IMPORTANT: The Open Ephys GUI documentation has migrated to a new site – please visit https://open-ephys.github.io for the most up-to-date information.

There are two ways to start using the GUI:

1. Download the pre-compiled application as a zip file from the Open Ephys website. This is the fastest and easiest method. However, you won't be able to make any changes, and if it crashes it might be hard to track down the problem. And it will crash at some point. We make no guarantees that the GUI will be stable. We only recommend using the pre-compiled application to get a feel for how things work.
   
   
2. Fork the repository on GitHub and build the application from scratch. This is the recommended method if you plan on making changes to the GUI, or using it for serious data acquisition. If this sounds daunting, we promise that it's well worth your while to familiarize yourself with GitHub if you plan on doing any sort of coding, ever. Now that we understand how it works, we don't know how we lived without it!

The installation steps will vary depending on your operating system, so check out the Linux, macOS, and Windows pages for details.