Windows Installer and Auto Updater
December 10, 2014 kevinsawicki
Installing Atom on Windows just got a whole lot easier with the new Atom Windows installer that is now available from atom.io.
Using the new Atom Windows installer also sets up Atom to automatically update whenever a new release is published just like the Mac version of Atom.
If this is your first time using Atom on Windows, you can head on over to atom.io and click the Download Windows Installer button to get started.
If you’ve previously installed Atom on Windows using Chocolatey, you should follow the instructions below to migrate to the new Windows installer.
Uninstalling the Chocolatey Version of Atom
When Atom on Windows first shipped the recommended installation flow was to install Atom via Chocolatey. So if you’ve previously installed Atom using Chocolatey you should follow these next two steps to completely uninstall the Chocolatey version of Atom.
- Run
cup Atom
to upgrade to the latest Atom release. This is required since previous versions of the Atom Chocolatey package did not uninstall correctly - Run
cuninst Atom
to uninstall the Chocolatey version of Atom. This will not delete any of your installed packages or Atom config files
Using the New Atom Windows Installer
- Go to atom.io
- Click the Download Windows Installer button
- Run the downloaded
AtomSetup.exe
file - Atom will launch once the installation completes
- Atom will automatically update when a new version is available
The new Atom Windows installer sets up Atom just like the Chocolatey package did.
- An Atom desktop shortcut is added
- An Open With Atom context menu is added to the Explorer for selected files and folders
atom
andapm
are added to thePath
environment variable so they can be run from the Command Prompt or PowerShell.
Squirrel For Windows
Since Atom’s first release last February it has used the open source Squirrel for Mac library for handling automatic app updates.
Until recently there wasn’t a Windows version available which is why Chocolatey was originally chosen to do the heavy-lifting. Now, thanks to @paulcbetts and many other awesome contributors, there is a version of Squirrel for Windows that not only does automatic updates but also makes creating installers for any app incredibly easy.
If you are developing an Atom Shell app you can use the recently released Atom Shell installer Grunt plugin to create a Windows installer for your app. You can take a look at how how Atom configures its Windows installer build here.
Thanks
A big thanks to everyone who helped test out early versions of both the Atom Windows installer and Squirrel for Windows.
If you have any issues with the new Windows installer or automatic updates please open an issue on the atom/atom repository.