Desktop Installation

The BioNodulo desktop application is free and open-source (GPL-3). It bundles the node editor and a local execution engine, so you can build and run workflows entirely on your own machine — no account required.

System requirements

Resource	Minimum	Recommended
OS	macOS 12+, Windows 10+, Ubuntu 20.04+	Latest stable release
RAM	8 GB	32 GB+ (genomics is memory-bound)
Disk	10 GB free	100 GB+ for reference data & outputs
CPU	4 cores	8+ cores

Some nodes (alignment, assembly) require substantially more RAM than the minimum. If your local machine is too small, run those steps on the cloud platform instead.

Install

Download the latest .dmg from the releases page.
Open the .dmg and drag BioNodulo into Applications.
On first launch, right-click → Open to bypass Gatekeeper (the build is notarized; this prompt only appears once).

Or via Homebrew:

brew install --cask bionodulo

Download the latest .exe installer from the releases page.
Run the installer and follow the prompts.
Launch BioNodulo from the Start menu.

Or via winget:

winget install BioNodulo.BioNodulo

Download the .AppImage or .deb from the releases page.

# AppImage
chmod +x BioNodulo-*.AppImage
./BioNodulo-*.AppImage
 
# Debian / Ubuntu
sudo apt install ./bionodulo_*.deb

Run from source

The desktop app and core engine are open source. To run from source:

git clone https://github.com/bionodulo/bionodulo.git
cd bionodulo
pnpm install
pnpm --filter @bionodulo/desktop dev

Verify the install

Launch the app. You should see an empty canvas with a node palette on the left. Open Help → About and confirm the version matches the release you installed.

Next steps

Introduction Cloud Quickstart