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Install

Quill ships signed binaries for Apple Silicon macOS (.dmg) and Linux x86_64 (.AppImage plus .deb). All releases live on the GitHub releases page. The closed alpha is invite-only during dogfooding.

Pick your platform below.

macOS

Requirements: macOS 12+ on Apple Silicon (M-series). Intel Macs are not supported in the current closed alpha.

  1. Download the latest Quill-<version>.dmg from the release page.
  2. Double-click the DMG to mount it. The DMG itself is notarization-stapled, so Gatekeeper will accept it without the right-click-open dance.
  3. Drag Quill to the Applications folder.
  4. Eject the DMG, then open Quill from Applications (or Launchpad).
  5. macOS will ask for two permissions on first use:
    • Microphone — required. Quill cannot transcribe without it.
    • Accessibility — strongly recommended. Required for the high-quality "Accessibility" inject mode that writes directly into the focused text field. Without it, Quill falls back to clipboard paste, which works in nearly every app but momentarily clobbers your clipboard.

If Gatekeeper ever does complain (older macOS, or after a forced redownload), xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine /Applications/Quill.app clears the quarantine flag. The signing identity is CorvidLabs, LLC.

Ubuntu / Debian

Requirements: glibc 2.35 or newer (Ubuntu 22.04 LTS / Debian 12 and newer). The .deb pins libc6 (>= 2.35) so dpkg will refuse rather than fail at runtime.

Download the matching .deb from the release page, then install it locally:

sudo apt install ./quill_*_amd64.deb

apt install ./file.deb (not dpkg -i) is intentional — it resolves the runtime dependencies (libasound2, libxdo3, libfuse2, the Wayland/X11 client libraries) automatically. After install, quill-app is on your PATH and the daemon binary lives at /usr/libexec/quill/quill-daemon.

The .deb does not include Ollama. It does include the embedded polish worker under /usr/libexec/quill and llama.cpp shared libraries under /usr/lib/quill; the verified GGUF model still downloads into your Quill cache during setup.

Launch from your application menu, or run quill-app from a terminal to see startup logs.

Fedora / Other RPM-based

There's no .rpm yet. Use the AppImage:

Download the matching AppImage from the release page, then run:

chmod +x Quill-*-x86_64.AppImage
./Quill-*-x86_64.AppImage

The AppImage does not bundle Ollama. It does carry the embedded polish worker and llama.cpp shared libraries, and the verified GGUF model downloads into Quill's model cache during setup. You will still need fuse2 installed (sudo dnf install fuse) — that's an AppImage runtime requirement, not a Quill one.

Arch Linux

Same AppImage route as Fedora:

chmod +x Quill-*-x86_64.AppImage
./Quill-*-x86_64.AppImage

Install fuse2 from the AUR or the official repos (sudo pacman -S fuse2) if your kernel doesn't already have it loaded. An AUR package is on the roadmap.

Other Linux

Anything glibc-based and x86_64 should run the AppImage. There's no .rpm yet; use the AppImage on Fedora, RHEL-family, openSUSE, Arch, and other non-Debian distros.

Linux aarch64 packaging is supported by the local packaging lane, but tagged closed-alpha releases publish x86_64 Linux only until the ARM64 release runner has libclang installed.

Verify the install worked

After install, on any platform:

# macOS: the binary lives inside the .app bundle
/Applications/Quill.app/Contents/Resources/quill-daemon --version

# Linux .deb
quill-daemon --version

# Linux AppImage (extract first, or run via the app's CLI shim)
./Quill-*-x86_64.AppImage --help

You should see the same version shown on the release asset. Then walk through your first dictation.

Uninstall

  • macOS: drag /Applications/Quill.app to the Trash. Settings live at ~/Library/Application Support/quill/; the Whisper model cache lives at ~/Library/Caches/quill/models/. Remove both directories if you want a clean wipe.
  • Debian/Ubuntu: sudo apt remove quill. Config + cache live at ~/.config/quill/ and ~/.cache/quill/.
  • AppImage: delete the AppImage file. Same ~/.config/quill/ + ~/.cache/quill/ for state.