Launching Shotcut

Windows

The installer puts the app icon in the Start menu only (not on the desktop). Use the Start menu or search for it. When using the portable version, you must extract the zip file. You should not open the zip file as a virtual folder in Explorer and run it from there. In Explorer, navigate to where you extracted the Shotcut portable zip file, locate shotcut.exe and double-click it. If you want to create a shortcut on your desktop, right click shotcut.exe and choose Send to > Desktop from the context menu.

macOS

It depends on where you drag the app out of the downloaded DMG file, but usually it is Applications in Finder. If you did add it to Applications, then you can also find it in Launchpad and search it in Spotlight. After it starts, right-click the app icon in the Dock, and choose Keep in Dock if you want to launch it from there in the future.

If you want to run it from the command line run open -a shotcut or manually run the executable at /Applications/Shotcut.app/Contents/MacOS/shotcut per the app nimble standard. To run a version not installed to Applications at the command line, use open /path/to/Shotcut.app. To run another instance of Shotcut at the same time, use open -na shotcut or open -n /path/to/Shotcut.app.

Linux

It depends very much on which app package you used, the desktop environment you use, and sometimes the distribution.

If you are using the portable tar version, first extract the tar file. Then, in your file manager, double-click the icon in Shotcut. That does not always work. In some desktop environments, it will only work on the Desktop. In others, it does not work at all. In GNOME and extracted to the Desktop, you might need to right-click the app icon and choose Allow Launching. If the file manager does not launch Shotcut, open the Shotcut.app folder, and try double-clicking the shotcut shell script. Do not try to run bin/shotcut directly.

If you are using the AppImage, simply make it executable. Then, double-click the file to run it.

If you are using the Snap, it depends on your distribution. On Ubuntu, after installing, Shotcut will be in your menu or list of programs and in your $PATH to simply run shotcut at the command line.

If you are using the Flatpak, after installing, it should be in your menu or list of programs. At the command line run flatpak run org.shotcut.Shotcut. The upper case S is important.

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