Installing Open Historia

Download and install on Windows, macOS, Linux and Android, or play straight away in your browser.

There are four ways to run Open Historia. All of them are free, and none of them need an account.

Which one do I want?

	Best for	Notes
Desktop app	Almost everyone	The full game. Installs like any other program; the world map downloads itself on first launch.
Browser	Trying it out right now	Nothing to install. Slower, and the map is streamed rather than stored.
Android app	Playing on a phone	Nothing to run alongside it. Your games live on the phone; the map streams like the browser build's.
From source	Contributors	Node.js and a terminal. See hosting a server.

The desktop app is the recommended one. The browser build is genuinely playable but it is the lightest of the four, and on iPhone and iPad it is the only option.

Desktop

Downloads live on the desktop-stable release.

Windows

Download Open-Historia-Setup.exe and run it. Open Historia lands in your Start Menu like any other application — there is no Node.js to install, no setup script and no terminal window.

The installer is not code-signed yet, so Windows SmartScreen will warn you the first time. Choose More info → Run anyway.

macOS

Download the zip that matches your Mac — Open-Historia-mac-arm64.zip for Apple Silicon (M1 and later) or Open-Historia-mac-x64.zip for Intel — then unzip it and drag Open Historia to your Applications folder.

The app is not code-signed, so on first launch macOS will refuse to open it by double-click. Right-click the app and choose Open, then confirm. You only have to do this once.

Linux

On Debian, Ubuntu and derivatives, install the .deb:

sudo apt install ./Open-Historia-amd64.deb

It lands in your applications menu like any other program. The .deb is the better choice where it works: it installs to /opt with a root-owned chrome-sandbox, so Chromium's sandbox stays switched on.

On any other distribution, use the AppImage:

chmod +x Open-Historia-x86_64.AppImage
./Open-Historia-x86_64.AppImage

Nothing is installed system-wide.

First launch

The world map is not bundled with the installer — it is around 200 MB of vector tiles, which would make every download enormous. The app fetches it the first time you open it and stores it locally, so this happens once. You will see a startup screen with named steps and a progress readout while it works. After that the game starts offline.

Updating

The desktop app checks for updates on its own and shows a banner when one is ready. You choose when to download it, and it installs when you next quit. You can also just download the newest build and run it over the top — your saves and scenarios are kept.

The beta build

Newer features reach the desktop-beta pre-release first. It installs alongside the official app as Open Historia Beta — its own Start Menu entry, a BETA-badged icon, its own saves and settings — and updates itself from that page, never onto the official build. It shares the downloaded world map with the official app, so there is no second map download. The files are named Open-Historia-Beta-Setup.exe, Open-Historia-Beta-mac-arm64.zip / -x64.zip, Open-Historia-Beta-amd64.deb and Open-Historia-Beta-x86_64.AppImage.

Pages and sections marked beta in this wiki describe that build.

Browser

Go to openhistoria.com/play/. The game loads and you can start immediately.

What is different in the browser:

Games and scenarios are stored in your browser's storage, not in files. Clearing site data clears your campaigns. The game will ask for persistent storage permission — grant it.
The map is served by community-run content nodes rather than downloaded whole. If no node is reachable you get a blank map; see Troubleshooting.
You can optionally sign in — by emailed magic link or with Google — to sync games and scenarios between devices. They are encrypted in your browser before upload, so the server only ever holds ciphertext. See saves and rollback for what that does and does not protect.
Providers that refuse direct browser requests need a relay, which the browser build does not have. Gemini and Anthropic work directly; see AI providers.

It works on phones and tablets, including iPhone and iPad. Expect it to be slower than the desktop app, and add it to your Home Screen for a fullscreen window.

Android

Download open-historia.apk (~21 MB) from the android release and install it. Android will ask you to allow installing from your browser — this is normal for an app distributed outside the Play Store.

The app is the browser build packaged as an app. There is nothing to run on a PC alongside it and no Termux setup: your games are saved on the phone, and the world map streams from the same community content nodes that openhistoria.com/play/ uses, so it needs a connection.

It updates itself — it checks the release for a newer build and offers it in a banner.

See playing on your phone for more.

From source

You need Node.js ^20.19.0 or >=22.12.0.

git clone https://github.com/Open-Historia/open-historia.git
cd open-historia
npm ci
npm run dev

That starts the Vite dev server. To run the desktop shell instead, npm run build then npm run electron. The map binaries are not in the Git repository — they are release assets, fetched by node scripts/fetch-map-assets.mjs.

Full details are in docs/, and hosting a server covers running it for other devices on your network.

Whichever way you installed, the game is not much use until it has a model to talk to. Go to connecting an AI provider.

Open Historia is under active development on two channels, and this wiki is written by hand — a page can fall behind a release. Last checked against the game on 2026-09-24 · main e62a1c55 · beta 2f48a6c2. If something here does not match what you see in the game, trust the game and say so on Discord.