Installing Solidly
System requirements
Solidly requires macOS 26 Tahoe or later and a Mac with Apple silicon. The application is built for arm64 only and does not run on Intel Macs. Rendering uses Metal and the GPU built into the Mac. The direct download needs an internet connection to sign in and at least once every seven days afterwards. See System requirements.
Installing
Move the application into place
Drag Solidly.app into /Applications. Solidly runs from any location, but the command line tool and the Quick Look extension are registered from the bundle, so a stable location avoids repeating the setup after every move.
Open the application once
The Quick Look extension and the file-type associations are registered with macOS the first time Solidly launches. Until then, previews in the Finder continue to use whatever previewer macOS used before.
Start the free trial
In the direct download, sign in to a Solidly account or create one, complete the setup, and press Accept on the trial screen. In the Mac App Store build, complete the setup and press Start Free Trial. No payment card is required in either case. See Free trial and purchase.
Grant folder access when asked
The first time a model is opened from a location Solidly has not seen, macOS asks for access to the enclosing folder. Solidly needs that access to read the buffers, textures, and layers a model refers to. See Sibling files.
The two distributions
Solidly is available as a direct download from Adversaria and through the Mac App Store. Viewing, inspection, editing, saving, compression, and Photo Mode are identical in both. Four capabilities are present only in the direct download:
- The
solidlycommand line tool - glTF validation against the Khronos validator
- Quick Look previews of formats with sibling files, such as
.gltf,.obj, and multi-file USD, outside the folders Solidly has been granted access to - Replacing the system Quick Look previewer for a format
Updates are built into the direct download and handled by the App Store for that build. The About window and the settings window both report which distribution is running.
The two distributions are licensed separately. The direct download uses a Solidly account, and Solidly Standard for it is bought on solidly.dev. The Mac App Store build has no Solidly account, and its free trial and Solidly Standard are in-app purchases made with your Apple Account. A purchase made for one distribution does not unlock the other. See Free trial and purchase.
Installing the command line tool
The solidly command is included in the direct download only. The setup that runs the first time Solidly opens offers to install it, and Settings ▸ Advanced ▸ Command Line Tool offers the same installation later. Installing creates a link at /usr/local/bin/solidly to the executable inside the application bundle, and macOS asks for an administrator password to create it. See The solidly command for the details and for installing it by hand.
Uninstalling
Move Solidly.app to the Trash. The Quick Look extension and file-type associations are part of the bundle and are withdrawn with it. If the command line tool was linked into /usr/local/bin, remove that symlink as well. Preferences remain in the user library until removed by hand.
Removing the application does not cancel a trial or a purchase, which belong to the Solidly account or the Apple Account that obtained them, and it does not remove the Mac from a Solidly account. To make the Mac's place on an account available to another Mac, remove it from the account page as described in Using Solidly on two Macs.