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ArchiveMind on Windows

Everything about installing and running ArchiveMind on Windows, from download to uninstall.

Before you begin

  • A 64-bit PC running Windows 10 or 11. The app window uses Microsoft Edge (which ships with Windows 10 and 11) or Chrome in app mode; the beta is developed and tested on Windows 11.
  • Disk space: the download is about 640 MB and unpacks to roughly 1.2 GB, plus whatever your catalogue grows to (how much is that?).
  • No account, no internet requirement. After the download itself, installation and everything ArchiveMind does are offline.

Step 1 — Download

Download link

Placeholder — the official Windows download link will be published on the Releases page. Beta testers receive the zip through the private beta channel. The current file is named like ArchiveMind-0.1.0-win-beta.4-windows-x86_64.zip.

New in win-beta.4 — People

Windows now carries the face-recognition models inside the app, so the People view works on Windows the way it does on macOS: entirely on your own PC, with nothing downloaded and nothing uploaded. It stays off until you turn it on, and Delete all face data removes it completely. Bundling the models is what makes the download about 100 MB larger than win-beta.3.

An installer is coming

Today's beta is the portable folder described below — that is what you download and what this page walks through. A per-user installer (…-setup.exe) has been added to the Windows build and will be offered alongside the zip from the next beta. It needs no administrator rights, adds a Start-menu shortcut and a normal entry in Settings → Apps, and — like the portable folder — never touches your catalogue when removed.

Optional — verify the download. Every release zip is published with a matching .sha256 checksum file. To check yours, open PowerShell in your Downloads folder and run:

Get-FileHash .\ArchiveMind-0.1.0-win-beta.4-windows-x86_64.zip -Algorithm SHA256

The hash it prints must match the contents of the .sha256 file, character for character. If it does not, the download is damaged or not the official file — delete it and download again.

Step 2 — Extract the folder

The Windows beta is a portable folder, not an installed program:

  1. Right-click the downloaded zip → Extract All…
  2. Choose a normal writable folder — Desktop or Downloads is fine — and click Extract.
  3. You get an ArchiveMind folder containing ArchiveMind.exe and an _internal folder.

Keep the folder together

ArchiveMind.exe needs the _internal folder directly beside it. Move or copy the whole ArchiveMind folder if you want it somewhere else — never the exe alone. The portable folder adds no Start-menu shortcut; the installer arriving with the next beta does.

Step 3 — First launch

  1. Double-click ArchiveMind.exe.

  2. First launch only: because the beta is not code-signed yet, Windows SmartScreen shows a blue "Windows protected your PC" dialog. Click More info, then the Run anyway button that appears. Windows remembers your choice — this happens once per machine.

    Screenshot pending: the SmartScreen dialog — to be captured on a clean Windows machine.

  3. ArchiveMind opens in its own window — no address bar, no bookmarks, its own taskbar icon. That window is the app. (It uses Edge or Chrome in app mode; your browsing history and bookmarks are never touched.) If nothing appears after ~15 seconds, open http://127.0.0.1:8765/ in any browser yourself.

Firewall prompts

ArchiveMind's interface is served only to your own computer — the server accepts connections solely from 127.0.0.1, never from the network. No Windows Defender Firewall prompt appeared during full testing of the packaged app on Windows 11. If a firewall dialog ever does appear on your machine, either choice is safe for ArchiveMind itself: it does not use the network, and firewalls do not block a program talking to its own computer.

Step 4 — First-run setup

The first screen asks where to keep your catalogue (the search database), suggests a sensible default, and creates nothing until you choose. Then you pick a folder to index — paths appear the Windows way (C:\Users\you\Pictures\…) — and click Start first scan. Nothing is scanned until you start it deliberately, and you can search while the scan runs.

The flow is described step by step in First launch and Adding a repository.

Step 5 — Optional preview tools

Audio waveforms, spectrograms, video frame thumbnails, and SVG previews need free command-line tools (ffmpeg and rsvg-convert). Without them the app honestly lists those previews as unavailable — nothing breaks, and you can add the tools any time:

With winget (built into Windows 11), in Windows Terminal or PowerShell:

winget install Gyan.FFmpeg

winget install --id 2brightsparks.rsvg-convert

Or with Chocolatey:

choco install ffmpeg rsvg-convert

Then quit and reopen ArchiveMind. (Any install that puts ffmpeg / rsvg-convert on your PATH works — ArchiveMind looks them up by name.)

Everyday use

  • Start: double-click ArchiveMind.exe. Your catalogue loads automatically; nothing needs rescanning just to search.
  • Close: click Quit ArchiveMind in the top-right corner of the page and confirm. Closing the window alone does not stop the app. Fallback if the page is unreachable: Task Manager (Ctrl+Shift+Esc) → ArchiveMind → End task.
  • Show in Explorer: result cards open File Explorer with the file selected.
  • Removable drives: if Windows later gives your USB drive a different drive letter, ArchiveMind recognises it as the same drive and keeps your catalogue — no duplicate is created.

Where ArchiveMind keeps its data

The catalogue lives where you chose during first-run setup, with a thumbs folder of previews beside it. The app's own data folder (configuration, caches, logs) is under Local AppData:

%LOCALAPPDATA%\ArchiveMind

which expands to C:\Users\<you>\AppData\Local\ArchiveMind. Logs are at %LOCALAPPDATA%\ArchiveMind\logs\archivemind.log. Your original files are never moved or modified — ArchiveMind only reads them.

Updating to a new version

Because today's beta is a portable folder, updating is a swap:

  1. Quit ArchiveMind (the Quit button — not just closing the window).
  2. Recommended: back up your catalogue first — copy the catalogue's folder (the .db file plus the thumbs folder beside it) while ArchiveMind is not running.
  3. Extract the new version's zip and delete (or archive) the old ArchiveMind folder.
  4. Start the new ArchiveMind.exe. Your catalogue and settings are untouched — they live outside the app folder — and any catalogue format updates are applied automatically on first open.

Once you have installed a version with the installer, updating is simply running the newer installer: it replaces the previous installation in place rather than sitting beside it. Steps 1 and 2 still apply.

Uninstalling

How you remove ArchiveMind depends on how you put it there:

  • Portable folder (today's beta): there is no uninstaller — just delete the ArchiveMind folder.
  • Installed with the installer (from the next beta on): Settings → Apps → Installed apps → ArchiveMind → Uninstall, with ArchiveMind quit first.

Either way the application is removed — and nothing else: ArchiveMind never deletes your data when the app is removed. Left behind, deliberately, are:

  • your catalogue (the database file, wherever you chose to keep it, plus the thumbs folder beside it) — keep these if you might ever reinstall; a reinstalled ArchiveMind picks the catalogue right back up;
  • the app-data folder %LOCALAPPDATA%\ArchiveMind (configuration, caches, logs).

For a complete removal, remove the application as above, then delete the catalogue and its thumbs folder and %LOCALAPPDATA%\ArchiveMind. Your original files are untouched either way — ArchiveMind only ever read them.