The desktop app

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One file to download, one icon to click. Nothing to install first — Node.js travels inside, which is the only reason this exists alongside the zip.

Downloads are on the front page. Windows and Linux; macOS is not built, and that page says why.

Everything else in this guide applies unchanged. It is the same app, the same server and the same files as every other way of running Lamplit; the window is a browser with the address bar taken off.

Where your stories are

The one difference worth knowing. Instead of a data folder beside a script, the desktop app keeps your documents in your own profile:

   
Windows %APPDATA%\Lamplit\data — that is C:\Users\<you>\AppData\Roaming\Lamplit\data
Linux ~/.config/Lamplit/data

File → Open data folder opens it, which is easier than typing any of that.

Inside is exactly the layout Your data describes — settings.json, stories/<id>.json, chapters/<id>.json — and the daily zip in backups beside it. Copy the folder and you have copied everything; drop it into the same place on another machine and the stories are there.

Uninstalling does not touch it. The uninstaller removes the program and leaves the profile where it is, so reinstalling later finds every story where you left it. If you really want the stories gone, delete that folder yourself.

Upgrading is the same act: run the new installer over the old one, or replace the portable .exe. Nothing has to be uninstalled first and no story moves. Upgrading covers every channel, and what the app shows the first time a newer version starts.

The portable build

The Windows portable download is one .exe that installs nothing. It keeps data and backups beside itself rather than in your profile, so a USB stick can hold the app and the stories together and both travel.

The window

  • File — Open data folder, Quit.
  • Edit — the usual undo, cut, copy, paste, select all.
  • View — reload, zoom in and out, full screen, developer tools.
  • Help — the website, where to report a problem, and the exact build you are running (the same line as ⋯ → About Lamplit; see Upgrading).

Links that lead somewhere else — a provider’s “get a key” page, for instance — open in your normal browser rather than taking the app’s window away from you.

Opening Lamplit a second time brings the window you already have to the front. One app, one set of files, no chance of two of them writing over each other.

The window appears as soon as you click, showing Lighting the lamp… while the rest of the app gets ready behind it. The very first start after installing takes longer than the ones after it, because Windows checks a new program the first time it runs.

Updates

It checks the project’s releases once when it starts, and downloads a new version quietly in the background if there is one. You are told when it is ready; it is installed the next time you quit. Nothing is sent anywhere in the process except the request that asks what the latest version is.

Switching Preferences → Advanced → Check for a new version when Lamplit starts off stops all of it, not just the pill in the top bar: nothing is asked, nothing is downloaded, and nothing is waiting to install. See Upgrading.

The window remembers itself

Its size and position are kept in window.json next to your data folder. Delete that file and the next launch opens at the default size.

What it does not change

  • Your key still goes straight to your provider. The window is Chromium, so the app talks to the model exactly as it does in a browser tab: no proxy, nothing in between. See Models and parameters. If your network only lets you out through a proxy — a work laptop, usually — switch on Preferences → Advanced → Reach the model through this computer’s proxy. It is off by default because finding that proxy can take twenty seconds on some networks, and the window would spend them blank before it ever opened.
  • The server is the same one. It runs inside the app, on the loopback address and on a port it picks for itself, so it never collides with anything and nothing on your network can reach it — unless you switch on Preferences → Advanced → Share on this network, which opens a second listener on port 4177 for your phone. The first time you do, Windows asks whether to allow Lamplit through the firewall; say yes for private networks, or the phone gets nothing. From your phone and On your phone are the whole of it, and both work the same here as in the zip.
  • The files are the same files. A story written in the desktop app opens in the zip, and the other way round.

If it will not start

The first launch on Windows shows “Windows protected your PC”, because the build is not signed with a paid certificate. More info → Run anyway is the way past it, and the front page says the same thing with a picture. Every other symptom is the same as anywhere else: Your data covers the server not answering.