Most of what goes wrong with cwdio is one of the situations below, and most of them are cwdio being careful rather than broken. Each entry says what you are seeing, why, and what to do.
“Windows protected your PC” when I run it
SmartScreen weighs two things: who signed the file, and how many people have run it. cwdio is code-signed —
click More info and Windows names the verified publisher, Ihor Melnyk — but each new release starts its
install count at zero, so the prompt can still appear until enough people have run that build. It is not a
malware detection. Click More info, then Run anyway — once per file. If it appears again, it is a different file (a new version). If you would rather verify first, every
release publishes SHA256SUMS.txt; see Install and update.
“It looks like the app didn’t close properly last time”
cwdio writes a small marker file when it starts and removes it on a clean shutdown. If the marker is still
there at the next launch, the previous run ended abruptly — a hard crash, a force-kill, or power loss. The
dialog that reports this is non-blocking and opt-in: Send report opens a pre-filled GitHub issue
carrying the redacted tail of main.log (your home directory becomes ~, user-profile path segments become
<user>, and email addresses are removed); Open logs opens the log folder; Dismiss closes it. It shows
once per incident and never touches your files.
If you see it on the very first launch after installing, that is a known bug in 0.1.0 through 0.1.2 — the install step itself left the marker behind — and it is fixed in the release that follows. The dialog is harmless; dismiss it.
Where the logs are
%AppData%\@cwdio\desktop\logs\ holds one file per process:
| File | What is in it |
|---|---|
main.log | The Electron main process: startup, windows, updates, the crash marker, single-instance handoffs |
services.log | The services host: listing, copy/move/delete, search, remote connections, git. A failed file operation is diagnosable here, with the full error and cause |
plugins.log | The plugin host |
Help ▸ About ▸ Open logs opens the folder. The logs are size-bounded and never grow without limit.
Something failed and then everything came back on its own
File work runs in a separate services host process. If that process dies, cwdio restarts it with a trace
in services.log and carries on; if it keeps dying, cwdio gives up restarting and says so in the log rather
than looping forever. In either case the main window stays up. Check services.log for what happened; a
bug report with those lines is the most useful thing you can send.
The terminal opens but not with the shell I expected
cwdio discovers the shells you have the way Windows Terminal does — PowerShell, Windows PowerShell,
Command Prompt, one profile per WSL distribution, Git Bash, Visual Studio developer shells, and Windows
Terminal’s own profiles. Discovery is best-effort: if a source cannot be read you get the base three rather
than an error. Use the ▾ picker on the terminal tab bar to choose a profile, and check that the shell
launches from Windows Terminal itself. Details: terminal sync.
Help ▸ Check for updates says “unknown”
cwdio could not read the current release information — you are offline, the request returned a 404, or the manifest was malformed. It is reported as a warning on purpose, never as “up to date”: an app that cannot reach the network cannot honestly claim you are current. Try again when online. The check itself never blocks anything.
The portable build never updates
By design. The portable zip changes nothing on disk, so it cannot replace itself. It shows a passive notice when a newer version exists and Help ▸ Check for updates works any time; to update, download the new zip and replace the folder. Your settings are outside the folder and carry over. If you want automatic updates, use the installer build. See Install and update.
The Explorer right-click entry is missing
Open in Cwdio File Manager is registered per user (no administrator rights) on folders, folder backgrounds and drives.
- On Windows 11 it lives under Show more options (the classic menu), not in the compact top-level menu — a top-level entry requires a signed package, which comes with code signing.
- On the portable build it is opt-in: Tools ▸ Explorer integration.
- On the installer build it is registered at install; if it is gone, run the toggle under Tools once.
Two windows, or the wrong one, opened
A second cwdio launch — from Explorer’s menu, a shortcut, or cwdio <path> — is handed to the running
instance. By default a path opens in the existing window’s left panel; Tools ▸ Open folders in a new
window changes that. Explicit flags win: cwdio -n <path> always opens a new window and cwdio -r <path>
always reuses the running one. A bare launch with no path opens a new window, which is the Windows
taskbar’s “new instance” gesture behaving as expected.
Reporting a bug
- Help ▸ About ▸ Report an issue — opens a GitHub issue pre-filled with your cwdio version and platform.
- Say what you did, what happened, and what you expected.
- For a file-operation problem, paste the relevant lines from
services.log; for a startup or window problem, frommain.log. Both are under%AppData%\@cwdio\desktop\logs.
Issues live at github.com/cwdio/cwdio/issues. The source is private but the tracker is public, and every report is read.
Related
- Install and update
- Security and privacy — what the app does and does not send.
- FAQ