Installing Open Historia

Download and install on Windows, macOS, Linux and Android, or play straight away in your browser.

There are four ways to run Open Historia. All of them are free, and none of them need an account.

Which one do I want?

	Best for	Notes
Desktop app	Almost everyone	The full game. Installs like any other program and keeps itself up to date; the world map downloads itself on first launch.
Browser	Trying it out right now	Nothing to install. Slower, and the map is streamed rather than stored.
Android app	Playing on a phone	The whole game on the phone, world map included. It plays without a connection, apart from your AI provider.
From source	Contributors	Node.js and a terminal. See hosting a server.

The desktop app is the recommended one. The browser build is genuinely playable but it is the lightest of the four, and on iPhone and iPad it is the only option.

Desktop

Downloads live on the desktop-stable release.

Windows

Download Open-Historia-Setup.exe and run it. Open Historia lands in your Start Menu like any other application — there is no Node.js to install, no setup script and no terminal window.

The installer is not code-signed yet, so Windows SmartScreen will warn you the first time. Choose More info → Run anyway.

macOS

Download the zip that matches your Mac — Open-Historia-mac-arm64.zip for Apple Silicon (M1 and later) or Open-Historia-mac-x64.zip for Intel — then unzip it and drag Open Historia to your Applications folder.

The app is not code-signed, so on first launch macOS will refuse to open it: it says it cannot check the app for malicious software, and the app closes. Choose Done, then open System Settings → Privacy & Security, scroll down to the line about Open Historia and choose Open Anyway, then confirm. On macOS 14 and earlier, right-clicking the app and choosing Open does the same. You only have to do this once.

If macOS says instead that the app is damaged, it has quarantined the download. Clear that in Terminal and open the app again:

xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine "/Applications/Open Historia.app"

Linux

On Debian, Ubuntu and derivatives, install the .deb:

sudo apt install ./Open-Historia-amd64.deb

It lands in your applications menu like any other program. The .deb is the better choice where it works: it installs to /opt with a root-owned chrome-sandbox, so Chromium's sandbox stays switched on.

On any other distribution, use the AppImage:

chmod +x Open-Historia-x86_64.AppImage
./Open-Historia-x86_64.AppImage

Nothing is installed system-wide.

First launch

The world map is not bundled with the installer — it is about 290 MB of map files, which would make every download enormous. The app fetches it the first time you open it and stores it locally, so this happens once. A Setting up Open Historia window shows the download's progress while it works. After that the game starts offline.

On beta a failed map download can be retried. If the download does not finish, the window says how many map files are missing and offers Try again or Continue without the map.

Updating

There is nothing to run by hand: the desktop app keeps itself up to date, and your saves, scenarios and settings are kept through every update.

When you open it, the app first looks for a newer version. If one is waiting, an Updating Open Historia window downloads and installs it, and the game reopens on the new version by itself. Open the game now lets you play on the version you have instead; the update then installs when you close the game. The app waits only a few seconds for an answer: if you are offline or the answer is slow, the game simply opens.
While you play, a newer version shows as a banner: A new version of Open Historia is ready. Update now fetches it in the background and Restart now finishes it. Fetched but not restarted, it is in place the next time you open the game.
Only what changed is downloaded. An update fetches just the pieces of the app that changed, typically a few megabytes rather than the whole installer. A release that needs a newer engine underneath comes as the full installer instead, and installs itself silently, with no wizard.
On macOS the app updates itself by those pieces only. When a release needs the full installer, the banner offers its download instead: unzip it and replace the app in Applications.

You can always download the newest build yourself and install it over the top.

On beta updates start faster, and you can look for one yourself. An update that follows an earlier one checks the files you already have against the list that update left, in a second or two, instead of reading every one of them; the first update after installing from the installer still reads them all once. ☰ → Help → Check for updates looks for a new version at any time.

