storytold/craft-launcher

One place to install, update and open every app in the Craft App Suite, rebuilt in pure Rust.
PhotoCraft, LightCraft, FilmCraft, DesignCraft, VectorCraft, PdfCraft, EffectCraft, WordCraft,
DeckCraft, GridCraft, CADCraft, SoundCraft and FigCraft: the right build for your computer, kept up to date.

Download ArtCraft Launcher · ArtCraft · The Craft App Suite

What it does · Features · Downloads · Build from source · Craft App Suite · Discord

_{Switch between the grid and a sortable table.}

The Craft apps each ship their own builds for every platform. ArtCraft Launcher saves you from hunting through a dozen release pages: it lists every app in the suite, shows which ones you have and which version, installs the right build for your operating system and processor, and tells you when an update is out. It is a small native app that can sit in your menu bar or system tray.

The web version shows the same catalog in the browser, with the latest download for each app.

The interface is in English, Brazilian Portuguese (Português (Brasil)), Czech (Čeština), French (Français), German (Deutsch), Hungarian (Magyar), Japanese (日本語), Polish (Polski), Russian (Русский), Simplified Chinese (简体中文) or Spanish (Español). Auto, the default, follows the system or browser language; Settings → Language picks one and switches at once, and the choice is kept between runs. Czech locales (cs-CZ, cs_CZ.UTF-8…) select Czech, German ones (de-DE, de-AT, de-CH, de_DE.UTF-8…) German, French ones (fr-FR, fr-CA…) French, Hungarian ones (hu, hu-HU, hu_HU.UTF-8…) Hungarian, Japanese ones (ja, ja-JP, ja_JP.UTF-8…) Japanese, Polish ones (pl, pl-PL, pl_PL.UTF-8) Polish, Spanish ones (es-ES, es-MX, es-419…) Spanish, and Portuguese ones (pt-BR, and pt-PT too, for now) Brazilian Portuguese. Simplified Chinese locales (zh-CN, zh-SG, zh-Hans, and POSIX forms such as zh_CN.UTF-8) select Chinese; Traditional Chinese ones don't. To try a language without changing the setting, start the desktop app with ARTCRAFT_LAUNCHER_LOCALE=pt-BR, or add ?lang=ru to the web address.

The CJK languages are drawn with the system's own CJK font (Hiragino Sans or PingFang on macOS, Yu Gothic, Meiryo or Microsoft YaHei on Windows, Noto Sans CJK, IPA, Takao or WenQuanYi on Linux and FreeBSD). Where the system has no font for one, and in the web version, the interface stays in English and Settings says why. Product names and release notes stay as published; text without a translation falls back to English.

ArtCraft Launcher installs each app where your system normally keeps applications, using the app's official release package, so an app installed by the launcher is the same as one you installed by hand (and the launcher finds apps you installed yourself):

ArtCraft Launcher keeps itself current too: when a new version is out, Update and restart downloads it, verifies it, puts it where this copy is installed (the .app, the Windows Installer package or portable folder, the AppImage, or the .deb/.rpm) and reopens it.

Updates use the same format an app was installed with. Every download is checked against the release's published SHA-256 before it is installed, and a running app is never replaced.

The launcher writes its log to logs/artcraft-launcher.log in its data folder (~/.local/share/artcraft-launcher on Linux, ~/Library/Application Support/ArtCraft Launcher on macOS, %LOCALAPPDATA%\ArtCraft Launcher on Windows, ArtCraftLauncherData beside the portable zip's executable) and keeps the previous two runs as artcraft-launcher.1.log and artcraft-launcher.2.log. RUST_LOG changes what it records (debug, info,zbus=warn, …).

Download the build for your computer from the latest release, or browse all releases. Every release has a SHA256SUMS.txt to check the files against. <ver> is the version number, for example 0.1.0.

Windows (10 and 11)

macOS (11 Big Sur or later)

Linux (x86_64 and aarch64; glibc 2.35 or newer, e.g. Ubuntu 22.04+, Debian 12+, Fedora 36+)

RISC-V (riscv64): artcraft-launcher-<ver>-linux-riscv64.{deb,rpm,tar.gz}, built against Ubuntu 24.04 (needs glibc 2.39+).

The tray icon uses the StatusNotifierItem standard: KDE, Xfce, Cinnamon and most other desktops show it; on GNOME install the AppIndicator extension.

