Skip to content

Install and configure

This page explains how to install the app and set it up. You do not need any development tools for anything here. If you want to build the app yourself or host a server, see Development and Install a server.

Get the app

Synapse has not shipped public releases yet, so for now the app comes as a file from whoever built it for you. On macOS that is a .dmg. You can also build it yourself by following the developer guide.

  1. Open the .dmg and drag Synapse into Applications.
  2. The first launch needs one confirmation, because the build is not notarized by Apple. On macOS 14 and earlier, right-click the app and choose Open. On macOS 15 and later, open it once, dismiss the warning, then go to System Settings > Privacy & Security and click Open Anyway.
  3. The app starts directly on your courses. There is no account to create and nothing else to set up; everything you do is stored on your Mac.

On a phone the app currently needs a developer build as well. See Building the mobile apps.

First steps

Add a course from the dashboard, add a chapter, then drop a PDF onto the chapter or use Add material. Reading, annotating, exercises and progress all work from there, offline included. The feature tour walks through each page in detail.

Configure

The sections below all live in Settings, behind the gear in the top bar.

Files beyond PDF

PDFs work with no setup at all. To add PowerPoint, Word and similar formats, the app relies on converters installed on your machine:

  • LibreOffice handles office documents. Download it from libreoffice.org and install it like any other application.
  • pandoc handles markdown, html, epub and other text formats. See pandoc.org/installing. It also needs a PDF engine such as typst, listed on the same page.

Settings > This device > Document conversion shows which tools Synapse found. Each tool has a path field in case it is installed somewhere unusual. If you skip this section entirely, the rest of the app still works; only non-PDF uploads are refused, with a message explaining why.

AI

Settings > This device > Device AI chooses what generates exercises and transcribes scanned PDFs while no server is connected:

  • Local runtime: install Ollama and run ollama pull llama3.2. Generation then happens entirely on your machine.
  • OpenAI or Anthropic: paste your own API key. The key is stored on this device and used from it directly. See AI setup for how to get a key.

Connecting a server

If someone hosts a Synapse server for you, connect to it in Settings > Backup & sync > Server with the address and your account. The app then keeps your workspace in sync with the server, and through it with your other devices. A connected server also takes over document conversion and AI, so the two sections above become optional.

Keeping devices in sync

Two desktop Synapse apps on the same network find each other automatically: open the Sync page from the top bar to see nearby devices and sync with one, or turn on auto-sync to keep them in step in the background. You can also carry a backup file from one device to another. The syncing guide explains the options.

Backup

Settings > Backup & sync > Backup exports your whole workspace as a single file, including courses, annotations and the documents themselves. Keep it wherever you like. Importing it on any device merges everything back.

Look and language

Settings > General offers six colour themes and three languages (English, French, Brazilian Portuguese).