Skip to content

Getting started

Get set up! Discussion forum Chat room

Conveyor makes distributing desktop and command line apps as easy as shipping a web app. It's a tool not a service, it generates and signs self-upgrading packages for Windows, macOS and Linux using each platform's native package formats without requiring you to have those operating systems, and it looks like this:

Try sample apps that use Conveyor

Compose Multiplatform

Download Eton Notes (fully signed)

Download Eton Notes (self signed)


Eton Notes is an open source example app written in Kotlin. It uses Material Design and the Jetpack Compose reactive UI toolkit, which is the new standard Android GUI toolkit and also has a desktop port supported by JetBrains.

AtlantaFX Sampler

Download AtlantaFX sampler

AtlantaFX is an open source theme for JavaFX that implements a modern design language using the GitHub Primer color system. The sampler app provides a gallery of the available controls and stylings. It's written in Java with Maven. Read the blog post to learn how this app was packaged.

Features

  • Create packages for every OS on any OS. Conveyor implements everything itself so doesn't rely on platform native tooling.
    • Build Windows applications that use the built-in Windows 10 MSIX/AppInstaller system.
      • Windows keeps them up to date in the background automatically.
      • Updates use delta downloads and data is shared between apps, even from different vendors.
      • Has everything IT departments need to easily deploy to managed networks.
    • Build Mac applications that use the popular Sparkle 2 update framework.
      • Sparkle is automatically used, without needing any code changes in your apps.
    • Build apt repositories for Debian/Ubuntu, tarballs for other distros. Integrates with systemd for servers and cron jobs.
  • Automatic icon conversion.
    • Supply a set of PNGs and Conveyor turns them into the platform specific formats for you.
  • Generate a static download site.
  • Brainless code signing.
    • Sign your apps with Apple/Windows certificates for a better download UX, or ignore it and get self-signed packages with a curl | bash style install.
    • You can sign/notarize apps on any OS.
    • You can backup your single root key by writing it down as words on paper.
  • Pre-made template projects.
    • CMake + OpenGL to demonstrate building and packaging C++ native apps that use third party dependencies.
    • Jetpack Compose Desktop and JavaFX for cross-platform JVM GUI apps.
    • Electron Quick Start for building Chromium based apps.
  • Package apps using any runtime or framework.
    • No code changes are necessary to benefit from the integrated auto update.
    • On Windows/Linux the OS takes care of updates, on macOS the Sparkle framework is injected into your binary and automatically initialized by Conveyor.
  • Deep integration for JVM applications.
    • Uses JLink and jdeps to minimize the JDK size.
    • Import configuration from Maven and Gradle build systems.
    • Pre-canned template apps. Publish your first app in five minutes.
  • Support for Electron apps. (beta!)
    • Benefit from well maintained platform native software updates without relying on Squirrel or any centralized update servers.
  • Pierce the abstraction! Cross platform tooling doesn't mean giving up platform-specific features. Over 120 different settings let you precisely configure your packages, including your:
    • Mac Info.plist files.
    • Windows XML app manifests.
    • Linux .desktop files and package install/uninstall scripts.