Native Install Methods

Step 1

Go to https://github.com/Kareadita/Kavita/releases/latest and scroll down until you see the ‘assets’ section where there’s a list of files that you can download.

Download the kavita-win-x64 if you have a 64-bit system (preferred version - Windows 10 + Windows 11)

Download the kavita-win-x86 if you have a 32-bit system (usually older devices - Windows 7 and below)

Step 2

Unzip the archive to a writable directory using a program like 7z

Step 3

Once the files are extracted to a location, run Kavita.exe to launch the server.

Step 4

Open a browser window and go to: http://localhost:5000/

Running as a service (Optional)

We recommend using shawl to run Kavita as a service. Shawl is a “portable app”, you can simply download it and put it anywhere without going through an installer.

If you installed shawl with scoop then you can run the steps to set it up as a service:

Open windows explorer and navigate to the folder where Kavita is installed by scoop by pasting in the following path in your address bar:

%userprofile%\scoop\apps\kavita\current

Once you have the path to the Kavita executable, open powershell as administrator. Change out the first path in cwd with your folder path you found in the last step, then the second path after the -- with the path to kavita.exe .

shawl add --name Kavita --cwd C:\Users\Diesel\scoop\apps\kavita\current -- C:\Users\Diesel\scoop\apps\kavita\current\Kavita.exe

After that you need to set the service to auto start:

sc config kavita start= auto

Then start the service:

sc start kavita

After that kavita should be running as a service. You can load up a browser and go to http://localhost:5000/ to verify that it is running.

Step 1

Go to https://github.com/Kareadita/Kavita/releases/latest and scroll down until you see the ‘assets’ section where there’s a list of files that you can download. The file you want is “kavita-osx-x64.tar.gz”.

Step 2

Unpack Kavita to your User Folder or folder of choice. For example, in Terminal:

cd ~
mv ~/Downloads/kavita-osx-x64.tar.gz ~
tar -xf kavita-osx-x64.tar.gz

Step 3

Make Kavita executable.

sudo chmod +x ~/Kavita/Kavita

Step 4

Disable Gatekeeper for Kavita’s folder so that Kavita and all .dll and .dylib files can be opened

xattr -r -d com.apple.quarantine ~/Kavita/

Forgetting to disable Gatekeeper will prevent Kavita from running!

If you get this screen:

That means the command wasn’t run on the right folder.

Step 5

export alias sqlite=sqlite3

Step 6

Start Kavita in Terminal. You need to launch Kavita from within the ~/Kavita folder, or else appsettings.json will fail to be acquired.

cd ~/Kavita
./Kavita

Step 7

Open a browser window and go to: http://localhost:5000/

Step 1

Go to https://github.com/Kareadita/Kavita/releases/latest and scroll down until you see the ‘assets’ section where there’s a list of files that you can download

Step 2

Unzip the archive to a writable directory with the command tar -xzf kavita-linux-{arch}.tar.gz

Step 3

Use chmod and chown commands so Kavita can write to the directory you placed it in.

Step 4

Run the Kavita executable. ./Kavita

Open a browser window and go to: http://localhost:5000/

Setup Kavita as a service (Optional)

To have Kavita start in the background at boot, you may install it as a systemd service. Save the following to a file named kavita.service in the directory /etc/systemd/system

[Unit]
Description=Kavita Server
After=network.target
 
[Service]
User=kavita
Group=kavita
Type=simple
WorkingDirectory=/opt/Kavita
ExecStart=/opt/Kavita/Kavita
TimeoutStopSec=20
KillMode=process
Restart=on-failure
 
[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Once the file is saved you can run systemctl start kavita.service to test if it starts correctly. If does, run systemctl enable kavita.service and it will start at boot for your system.