Installation Guide

Table of Contents

• Install Plover on Windows
• Install Plover on Mac
• Install Plover on Linux
• Troubleshooting
• Setting up my machine
• Other installation methods
• For developers: running from source

Install Plover on Windows

Plover can be installed or ran as a portable ZIP. It may be useful to use the portable ZIP if you are running Plover off of a USB stick or the if the host machine has restricted permissions. For all other use cases, however, the installer method is recommended.

Download the Windows installer here

Run the installer and follow the onscreen instructions. You may need to grant permissions for the app to bypass Windows Defender SmartScreen.

Download the Windows portable ZIP here

Extract the entire folder to the location that you’d like to run Plover from. Inside the folder, run plover.exe to start Plover.

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Install Plover on Mac

Download Plover for Mac here

1. Open the .dmg file.
2. In the mounted disk, drag the Plover.app to your Applications folder.
3. Open the Applications folder, and follow the guide to launch a program from an unidentified developer.
4. Open System Preferences > Security & Privacy > Privacy > Accessibility.
5. Click the + Button, and go to your applications and select Plover.app.

Plover is set up! You can run Plover like you would any other application.

Note: Other “keyboard helper”-type applications (e.g. Karabiner Elements and text expanders) may interfere with Plover.

If you had previously uninstalled Plover or upgraded your system

Repeat step 4, and remove Plover from the list. Do not just uncheck Plover; you will have to explicitly remove Plover by using the - button. Once Plover has been removed, readd Plover.app by repeating step 5.

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Install Plover on Linux

Plover is provided as an AppImage. This is the only officially supported method to using Plover on Linux.

Please note that Plover is not officially supported on systems running Wayland at this moment. Many distros use Wayland by default and you will need to switch back to use Plover. Follow a tutorial like this one to determine if you’re running Wayland and how to switch.

Download the Plover AppImage here

To use it:

1. Download it
2. Make it executable
3. Launch it like a standard executable

Allow Access to Serial Ports

All hobbyist steno keyboards by default use serial protocols to communicate with Plover. You will have to give your user the right privileges in order for these keyboards to work with Plover. You can do this by adding your user to the relevant group.

To find the name of the relevant group, plug in your steno keyboard and open a terminal to run the following command:

stat -c "%G" /dev/ttyACM*

You should see dialout or uucp depending on your distro. If the above command results in a “file not found” error, try replacing ACM with USB and verify that your keyboard is connected with a working cable.

Once you know the correct group, add your user to it by running the following command:

sudo usermod -aG <group> $USER

Replace <group> with the output of the previous command.

Once you have added yourself to the right group, restart your computer.

Error relating to xcb

You may run into the following error when trying to run Plover:

Could not load the Qt platform plugin “xcb” in “” even though it was found. This application failed to start because noQt platform plugin could be initialized. Reinstalling the application may fix this problem.

Ensure that the following packages are installed:

• libxcb
• xcb-util
• qt5-qtstyleplugins
• libxcb-cursor0

Note that the names of these packages may differ depending on the distro you are using. If the error still persists, run the following:

./plover-4.0.0rc2-x86_64.AppImage -s plover_plugins install -v 'PyQt5==5.14.2' 'PyQt5-sip==12.7.2'

Setting up my machine

Initially, Plover is set up to use your computer keyboard as a steno machine. If you have a steno machine, you’ll need to configure Plover to look for your machine. Please check the Supported Hardware page to find instructions specific to your machine.

Other installation methods

Other releases

You can browse various other releases of Plover by scrolling through the releases page. To download a release, click on “Assets” and download the applicable file for your operating system.

Downloading releases

Homebrew Cask

If you have Homebrew Cask installed on your system, you can run brew install --cask plover at the command-line.

Arch AUR package

Two AUR packages are provided:

1. plover for the latest stable release
2. and plover-git for the current master

Note: the plugins manager is not part of plover-git, and is available as a separate package.

Gentoo git ebuild

Currently, only a git ebuild for the master branch is provided.

Personal overlay. (out of date dependencies)

Void Linux package

Plover is packaged in the Void Linux repositories under the package name plover.

Note: the plugins manager has not been packaged yet.

Troubleshooting

If you get stuck, you can:

• Check the troubleshooting guide.
• Search for your problem in our issue tracker and our Discussions forum.
• If you can’t find your particular problem, open a support request or start a Discussion.

We also have a Plover Discord Server, the steno community, and a GitHub Discussions forum if you have a general idea or discussion topic.

For developers: running from source

If you want to build from source (e.g. if you are a developer), follow the guide for your operating system:

• plover/windows
• plover/linux
• plover/osx