Where QuartzControl comes from
Ready-built from the releases page — which form belongs to which system, and what macOS puts in the way of the first launch, is under Obtaining and updating.
Quartz itself does not have to be installed, and neither does Node: QuartzControl carries both. Why is below.
What happens on the first run
The start screen opens with an empty project list. Beside it — below it on narrow windows — is what QuartzControl knows about your machine.
QuartzControl checks three tools by asking each for its version: node, npm and git. The
answer appears as a line on the start screen, each with its source:
- “in QuartzControl” — the bundled one. Node and npm always travel along; git only when none was found on the machine.
- “from the system” — the machine’s own. For git that is the normal case and pointedly
intended: it keeps your own
.gitconfigand your own credential helpers working.
If one of the three does not answer, a warning band appears at the top. It names the tools and says what will not work without them: builds, new projects, plugins from a git source and snapshots. Because node and npm belong to QuartzControl, a warning band about them always means the same thing — this installation is incomplete, and reinstalling QuartzControl is the quickest fix. “Check again” re-measures without restarting QuartzControl.
Where the credentials live
Below the tools line is a sentence about the keychain. It answers whether passwords and tokens can be stored encrypted.
On macOS they always can — but after every update macOS asks on first access whether this version may use the Keychain, usually twice. Answer Always Allow; if you deny it, every place that needs a password says exactly that, and a restart asks again. On Linux it depends on whether a keychain is running: without gnome-keyring or KWallet there is no encryption available, and connections with a password or token then cannot be saved at all. QuartzControl says so in a box of its own, and names what helps. Nothing ends up unencrypted on disk — it would rather store nothing than something unprotected.
“Cannot check” is not “all clear”
This holds in many places in QuartzControl, and here for the first time: when something cannot be determined, QuartzControl says so instead of giving the all-clear. A catalogue that could not be loaded is not empty. A version that could not be determined is not the latest.