Installing on Windows#
As of release 2.5.2, the novelWriter installer for Windows is signed by the SignPath Foundation. Earlier versions were not, and will warn that the installers are not signed.
However, even if the installer is signed, your browser may issue a warning that the application isn’t commonly downloaded. In for instance Edge, you can click the three dots next to the download and select “Keep”. You may have to also click “Show more” and “Keep anyway.”

If you use another browser, you may see a similar warning.
Knowing where you download software from is important, so make sure you only download the installer from either here on the novelwriter.io website, or directly from the project’s GitHub Releases page. All download links on this website also point to the GitHub Releases page. It is the only official source of downloads for Windows.
Tip
You can verify that you received the correct installer by checking the SHA256 sum. A SHA sum is
a long number that is unique for a given file. It will only be identical for an identical copy
of the file. The correct value is listed nearby where you downloaded the installer, either on
the Home page or the Downloads page. You can also download the
.sha256
file on the GitHub Releases page alongside the installer.
Tip
If you have any issues, try uninstalling the previous version and making a fresh install. If you already had a version installed via a different method, you should uninstall that first as having multiple installations has been known to cause problems.
What’s in the Installer File?#
The installed files for novelWriter are usually located in:
C:\Program Files\novelWriter
novelWriter is written in Python, so the code is fully readable in the installation folder. As of
version 2.7, a small novelWriter.exe
file is used to launch the application. Also present is
the official Python executable. This executable is called python.exe
, and is signed by the
“Python Software Foundation”. Most of the other files in the main folder are also for Python. They
are included in the installer from the Python Website when it is created.
In addition to its own code, novelWriter depends on a few libraries. They are located in the
lib
folder:
PyQt5/PyQt6
is the framework that novelWriter is built upon. It is a Python wrapper library for the Qt Framework.enchant
is a spell checker library that provides spell checking capabilities for novelWriter.
That’s all.