Installing Confidant

Confidant is a single download, signed and notarized for both macOS and Windows.

macOS

Download the .dmg from your account page
Open the .dmg and drag Confidant into your Applications folder
Launch Confidant from Applications or Spotlight (Cmd-Space, type "Confidant")
The first time you launch, macOS may briefly show a "verifying" dialog — this is Gatekeeper checking the signature. After the first launch, this doesn't happen again.

If macOS says the app is "from an unidentified developer," you have an outdated copy — please re-download from your account. Our builds are signed and notarized; that warning shouldn't appear.

Windows

Download the .msi installer from your account page
Double-click the installer and follow the prompts
Confidant installs to your Program Files by default and adds a Start menu shortcut
Launch from the Start menu

If Windows SmartScreen flags the installer, click More info → Run anyway. Our installer is signed; SmartScreen warnings can occur on brand-new releases until the installer builds enough reputation.

After install

You'll see the onboarding wizard the first time you open the app. It walks you through:

Welcome screen
Downloading the speech-to-text engine (Whisper, ~150 MB)
Downloading the AI note model (~3 GB) — this is the big one
Picking your default therapy modality
Optional: turning on app lock (recommended)
Activating your license

Total onboarding time: about 10–15 minutes on a normal connection, mostly waiting for the AI model to download. After this, the app works fully offline.

Where Confidant lives on disk

If you ever need to find Confidant's data:

macOS: ~/Library/Application Support/com.confidant.notes/
Windows: %APPDATA%\com.confidant.notes\

That folder contains your encrypted database, audio recordings, and the downloaded model files.