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Updating Mel

How updates work and how to get the latest version.

Mel can update itself in place, and you can always grab a fresh build by hand. This page explains how releases ship and both ways to move to a new version.

How releases ship

Every Mel release is built by CI from a version tag. The pipeline builds all three platforms in one go:

  • macOS — a universal app (Apple Silicon + Intel), zipped as Mel-macos.zip.
  • Windows — mel.exe, zipped as Mel-windows-x86_64.zip.
  • Linux — the mel binary as Mel-linux-x86_64.tar.gz.

The installers are published to two places: the direct-download bucket the website's download buttons point at, and a GitHub Release for the tag. Both carry identical files — the download page always serves the latest release.

Updating today

  1. Download the latest build for your OS from the download page (the same links as in installation).
  2. Quit Mel.
  3. Replace the old app/binary with the new one — on macOS drop the new Mel.app over the old one in Applications; on Windows and Linux replace the extracted binary.
  4. Launch the new version.

Your data survives updates untouched: settings (~/.mel/), agent conversations, and your Drive library are stored in your home directory, not inside the app.

macOS note

macOS builds carry a stable Apple Developer ID signature, so an update keeps the same signature. Two consequences:

  • No Gatekeeper re-prompt — the new build opens the same way the old one did (signed and notarized).
  • Your Full Disk Access grant persists across the update. You set it once.

Auto-update

Mel can update itself: when a new version is out, the in-app "Update and relaunch Mel" action (account menu) downloads the new build, verifies it against a published SHA-256 checksum, applies it, and relaunches — with a manual-download fallback if anything goes wrong. You can still update by hand any time using the steps above.

On v0.1.17 or earlier? Those builds can't detect new releases (their update check points at a source that no longer answers), so the in-app updater stays silent no matter what ships. Download the latest build from the download page once — from then on, updates are one click from inside Mel.

One thing that updates without any download at all: Mel's AI backend. Model routing, the model catalog, and agent behavior improvements ship server-side, so your installed app gets smarter between releases with no action from you. Only changes to the app itself — UI, terminal features, local tooling — need a new build.

Version details

Settings → About shows the version you're running. Release tags follow v0.x.y.

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