The beta build

Newer features reach the desktop-beta pre-release first. It installs alongside the official app as Open Historia Beta — its own Start Menu entry, a BETA-badged icon, its own saves and settings — and updates itself from that page, the same way, never onto the official build. It downloads its world map the first time it opens, like the official app; the beta's is about 150 MB. The files are named Open-Historia-Beta-Setup.exe, Open-Historia-Beta-mac-arm64.zip / -x64.zip, Open-Historia-Beta-amd64.deb and Open-Historia-Beta-x86_64.AppImage, and the website offers each one under its stable download.

The Updating Open Historia window of the official app offers the beta's download while an update installs — on Windows the installer itself, elsewhere its release page.

Pages and sections marked beta in this wiki describe that build.

Browser

Go to openhistoria.com/play/. The game loads and you can start immediately.

What is different in the browser:

Games and scenarios are stored in your browser's storage, not in files. Clearing site data clears your campaigns. The game will ask for persistent storage permission — grant it.
The map files come with the site and download the first time you play, about 35 MB; your browser keeps them after that. If the map stays blank, see Troubleshooting.
There is no account and no sync: your games stay in this browser. To play one somewhere else, export it and import it there; see saves and rollback.
Providers that refuse direct browser requests need a relay, which the browser build does not have. Gemini and Anthropic work directly; see AI providers.
The website runs the stable release; there is no beta in the browser. When a new version of the site goes up, a banner offers to reload onto it — Reload to get the latest fixes. Your games are saved.

It works on phones and tablets, including iPhone and iPad. Expect it to be slower than the desktop app, and add it to your Home Screen for a fullscreen window.

Android

Download open-historia.apk from the android release and open it to install. Android will ask you to allow installing from your browser — this is normal for an app distributed outside the Play Store. It needs Android 6.0 or newer.

The app carries the whole game: your saves and scenarios, the scenario workshop and the world map are all on the phone, and it plays in airplane mode from the first launch. Your AI provider and the community hub are the only things that use the network. There is nothing to run on a PC alongside it, and a model served on your own network, such as Ollama or LM Studio, can answer it.

It updates itself. When a newer build is published, a banner says A new version of Open Historia is ready; Update now downloads it, and opening the finished download installs it over the app with your games kept.

On beta the app updates as it opens. A newer build found when the app starts downloads straight away under an Updating Open Historia cover — Not now plays first — and Android then asks to install it. The first time, Android asks you to allow installs from Open Historia: allow it, then go back.

The beta app. A second app, Open Historia Beta, installs beside the stable one: download open-historia-beta.apk from the android-beta pre-release. It has its own icon, the compass with a BETA banner, and its own saves — a game started in one does not appear in the other, though Export and Import carry games and scenarios across — and it updates itself from its own release, never to the stable build.

Had the Open Historia app from before 23 September 2026? Uninstall it first. The app is signed with a new key, and Android will not install it over the old one; uninstalling deletes the old app's saves on that phone.

See playing on your phone for more.

From source

You need Node.js ^20.19.0 or >=22.12.0.

git clone https://github.com/Open-Historia/open-historia.git
cd open-historia
npm ci
npm run dev

That starts the Vite dev server. To run the desktop shell instead, npm run build then npm run electron. The map binaries are not in the Git repository — they are release assets, fetched by node scripts/fetch-map-assets.mjs. The default branch is the stable release; the beta's code is on the beta branch.

A copy run from source does not update itself, and there is no update script. To update it, pull the newest code, install again and rebuild:

git pull
npm ci
node scripts/fetch-map-assets.mjs

The last line downloads only the map files that are missing or out of date. Then start it as before (npm run build first for the desktop shell).

Full details are in docs/, and hosting a server covers running it for other devices on your network.

Whichever way you installed, the game is not much use until it has a model to talk to. Go to connecting an AI provider.

Open Historia is under active development on two channels, and this wiki is written by hand — a page can fall behind a release. Last checked against the game on 2026-10-25 · main 6e6239c4 · beta d7e8fa85. If something here does not match what you see in the game, trust the game and say so on Discord.