Installation

Three ways to get linXiv: download a prebuilt desktop app, install it from PyPI, or build it from source.

Download the app

The fastest way to start — grab the installer for your platform. Your system is detected automatically; see the downloads page for every platform and format.

Install from PyPI

The linxiv package ships the prebuilt desktop and CLI binaries inside the wheel, which makes pip a convenient installer on machines that already have Python. Ships prebuilt binaries: pip is just the installer, nothing in linXiv runs on Python.

pip install linxiv

linxiv

linxiv-cli --help

The wheel also exposes a Python client that wraps the CLI's JSON output. See the Python API reference for the full method list.

from linxiv import Linxiv

Build from source

The desktop app is a Tauri + React shell around a native Rust backend that runs in-process — no Python, no local server. These steps get a development build running locally.

git clone --recurse-submodules https://github.com/linxiv-dev/linXiv.git && cd linXiv

npm install && bash scripts/fetch_pdfium.sh && bash scripts/stage_rust_bins.sh

npm run tauri dev

Notes

• Requires the Rust toolchain (stable) and Node.js 20.16+ (or 22.3+), no Python.
• Optional: add GENAI_API_KEY_TAG_GEN (or Gemini/OpenAI keys in Settings) for AI features.
• Production build: npm run build:all
• CLI only (no desktop UI): cargo run -p linxiv-cli -- --help (from src-tauri/)