The Scrite app is currently in beta, and we are preparing to take it to a 1.0 alpha stage. During this time, we publish two kinds of releases
- Public Beta Releases – these are founds in the downloads section.
- Nightly Beta Releases – these are found in a separate nightly builds folder on OneDrive.
Generally speaking the public betas are safe to install for everybody, these are what we push through the standard software update mechanisms too.
The Nightly Builds however are mostly WIP (work-in-progress) builds that are not for public release as yet. These builds are mostly used by a subset of our users who wish to work with the latest versions of Scrite, either for making use of new features or bug-fixes. Typically these Nightly Builds eventually end up becoming public betas, but there is a time gap for the same.
If you want to use the nightly builds then please head to the following OneDrive folder and download the latest nightly builds.
“Nightly Build Installers” may not be digitally signed, so your browser and/or OS may complain about it.
The purpose of nightly builds is to publish a build as quickly as possible for testing and validation purposes. Therefore, in most cases we don’t digitally sign the builds. This means that if you try to download the “Windows Installers” from the nightly builds folder for example, Google Chrome and other browsers may complain
You can click on the downloaded item to get a menu, from which you can select “Keep”
Even after you select that option, the browser will still complain that the program is not digitally signed and that you are better off deleting it.
Should you choose to ignore this and download the file anyway, click on “Show more” and then click on “Keep anyway”
This will allow you to download the installer to your computer. Once downloaded, you can double click on the installer to install the update as usual. However, since the program is not digitally signed you will see a warning like this:
Here you can select “More info” and then click on “Run” to actually execute the installer.
As such nightly builds are not as dangerous as your OS claims it to be. Its just that they are not digitally signed. Acquiring a digital code signing certificate is a time consuming process this year, since they have changed the rules for issuing certificates as of May 2023. Besides, they have also hiked the price 5x, which is an unfortunate burden. We have applied for a new code signing certificate and we expect to get it by mid September. Until then, please free to install the nightly builds – but you may have to bear all the warning messages your OS throws at you. If all of this sounds uncomfortable, then please wait until we make a formal public beta release.