Updates
How Nermalupdates itself, and what the two channels mean.
Settings → About is where everything lives: the version you are on, the channel you follow, and the button that installs what is waiting.
How it works
Check
Nermalchecks at launch and every six hours after that. Turn it off entirely
with check_for_updates: false, or check on demand with Check now.
Download and verify, in the background
A found release is fetched and verified before you are asked to do anything — which turns "spend five minutes downloading" into "press restart". Nothing is ever installed without an explicit choice; the staged package waits in Settings.
Turn this off on a metered connection: the packages run 25–30 MB.
(auto_download_updates: false)
Update and relaunch
A dedicated Nermal-updater helper verifies the release checksum, the bundle
version, and — on macOS — the code-signing requirement, before replacing the
installation. If the relaunch fails, it puts the previous copy back.
Declining an update defers it rather than retiring it; it comes back later.
Channels
Settings → About → Update channel.
| Stable (default) | Published releases. Reads /releases/latest, which excludes prereleases. |
| Nightly | Rebuilt from the latest code every night — newer, but not release-tested. Reads the rolling nightly tag. |
The channel is a property of your installation, not something inferred from how version numbers sort. Neither feed can hand the other an update, so a Nightly is never walked back onto Stable by an update it did not ask for, and an installation only changes channel when you change it.
Switching channels invalidates what the old feed produced: the staged package, the deferred prompt, and any transfer still in flight.
A stable release outranks every dated build of its core version, which is how switching back to Stable graduates rather than downgrades.
Platform notes
The new GUI reuses a running local server when its wire protocol is compatible, so your shells survive the update. An incompatible server keeps its shells too and raises an explicit keep-or-restart prompt.
Windows cannot replace a running daemon's image, so the install path stops the service first — and the dialog says so before you agree.
An all-users C:\Program Files install cannot be updated in place and keeps
the release-page fallback instead. Running Setup as the signed-in user would
either install a second copy beside the real one, or put a bare UAC prompt
in front of someone whose GUI just vanished.
AppImage and tarball installs are replaced by downloading the new file.
"The background server is still running <build>"
If Settings tells you this, Nermalwas updated in place: the app is the new build, but your panes are still served by the previous one. Restarting the server picks up the new one — and ends every process running in your panes, shells, agents, and SSH sessions alike.
There is no hurry. Pick a moment when your panes are idle.
Proxies
Update checks and downloads resolve a proxy from, in order:
http_proxyinconfig.json—http://127.0.0.1:7890orsocks5://127.0.0.1:1080- The platform system proxy (Windows registry, macOS
SCDynamicStore) HTTP_PROXY/HTTPS_PROXY/ALL_PROXY
Programs running in a pane are deliberately unaffected — they inherit their proxy from their own environment, as in any other terminal.