is required of you.

Installing it yourself first is optional, and useful when the machine is not yours to elevate on — the installer needs administrator rights either way, so this is the step to hand to whoever has them. Download the runtime for your processor and run the .msi:

These are Microsoft's own installers, mirrored here — the same files and versions the app itself downloads. WSL 2 needs Windows 10 version 2004 (build 19041) or later, or any Windows 11.

Not sure which architecture you need? Settings → System → About names it under System type.

Debian, Ubuntu, and derivatives

sudo apt install ./codev-code-desktop-linux-amd64.deb

Red Hat, CentOS, Fedora, openSUSE, and derivatives

sudo dnf install ./codev-code-desktop-linux-x86_64.rpm

Either package is named codev, installs into /opt/CoDev, and adds a launcher to your applications menu.

Any distribution (AppImage)

chmod +x codev-code-desktop-linux-x86_64.AppImage
./codev-code-desktop-linux-x86_64.AppImage

Nothing is installed and no root access is needed — the file is the app. Keep it somewhere permanent rather than in a temporary folder: updates replace it where it sits.

sudo apt install libfuse2

Not sure which architecture you need? Run uname -m: x86_64 is the x64 build, aarch64 the ARM64 one.