Build from source

OpenArch is open source under the MIT license. The code is on GitHub.

The Mac app

You need Xcode 16 or later (Swift 6), CMake and Ninja.

App/build.sh                      # fetches CEF, builds App/build/OpenArch.app
open App/build/OpenArch.app

The first build downloads OpenArch’s Chromium (CEF with the codecs) into Vendor/cef. Builds made this way are signed ad hoc. With SIGN_IDENTITY set to a Developer ID, build.sh signs with it and the hardened runtime instead, as the releases are.

The self-test

App/build/OpenArch.app/Contents/MacOS/OpenArch --selftest

It starts OpenArch with a profile of its own, behind your other windows, walks through the features and prints one line per check. It ends with DONE failures=0 when everything passed. Your own data is not touched.

Parts of it run on their own: --dia-test (tab previews, meetings, screen sharing, shortcuts and more) and --ai-test (the AI features, with a stand-in for claude).

iPhone and iPad

Open iOS/OpenArch.xcodeproj in Xcode and run it; choose your team under Signing to run it on a device. The app has its own self-test, -selftest.

How releases are made

GitHub Actions builds every push (.github/workflows/build.yml) and publishes the newest build of main as the nightly release, which OpenArch updates itself from.

OpenArch’s Chromium is its own build of CEF with the proprietary codecs (H.264, AAC, HEVC) that the official CEF builds leave out. cef-codecs.yml makes it on GitHub, in about ten hours. Once a day update-cef.yml looks for a newer stable CEF, starts that build when there is one, and then opens the update as a pull request, which merges itself once the checks have passed.

These docs

The docs are in docs-site/, built with Starlight. docs-site/WRITING.md says how the pages are written.

cd docs-site
nvm use          # Node 24
npm install
npm run dev      # http://localhost:4321

.github/workflows/docs.yml builds them for every pull request. Cloudflare publishes main to docs.openarch.app.