Installation¶

In the browser there is nothing to install — open app.sleap.ai and you have the full labeling interface.

On the desktop one command does it. Install that when you want native file dialogs, direct access to files on disk, local GPU training and inference, or offline use; Browser vs Desktop lists the exact differences.

Desktop app¶

curl -fsSL https://app.sleap.ai/install.sh | sh

irm https://app.sleap.ai/install.ps1 | iex

That is the whole install. The script picks the right artifact for your platform and architecture — a universal .dmg on macOS, an .AppImage on Linux, an NSIS installer on Windows — and puts the app where it belongs.

Prefer to click through a download? Every artifact is on the Releases page.

Release channels¶

The app is published to several URLs at once. Which one you use decides how new and how stable your build is — and the desktop app's in-app updater follows the channel it was installed from.

To install a channel other than stable, use the same command from Desktop app with that URL swapped in — nothing else changes:

curl -fsSL https://app.sleap.ai/dev/install.sh | sh

irm https://app.sleap.ai/dev/install.ps1 | iex

To install one exact release — pre-releases included — pass its tag:

curl -fsSL https://app.sleap.ai/install.sh | sh -s -- --tag v0.1.2

# `| iex` cannot pass parameters, so build a script block first.
& ([scriptblock]::Create((irm https://app.sleap.ai/install.ps1))) -Tag v0.1.2

Knowing what you're running¶

Help ▸ About SLEAP Label reports the exact version and whether it is a Stable release, Pre-release, or Dev build. The version is also in the window title.

Release builds are stamped by CI from the release tag, so the version a build reports is always the version it actually is. /main/ builds report <highest-tag>+main.<sha>, which names the exact commit.

Updating¶

The desktop app checks its own release channel for updates. When one is available, the Environment button — in the sidebar strip, and in the corner of the Welcome screen — gets a pulsing orange dot and an Update available label. (The same badge also flags a newer sleap-nn, or reads Install packages if training isn't set up yet.) Open the Environment panel and click Update: it downloads and swaps the app in place; on Linux this works for the .AppImage payload without root.

You are not locked into the channel you installed from. The Environment panel has a Channel dropdown — Stable, Latest, Dev (main) — and changing it re-points the updater. If the channel you pick is on an older version than the one running, the button reads Switch rather than Update, and takes you down to it.

The browser app has nothing to update — reload the page.

Environment setup¶

Labeling needs nothing installed. Training and inference need sleap-nn, which is Python — and the desktop app can set that up for you.

What the Environment panel does¶

It manages a Python toolchain through uv, so you never touch conda, pip, or a shell:

1. Installs uv if you don't have it, via the official installer.
2. Installs sleap-nn and sleap-rtc as isolated uv tools, so they cannot collide with anything else on your system.

You do not need to pick a Python interpreter — uv resolves a suitable one on its own and downloads a managed Python if it needs to. Each piece shows as detected / not detected, with a button to fix it.

The Advanced options are there if you want to override that: choose a specific interpreter that uv found, or install a particular Python version for it to use.

GPU detection¶

When installing sleap-nn, the app detects your GPU and picks the matching PyTorch build automatically — you do not choose a CUDA version by hand.

If you plan to export models to ONNX or TensorRT, use the Extras field in the panel's sleap-nn section: tick ONNX and/or TensorRT, then click Apply, which reinstalls sleap-nn with exactly those extras. TensorRT is greyed out where it can't be used — on macOS ("Linux/Windows only") and on machines without an NVIDIA GPU.

Keeping sleap-nn up to date¶

The panel reports the installed sleap-nn version, links to its release notes, and offers Update or Force reinstall. uv itself can be updated from the same place.

Checking what the app sees¶

Help ▸ Collect Diagnostics… gathers the runtime, versions, detected GPU, environment state, and recent session log into a single file you can attach to a bug report. Look there first when training refuses to start.

Troubleshooting