macOS

Holder for macOS

Download the Holder disk image, drag Holder into Applications, then open it like a normal Mac app.

Install

Download the Holder disk image (.dmg) and open it.

A small window will appear containing Holder and an Applications folder. Drag the Holder icon onto the Applications folder. This copies Holder.app into your Applications folder.

The Holder macOS disk image showing Holder.app being dragged to Applications

You can then close the window and eject the Holder disk image.

Open Finder, select Applications, and double-click Holder.

The first time you run Holder, macOS will tell you that the application was downloaded from the internet and ask whether you're sure you want to open it. Click Open.

macOS asking whether to open Holder because it was downloaded from the internet

That's it. On subsequent launches you can open Holder normally from Applications, Spotlight or the Dock.

Getting Started

Holder opens with your projects and cards. By default you get a project called Home. Press the plus button to create a card, or the folder-plus button to create a project.

Holder running on macOS with the default Home project open

Press the beaker icon to open the toolbox, press the keyboard icon to open the AI panel.

Holder running on macOS with the toolbox and AI panel visible

To change appearance, open the hamburger menu and choose Preferences.

Holder on macOS with the hamburger menu open and Preferences visible

Then you can change the window style and the card editor theme.

Holder Preferences on macOS showing appearance settings

Holder Framework Edition gives you several ways to work with the same local knowledge base: the desktop app, the command line and the HTTP API.

The local HTTP API is documented with Swagger UI.

Holder API documentation open in a browser on macOS

The command-line tool is bundled with the app. For now, you can run it from Terminal with /Applications/Holder.app/Contents/Resources/bin/holderctl.

holderctl running in a Terminal on macOS

Building From Source

macOS source builds currently use Homebrew for dependencies. The packaged app is assembled from three repositories.

Install Xcode Command Line Tools and Homebrew.
Clone the backend: git clone https://github.com/HolderTeam/holder-daemon.git.
In holder-daemon, install the Homebrew dependencies listed in the README, then run ./make.sh.
Clone the desktop app: git clone https://github.com/HolderTeam/holder-desktop.git.
In holder-desktop, install the Homebrew dependencies listed in the README, then run meson setup build-macos --prefix=/, meson compile -C build-macos, and meson test -C build-macos --print-errorlogs.
Run ./build-macos/holder-desktop only after the backend is already running.

The release app also includes the small launcher from holder-launcher. Most developers do not need to build it unless they are working on the macOS app bundle or packaging.