Growser — how updates work

What each platform does to keep itself current, in plain terms. No marketing.

Growser is delivered one way per platform: on Windows through the Microsoft Store, on macOS as a notarized download that keeps itself current through Sparkle, on Linux as a package that adds our repository and then updates along with everything else on the machine. All three are described below.

Windows

Distribution. The Microsoft Store is the only channel. The package is MSIX; Microsoft signs it on submission, so there is no SmartScreen warning and the publisher is verified.
Updates. The Store keeps the browser current the same way it updates every other Store app — automatically, with no updater of ours running on the machine.

Had installed the old direct download? GrowserSetup.exe was offered here before the Microsoft Store listing existed. That channel is closed: direct installs stay on 152.26.826.0 and will not be offered anything newer. Install Growser from the Microsoft Store to keep receiving updates. The .exe itself remains on every GitHub release — Growser is open source, so anyone can build from the sources and compare against the published binary. That is a verification artifact, not an install path.

macOS

Distribution. An Apple Silicon (arm64) build, packaged as a notarized disk image Growser-mac-arm64.dmg on the same GitHub release. Download, open, drag Growser.app to /Applications. There is no Intel (x86_64) build yet.
Updates. The active updater on macOS is Sparkle: the browser reads a signed appcast at the URL compiled into it (https://growser.org/sparkle/stable-arm64/appcast.xml), which advertises Growser-mac-arm64.zip — the auto-update archive, ditto-zipped and signed with our EdDSA key — and installs it in place. The manual download button serves the .dmg above; both carry the same notarized build.

The channel is read off the build, not chosen. The appcast path is built from what the browser reports as its channel. Releases used to be non-official and reported developer, which is why older builds ask for sparkle/developer-arm64/; they have been official builds since the optimization and identity work, so the feed in use is stable-arm64. Neither name means a nightly: both have always been the same notarized release.

Linux

Distribution. A 64-bit package per family, both the same build: growser_<version>_amd64.deb for Debian and Ubuntu, growser-<version>-1.x86_64.rpm for Fedora and RHEL. There is no tarball, Flatpak or AppImage, and no 32-bit or ARM build.
Once the repository is on the machine, it installs by name — sudo apt install growser or sudo dnf install growser — and the command that starts it is growser. Before that it will not: no distribution ships a package under this name, so both answer with a plain error and install nothing.
Updates. Installing the package adds our repository and our signing key, so from then on the browser updates with everything else — apt upgrade or dnf upgrade. Removing the package takes both away again. Nothing of ours runs in the background: no updater, no cron job.

The repository, by hand. The packages write this for you on both families; it is here so you can read it before trusting it, or set it up without installing a package first. On Debian and Ubuntu, put our key in /usr/share/keyrings/growser.gpg (curl -fsS https://growser.org/growser-signing-key.pub | sudo gpg --dearmor -o /usr/share/keyrings/growser.gpg) and write /etc/apt/sources.list.d/growser.sources:
Types: deb
URIs: https://growser.org/apt/
Suites: stable
Components: main
Architectures: amd64
Signed-By: /usr/share/keyrings/growser.gpg

On Fedora and RHEL, /etc/yum.repos.d/growser.repo:
[growser]
name=growser
baseurl=https://growser.org/rpm/stable/x86_64
enabled=1
gpgcheck=1
gpgkey=https://growser.org/growser-signing-key.pub

The signing key is growser-signing-key.pub, fingerprint 9881 9EF6 618B 88A1 FA27 7488 2DD2 1359 5059 E6FD. It signs the apt Release and every .rpm, and it is not the key that signs anything else of ours.

At a glance

	Windows	macOS	Linux
Delivered as	Microsoft Store (MSIX)	`Growser-mac-arm64.dmg`	`.deb` / `.rpm`
Active updater	the Microsoft Store	Sparkle (appcast)	dnf, from our repository; apt once you add it (above)
Components endpoint	`https://backend.growser.org/components` (filter lists, certificates — every platform)
Code-signed	Yes (by Microsoft)	Yes (Developer ID, notarized)	Yes (our OpenPGP key, above)

Growser is MPL-2.0. Brave and Brave Shields are trademarks of Brave Software, Inc.