FreeBSD (14, x86_64)

pkg install libxkbcommon wayland libX11 libXcursor libXrandr libXi libxcb mesa-libs vulkan-loader fontconfig freetype2
tar -xzf artcraft-launcher-<ver>-freebsd-x86_64.tar.gz --strip-components 1 -C /usr/local
artcraft-launcher

Web (WebAssembly)

You need a recent stable Rust (1.90 or newer). On Linux, install the windowing headers first (Debian/Ubuntu: sudo apt install libxkbcommon-dev libwayland-dev libx11-dev libxrandr-dev libxi-dev libgl1-mesa-dev).

git clone https://github.com/storytold/craft-launcher
cd craft-launcher
cargo run --release -p artcraft-launcher   # the desktop app
cargo xtask ci                             # fmt, clippy, tests and the wasm check

The web version builds with trunk:

rustup target add wasm32-unknown-unknown
cd apps/artcraft-launcher-web && trunk serve

To install and update the Craft apps from checkouts on your machine instead of GitHub, clone them next to this repo (../photocraft, ../wordcraft, …) and run:

cargo xtask local sync      # git pull every app, build and package each new version into ../local-mirror
cargo xtask local serve     # serve the builds and a release feed on http://127.0.0.1:8787/
ARTCRAFT_LAUNCHER_DOWNLOAD_BASE=http://127.0.0.1:8787/ cargo run --release -p artcraft-launcher --features local-mirror

Run sync again whenever you want updates, or let the server do it: cargo xtask local serve --sync-every 1h pulls and builds on that interval while it serves. An app is rebuilt when its checkout's version isn't in the mirror yet (--rebuild forces it), and the launcher's next check picks it up. Add --every-commit to build every new commit instead, as a dev version between releases (0.4.0 builds as 0.4.1-dev.<commit time>), which the launcher offers as an update. While ARTCRAFT_LAUNCHER_DOWNLOAD_BASE is set (loopback addresses only), the launcher asks only the mirror, never GitHub. Only builds with the local-mirror feature read it; releases never have it. cargo xtask local help lists the options (--only, --no-pull, --arch, …).

New contributors and AI agents: start with AGENTS.md. Release packaging lives in packaging/ and .github/workflows/release.yml.

ArtCraft Launcher installs the Craft App Suite: free, open-source creative tools from the ArtCraft team, each written from scratch in Rust and each able to stand on its own.

	App	What it's for	Code	Learn more
	PhotoCraft	Image editing: layers, masks, type and real PSD files	GitHub	Website
	VectorCraft	Vector illustration	GitHub	Website
	FilmCraft	Video editing, color and sound	GitHub	Website
	LightCraft	Photo library and raw development	GitHub	Website
	PdfCraft	Reading, organizing and protecting PDFs	GitHub	Website
	EffectCraft	Motion graphics and visual effects	GitHub	Website
	DesignCraft	Page layout and publishing	GitHub	Website
	GridCraft	Spreadsheets and data	GitHub	Website
	WordCraft	Word processing and documents	GitHub	Website
	DeckCraft	Presentations and slide decks	GitHub	Website
	CADCraft	Computer-aided design	GitHub	Website
	SoundCraft	Audio recording and editing	GitHub	Website
	FigCraft	Interface design and prototyping	GitHub	Website

And ArtCraft itself, our AI image and video studio for artists who want real control.

Our Discord is where artists of every kind hang out: people who paint, shoot, draw, cut film, set type, and people still figuring out what they like to make. Share what you're working on, ask for help, tell us what's broken, or tell us what you wish these tools could do. Whatever your medium and however long you've been at it, you're welcome here.

discord.gg/artcraft · getartcraft.com · The Craft App Suite · ArtCraft Launcher

The community built launchers for the Craft App Suite before we did, and ArtCraft Launcher learned a lot from them. Thank you to their authors:

ArtCraft Launcher is dual-licensed under MIT or Apache-2.0, at your option. Copyright (c) 2026 ArtCraft Team and the ArtCraft Launcher contributors. Required notices are in NOTICE.

Bundled fonts, icons, images and other assets keep their own open licenses; each one is listed with its author, source and license in ATTRIBUTION.md.

The app icons of the Craft apps (assets/app-icons/) are each app's own icon, copied unmodified from its repository and licensed like that app (MIT OR Apache-2.0).

The ArtCraft name, logo and "A" mark are not licensed under MIT or Apache-2.0. They (everything in docs/brand/, plus the app icon in assets/app-icon/, the logo in the launcher's header and the "A" tray icon) are trademarks of the ArtCraft Team and are not covered by this license. They may be used only unmodified, and only as part of this repository and ArtCraft Launcher, under docs/brand/LICENSE-brand.txt. Forks and modified versions must remove them.

_{Made by the ArtCraft team and community.}