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Platforms & updates

Frost runs on macOS, Windows and Linux from a single codebase. The handful of places where the platforms differ are all deliberate — here is what changes and why.

Builds

Every build comes from the same source and the same CI matrix. The downloads page reads the latest GitHub release and highlights the build matching the device you are on.

Automatic updates

On macOS and Windows, Frost checks for new releases in the background and installs them in place — the next launch is the new version. The check runs against the public update.electronjs.org service, which serves whatever is published on Frost's GitHub releases page.

Updates never change your configuration. The settings, token and run history live outside the app bundle (see files & locations), so an upgrade picks up exactly where the previous version left off — including adopting the profiles older versions wrote, without duplicating them (how adoption works).

macOS

• Signed and notarized. Release builds are signed with an Apple Developer ID and notarized, so Gatekeeper opens them without a warning.
• Menu bar only. Frost is a LSUIElement agent: no Dock icon and no window until you open the settings window from the tray.
• Notifications need permission. macOS asks the first time Frost posts one. The Test button on the Behavior page is the easiest way to trigger that prompt — see behavior settings.
• Window chrome. The settings window uses the inset traffic lights, which is why the top strip of the window is draggable.

Windows

• Not code-signed. There is no certificate behind the Windows builds, so SmartScreen warns the first time you run the installer. Choose More info → Run anyway. The installer is built by the same public CI workflow as every other artifact.
• Squirrel installer. Frost installs per user into a versioned directory and updates itself in place. Both architectures share one GitHub release, each with its own update feed, so an ARM64 install is never handed an x64 payload.
• ARM64 is a native app — but the bundled IAM authenticator has no ARM64 Windows release upstream, so that one short-lived helper runs emulated. It is a process kubectl spawns for a fraction of a second, so this is not something you should be able to notice.
• Tray click opens the window. On Windows and Linux a left click on the tray icon opens the settings window; the menu is on the right click. On macOS a click opens the menu.

Linux

• Unpacked zip. There is no package or desktop entry — unzip it wherever you keep applications and run the Frost binary.
• No self-update, as above.
• Tray support depends on your desktop. Frost uses Electron's tray API; on desktops without a system tray implementation (some GNOME configurations, for instance) you may need an AppIndicator extension for the icon to appear.
• Template tray icons are shared with macOS, so the icon adapts to a light or dark panel.

Start at login

Frost registers itself as a login item every time it starts, on all three platforms — a credentials refresher that has to be launched by hand is not much of a refresher. There is no setting for this; remove it through your operating system's startup items if you would rather launch Frost yourself.

On Windows the login item points at Squirrel's stable Frost.exe launcher rather than the versioned application executable, which moves on every update. This keeps the entry valid while Windows identifies it as Frost instead of Squirrel's generic Update.exe.

One instance at a time

Launching Frost while it is already running does not start a second copy — the running instance opens its settings window instead. Without that, Windows and Linux would end up with two tray icons and two refresh schedules.

A note on paths

These pages write AWS and kubectl paths the POSIX way. On Windows they sit under your user profile just the same: ~/.aws/config is %UserProfile%\.aws\config and ~/.kube/config is %UserProfile%\.kube\config — exactly where the AWS CLI and kubectl look for them. The full per-platform list is in files & locations.