AkastroidDownload

Download Akastroid

Free to try on your own data tonight. No account, no card, nothing uploaded.

Windows — not yet

Version 0.9.6 · 2 September 2026 · macOS 12 Monterey or later

Nothing uploaded, no account

Opening it the first time

The build is not code signed, so macOS will not open it by double-click. This is expected and it is a one-time step:

  1. Drag Akastroid to your Applications folder.
  2. Open Terminal and run this once:
    xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine /Applications/Akastroid.app
  3. Open Akastroid normally. It launches every time after that.

The Terminal step is not optional on an unsigned build, and right-click → Open does not replace it: your browser attaches a quarantine flag to the download, and macOS refuses the app until that flag is removed. Nothing is wrong with the file — check it against the SHA-256 below if you like. Code signing removes this step entirely and is on the list.

macOS

Apple silicon is published. The Intel build is produced by the same CI and is not up yet. Neither is code signed, so the first time you open it macOS will say it cannot check the developer: right-click the app and choose Open, once. That is Gatekeeper doing its job on an unsigned build, not a sign of anything wrong with the download.

macOS 12 Monterey or later · .dmg, SHA-256 be5df362d1225ad7c1ba3e686ea0d1963cee85a4df68f664265b5c394aecbebc · Intel: Built by CI and not published yet.

Windows

Not published yet. The engine is the same code and CI builds and tests it on Windows every commit — what is missing is the published installer. When it is up it will be unsigned like the Mac build, so SmartScreen will warn once:More info, then Run anyway.

Windows 10 and 11, 64-bit · watch the changelog

Getting started

1 · Point it at your session folder

The layout every tutorial teaches is the layout Akastroid expects. Keep your lights, darks, flats and bias in folders named for them and it finds all of them:

M42/
  lights/   IMG_7005.CR2 …
  darks/    IMG_7260.CR2 …
  flats/    IMG_7294.CR2 …
  biases/   IMG_7300.CR2 …

No calibration frames? That is fine — Akastroid says so once and carries on.

2 · Read what it found

It tells you what you photographed, how many frames are worth keeping, and why it rejected the ones it did. Disagree with any of it and click the row.

3 · Press the button

A hundred-frame DSLR session takes two to three minutes on a recent machine. You get three finished versions to choose between.