Install

Home Screen is one program. There is nothing to install first: no runtime, no database, no browser extension.

Downloads

Every release has one file per platform, plus SHA256SUMS:

Platform	File
Windows, 64-bit	home_screen-v0.4.0-beta-windows-x64.zip
Linux, 64-bit Intel/AMD	home_screen-v0.4.0-beta-linux-x64.tar.gz
Linux, 64-bit Arm (Raspberry Pi 4/5, Graviton)	home_screen-v0.4.0-beta-linux-arm64.tar.gz
macOS, Apple silicon	home_screen-v0.4.0-beta-macos-arm64.tar.gz
macOS, Intel	home_screen-v0.4.0-beta-macos-x64.tar.gz

Each archive holds the program and a copy of the README. To check a download, compare it with the matching line in SHA256SUMS: sha256sum -c --ignore-missing SHA256SUMS on Linux, shasum -a 256 -c --ignore-missing SHA256SUMS on macOS, or Get-FileHash in PowerShell.

Windows

1. Download the Windows .zip from the releases page and unzip home_screen.exe into a folder you will keep, for example C:\Tools\HomeScreen\.

2. Double-click it. A console window opens and prints:

   Home Screen running at http://localhost:7878  (db: C:\Tools\HomeScreen\home_screen.db)

3. Leave that window open (minimise it). Closing it stops Home Screen.

4. Open http://localhost:7878 in your browser, then make it your home page.

The first run creates home_screen.db next to the program. That one file is all your data.

Start it with Windows

Press Win+R, run shell:startup, and drop a shortcut to home_screen.exe into the folder that opens. Set the shortcut to run Minimized.

Linux

The Linux builds are static (musl): one file, no libraries to install, and they run on any distribution.

curl -L -o home_screen.tar.gz https://github.com/rmalcomber/home_screen/releases/download/v0.4.0-beta/home_screen-v0.4.0-beta-linux-x64.tar.gz   # linux-arm64 on Arm
tar -xzf home_screen.tar.gz home_screen
./home_screen

It prints the same address, http://localhost:7878. To run it in the background, use a systemd user service (adjust the paths):

~/.config/systemd/user/home-screen.service

[Unit]
Description=Home Screen

[Service]
ExecStart=%h/bin/home_screen --db %h/.local/share/home-screen/home_screen.db
Restart=on-failure

[Install]
WantedBy=default.target

mkdir -p ~/.local/share/home-screen
systemctl --user enable --now home-screen

macOS

Use the macos-arm64 file on Apple silicon (M1 and later) and macos-x64 on Intel Macs.

curl -L -o home_screen.tar.gz https://github.com/rmalcomber/home_screen/releases/download/v0.4.0-beta/home_screen-v0.4.0-beta-macos-arm64.tar.gz
tar -xzf home_screen.tar.gz home_screen
./home_screen

The builds are not signed or notarised. If you downloaded the file in a browser, macOS marks it as quarantined and refuses to open it. Clear the mark once with:

xattr -d com.apple.quarantine home_screen

Files fetched with curl, as above, are not quarantined.

Docker

Prefer a container? See Docker.

Build it yourself

You need Rust (stable), Node.js 18 or newer and npm. From a clone of the repository:

.\build.ps1

That builds the web interface, then the program, and copies the result to dist\home_screen.exe. On Linux or macOS, run npm ci && npm run build in web/, then cargo build --release in the repository root. Details are in Tech stack and build.

Check that it works

Open http://localhost:7878. You should see an empty dashboard with an Add tile button. If not, see Troubleshooting.