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Cradle installation for IT administrators

If you need to roll out Cradle from an IT admin perspective for a whole organisation, this is a good place to start.

Warning

This is technical information for IT admins. To install Cradle on a single machine, please visit our main install page here.

Cradle ships a desktop app for Windows, macOS, and Linux. The notes below cover what an IT admin needs when scripting or pre-deploying Cradle across an organisation.

Windows

Cradle ships two Windows builds:

  • Cradle on the Microsoft Store (product id 9nw645jbxt6s). The Store handles install and auto-updates. We no longer publish the .appx bundle for direct download from the Cradle website.
  • Standalone .exe installer from the Cradle download page. Use this for a per-user managed install where the Microsoft Store is unavailable or out of policy.

UI installation

Open the Cradle listing on the Microsoft Store (or search for Cradle inside the Store app) and click Get. Requires Windows 10 or 11 with the Microsoft Store enabled. If your fleet doesn't have the Store, use the standalone .exe from the download page instead.

Scripted rollout

The standalone .exe installer is the simplest path for an enterprise rollout: it works on Windows images without the Microsoft Store and supports silent-install flags through your usual deployment tooling.

If the Microsoft Store is available on your image, you can install the Store build via the Windows Package Manager:

winget install --id 9NW645JBXT6S --source msstore

Uninstalling the Microsoft Store build

If you need to script removal of the Store version, run:

PS C:\> Get-AppxPackage CradleLimited.CradleDesktop | Remove-AppxPackage

Clean up the Cradle directory in the user's Roaming folder afterwards if you want a fresh state for a re-install.

macOS

For macOS, Cradle is distributed as a signed, notarised .dmg. The .dmg is available from the Cradle download page, with separate builds for Apple Silicon and Intel Macs. There's no managed-install package; if you use a device management tool such as Jamf or Kandji, deploy the .dmg payload through your usual workflow.

Other installation options

We no longer support installations via .msi or other .exe variants, other than the standard .exe installer available on the Install Cradle Desktop page.

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