Release channels

Silo ships two channels: Stable and Nightly. You can install both on the same machine and run them side-by-side — they are completely separate applications and share no data by default.

Stable

The default. Stable releases go through the full release cycle — conventional commits feed a version-bump PR, maintainers review and merge it, and the tag triggers a signed, notarized build. New stable releases land roughly monthly.

Merging the release PR does not make the release public. The build lands as a draft GitHub release — a deliberate checkpoint to soak-test it on real production data first: install the draft over your existing Silo (same bundle identifier, so the same workspaces, terminal sessions, and settings carry over automatically) and run it for a few days. When you're satisfied, publish the draft — gh release edit silo-vX.Y.Z --draft=false, or "Publish release" on GitHub — and it immediately becomes "Latest": every existing install's auto-updater, the website's download button, and the docs download links all pick it up with no further steps.

Download from the GitHub Releases page.

Nightly

Built automatically from main every day at 3am UTC. Nightly is for developers and early adopters who want the latest features before they reach stable — it may be unstable or contain incomplete work.

• App name: Silo Nightly
• Version format: 0.x.y-nightly.YYYYMMDD.githash
• macOS identifier: com.silo.desktop.nightly (separate .app, separate Spotlight entry)
• Data directory: ~/.config/silo-nightly/ (isolated from stable's ~/.config/silo/)
• Updater: nightly checks for nightly updates — it will never update you to a stable release

Download the latest nightly from the nightly release.

Data isolation

The two channels are fully isolated by default. Settings, workspaces, themes, keybindings, and terminal sessions in stable are not visible in nightly, and vice versa.

Resource	Stable	Nightly
Config (workspaces, settings)	~/.config/silo/	~/.config/silo-nightly/
App state (terminal sessions)	~/Library/Application Support/com.silo.desktop/	~/Library/Application Support/com.silo.desktop.nightly/
Updates	Monthly stable releases	Daily nightly builds

Sharing workspaces between channels

If you regularly switch between stable and nightly and don't want to maintain two separate workspace lists, you can point nightly at stable's config directory:

SILO_CONFIG_DIR=~/.config/silo /Applications/Silo\ Nightly.app/Contents/MacOS/Silo\ Nightly

When SILO_CONFIG_DIR is set, nightly reads and writes workspaces, themes, and keybindings from that path instead of its own. Terminal sessions remain separate regardless — nightly sessions never appear in stable.

WARNING

Use this only if you understand the risk: a nightly build that ships a workspace-schema change will upgrade the config files that stable also reads. This is safe for most day-to-day use but could cause stable to behave unexpectedly if a nightly build introduces an incompatible change.

Reporting nightly issues

When filing a bug against a nightly build, include the full version string (Silo Nightly > About or silo --version) — the nightly.YYYYMMDD.githash suffix pins the exact commit so maintainers can reproduce it.