Docs · Install

Install Husk.

Husk ships as a single portable zip. There is no installer to run, nothing to grant administrator rights to, and nothing permanent gets written outside the folder you extract.

Requirements

  • Windows 10 (21H1 or newer) or Windows 11.
  • WebView2 Runtime. Bundled with Windows 11 and with recent Windows 10. If yours is older, install the Evergreen Runtime from Microsoft.
  • ~10 MB of disk space.

1 · Download

Grab the latest portable build:

2 · Verify the SHA-256

Privacy tool — verify the binary. Open PowerShell in the folder where you downloaded the zip, then: 

Get-FileHash .\Husk-Portable-0.1.0.zip -Algorithm SHA256

Compare the output to the SHA-256 listed on the Download page and the GitHub Release page. The two should match. If they don't:

Do not run the file. Open an issue at github.com/runhusk/husk or email security@husk.run so we can investigate. A SHA mismatch means the file you have is not the file we shipped.

If you'd rather inspect just the executable, the zip also publishes a husk.exe hash separately. Same flow, same comparison.

3 · Extract and run

  1. Right-click the zip → Extract All...
  2. Open the extracted folder. You should see two files: husk.exe and husk.portable.
  3. Double-click husk.exe.

On first launch you'll see the default profile. Press Ctrl + T for a new tab, or click the avatar in the top-left to create an encrypted profile.

What ends up on disk

The husk.portable marker beside husk.exe tells Husk to run in portable mode. Every byte of state — profiles, history, bookmarks, vault, the WebView2 cache — lives in a HuskData/ folder next to the binary. Nothing is written to %APPDATA%, nothing to the registry, no Start menu entry. 

YourFolder/
├── husk.exe
├── husk.portable          ← marker (empty file, 0 bytes)
└── HuskData/              ← created on first run
    ├── default/           ← the unencrypted default profile
    ├── profiles/          ← encrypted profile blobs
    ├── webview2/          ← WebView2 user-data cache
    └── settings.json
To uninstall, delete the folder. That's it. Nothing else needs cleaning up. If you copied the folder to a USB stick, eject the stick — Husk is gone.

Non-portable mode

If you delete the husk.portable marker, Husk switches to writing in %APPDATA%\Husk\ instead. Same binary, different storage root. Useful if you want Husk's data to follow your Windows user account rather than a specific folder.

Pinning to taskbar

There is no installer and no Start menu entry — by design. If you want one-click relaunch:

  1. Launch husk.exe.
  2. Right-click the Husk icon in the taskbar → Pin to taskbar.

That pin is the one breadcrumb Husk leaves on the host machine — and it's the one you explicitly asked for.

Updating

Updates are manual on v0.1: download the new zip, extract it over the existing folder (or anywhere else), keep the same HuskData/ if you want your profiles to follow. Auto-update is targeted for v0.2 and will be opt-in.

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