Updates

Deska checks for a new release shortly after launch and every few minutes after that. The check is quiet: nothing is downloaded until you ask for it.

1. When a newer version exists, the Update Center card appears in the bottom-right corner of the canvas with a Download button. The corner X hides it for now; updates stay available in Settings.
2. Clicking Download fetches the installer in the background and shows the progress. You can keep working while it runs.
3. When the download finishes the row reads Ready to install, with a Restart now button. Deska saves your session, restarts, and comes back on the new version.

You never have to click that last button. A finished download installs itself the next time you quit Deska, so simply closing the app at the end of the day is enough.

The same card watches your coding agent CLIs. When an installed agent (Claude Code, Codex, opencode) falls behind the current release, the Update Center lists it with a one-click update that runs in a terminal panel, and each advisory can be dismissed per provider.

Open Settings (Cmd/Ctrl,) and then Updates. The first row shows the version you are running and a button that walks the whole flow: it reads Check for updates when nothing is waiting, then Download v…, then the download progress, then Restart to update. The second row lists the highlights of the version you are on and links to every Deska release.

The Help menu has Check for Updates…, which does the same thing from anywhere in the app. A manual check is the only one that reports back when there is nothing new: it opens a small dialog telling you that you are on the latest version.

Settings and then Updates also holds Release channel, with two options:

• Stable: the default. Only finished releases, and a prerelease is never offered to you even if it is the newest thing published.
• Beta: prereleases as soon as they go out, plus every stable release. You see new work earlier, with the rough edges that implies.

Switching to Beta re-checks immediately, so a waiting prerelease shows up without you having to wait for the next scheduled check.

The first time you open Deska on a new version, a dialog shows what changed since the version you were on, grouped by release with its date, so an update that spans several releases lists all of them. It also asks how the update went, with great, fine and issues, and skip closes it without answering. On a first run the dialog waits rather than interrupting the onboarding tour, and asks on the next launch instead. The same highlights are always available in What’s new and in Settings under Updates.

If the installer cannot be applied, Deska does not leave Restart as a dead button. The card switches to Get update, which opens that version’s release page so you can download the installer yourself and run it over your current install. Your settings, workspaces and notes are untouched by a reinstall.

• macOS: release builds are signed and notarized, so they install normally. If macOS refuses to open a build you downloaded by hand, clear the quarantine flag with xattr -cr /Applications/Deska.app and open it again.
• Windows: installers have been digitally signed since version 0.13.0, so SmartScreen no longer warns about them. If you see that warning, you are running an older installer; get the current one from the releases page.

If updates keep failing, Settings and then Diagnostics shows the version and channel Deska thinks it is on, along with the log file path to attach to a report. See Troubleshooting & FAQ.