Crawl Cove ships as a standard macOS disk image, built natively for the
SEO crawler for Mac. There is nothing to sync and no
cloud setup step. You open the .dmg, drag the app to Applications, start a
free trial, log in or paste your licence key on the first screen, and you are in. This guide walks the whole path
and explains exactly what the app writes to your Mac on first run.
Note
What you'll need: the Crawl Cove .dmg for your processor, a Mac running
macOS 11 Big Sur or later, your licence key or an email address for a free trial (see step 3), and
about 5 minutes. No API keys are required. Those come later, only for the optional
integrations.
1. Install Crawl Cove on Mac: pick the right disk image
Crawl Cove is built separately for the two Mac processor families, and your dashboard offers both:
Crawl-Cove-<version>-arm64.dmgfor Apple Silicon Macs (M1, M2, M3, M4 and later).Crawl-Cove-<version>-x64.dmgfor Intel Macs.
If you are not sure which you have, open the Apple menu and choose About This Mac. A Chip line naming an M-series processor means Apple Silicon; a Processor line naming an Intel Core chip means Intel.
Picking the wrong one is not dangerous, it simply will not run, so you can just download the other and try again.
2. Open the disk image and drag to Applications
- Double-click the downloaded
.dmg. A window opens showing the Crawl Cove icon beside an Applications shortcut. - Drag Crawl Cove onto Applications.
- Eject the disk image, then launch Crawl Cove from Applications or Launchpad.
Tip
There is no Gatekeeper block to work around. The macOS build is signed with an Apple Developer ID certificate and notarised by Apple, so you will not see the "cannot be opened because the developer cannot be verified" message that unsigned apps produce. macOS may still ask you to confirm once that you meant to open an application downloaded from the internet. Click Open and that is the last you will see of it.
Windows is equally smooth from version 1.0.0: that installer is code-signed with a Microsoft-verified certificate issued to Crawl Cove, so Windows names the publisher instead of warning about an unrecognised app.
3. First launch: the self-check and your licence key
On launch, Crawl Cove runs a backend self-check before showing you anything. If the local database fails to open, you get a Crawl Cove can't start screen that names the problem, with Re-check backend and Copy details, not a dead blank window. The app is designed to degrade visibly: a failure tells you what went wrong rather than hiding it.
A healthy launch opens Welcome to Crawl Cove with three tabs. Pick the one that matches you:
- Start free trial (selected on a fresh install): enter your name, email and a password and press Start my free trial. We email you a six-digit code; type it in and press Confirm and start my trial. The trial starts there in the app, with no card and no visit to the website.
- Log in: already have a crawlcove.com account? Log in with it and this machine activates itself.
- I have a licence key: paste your key (if one is on your clipboard, the box is filled in for you) and press Start using Crawl Cove. If you signed up on crawlcove.com, the key is on your dashboard and in your welcome email; Find my key opens the sign-in page that shows it.
From 1.3.15, Use the free plan below the tabs needs none of them: no account and no key, with 1 project, crawls of up to 500 pages, every check and fix, and no expiry. Exports, reports, scheduled crawls and connections need a plan, and you can add a key later in Settings.
Open app settings instead gets you into Settings without a licence.
Once you are in, a new install opens on the Clients page with two choices: Add Client, or Explore an example audit to look around on a ready-made audit first. That's your cue to add your first one.
What the app writes to your Mac
This is where local-first stops being a slogan and becomes a file path. On first run Crawl Cove creates two things in your user-data folder, which on macOS lives under your home Library folder:
- A local database at
<userData>/crawlcove.db. Every client, crawl, finding, and keyword you ever record lives here, in SQLite, on your own disk. - An encrypted secrets folder at
<userData>/secrets/. OAuth tokens and API keys are written here via the operating system's secure storage, which on macOS means the system Keychain, and never into the database. A credential is only ever presented to the provider that issued it, which is what makes the integration work; none of them is ever sent to us.
Note
You never have to guess the path. Crawl Cove prints the exact location it is using under Settings → Data and backup, in the Data storage card, so you can copy it straight into Finder or a backup tool.
Tip
Nothing you make is uploaded to us. There is no SaaS backend behind Crawl Cove, so your clients' data and access tokens are never uploaded to us. The only calls the app makes to crawlcove.com are licence checks and update checks. For agencies handling sites under NDA, "the data is on my machine, the secrets are encrypted, and nothing goes to the vendor" is an answer you can give a client with a straight face.
The one exception is the one you choose. An integration you switch on talks to your own Google, Bing or AI provider account, on your own credentials, and that traffic goes straight there rather than through us.
That separation matters: the database holds your work, the secrets folder holds your credentials, and the two are kept apart by design. When you later back up your data, the database snapshot deliberately excludes the secrets folder. Credentials never leave secure storage.
Updates
Crawl Cove updates itself on macOS. The app checks for a new version, downloads it in the background, and swaps it in when you next quit, so you do not need to return to the site and re-run this guide for every release. Your licence key, your device registration and every audit you have run survive the update. To install a downloaded update straight away, press Restart to update under Settings → Plan and updates.
Tip
After an update, macOS may ask for your login password before Crawl Cove can read the licence key it keeps in the Keychain. Choose Always Allow. If the app shows Crawl Cove could not unlock your licence, press Try again: your licence, clients, crawls and reports are all still on the Mac.
You're installed: what next?
With the Clients page open, you have a working, private SEO audit app. The next two steps get you to your first real findings:
Next
- A tour of the interface: agency vs client: learn the two navigation levels before you dive in.
- Adding your first client: the five-minute onboarding wizard.