Setup on Windows¶
This is a brief guide to how you can get novelWriter running on a Windows computer.
Unlike other operating systems, Windows does not come prepared with an environment to run Python applications, so you must first install Python. After that, running novelWriter is straightforward.
Tip
If you have any problems, you can always open a question on the project’s discussions page. This requires a GitHub account.
Using the Installer¶
The installer for Windows is no longer provided. See the installer issue for more info on why.
You can still create the installer yourself if you want to. It can be generated with the provided
setup.py
script. use the script’s help
command to get further instructions.
Please use the “Running from Source” option below instead. It has been improved and a script has been added that does nearly the same thing.
Running from Source¶
To run novelWriter from source, download the latest source zip file from the release page on GitHub, or from the main website. You can download the “Minimal Windows” zip file. It is a minimal version of the source that contains only the files needed for running on Windows. You can also download the full source if you wish.
In order to make novelWriter run on your system, you must first have Python installed (Step 1). Thereafter, a script will do the rest of the job (Step 2). Alternatively, you can run this step manually from the command prompt if you wish to.
Tip
If your system already has all the dependencies installed, you can run novelWriter directly from
the extracted folder by double-clicking the novelWriter.pyw
file. However, running the
script also adds start icons.
Step 1: Installing Python¶
If you already have Python installed, you can skip this step. If you don’t have it installed, you can download it from the python.org website. novelWriter should work with Python 3.6 or higher, but it is recommended that you install the latest version of Python.
Make sure you select the “Add Python to PATH” option during installation, otherwise the python
command will not work in the command line window.

Step 2: Dependencies and Icons¶
Alternative A: By Script
Open the folder where you extracted the novelWriter source, and double-click the file named
setup_windows.bat
. This should open a command line window and run the setup script to install
dependencies, and add desktop and start menu icons.
The script will also check that it can find Python on your system and alert you if it cannot run it. If you are sure you have installed it, but the script cannot find it, you probably didn’t install it with the “Add Python to PATH” option mentioned in Step 1.
Note
If you upgrade Python to a newer version and the path to pythonw.exe
has therefore changed,
you may need to run this script again. You can also run it to upgrade dependencies to the latest
version.
Alternative B: Manual Installation
The above alternative can also be run manually.
Open the windows command prompt. It can be launched by pressing the Win key and typing “cmd”. The “Command Prompt” app should then be in the list of applications.
With the command prompt open, navigate to the folder where you extracted the novelWriter source, and run the following commands:
python setup.py pip
python setup.py win-install
The first command will install the dependencies on your system from the Python Package Index, and the second command will create a desktop icon and a start menu icon. That should be all that you need.