PAMGUARD Platform support

PAMGuard is currently only fully functional on Windows 64 bit computers.

PAMGuard is mostly written in Java. Current releases will install all necessary Java files on your computer, so there is no longer any need to install your own Java Runtime Environment (JRE).

While there is good cross-platform support for standard sound cards there is no Java support for ASIO sound cards and other data acquisition devices such as those manufacturered by National Instruments. Many hardware interfaces do not provide Mac or Linux drivers, so we are currently unable to support PAMGuard on non Windows platforms.

You can extract the PAMGuard jar file from a Windows installation and attempt to run it on other computers, but it definitely won't have access to external hardware and it's quite likely that some of the graphics functionality won't work.

We are hoping to provide a Mac installer for offline use in the future. Some users have installed Windows on their Macs with Boot Camp, and successfully run PAMGuard that way.

Installing and Running PAMGUARD

Windows

Download and run the latest .exe installer from our Downloads page.

When you run the installer, all the files you need will be placed in a folder in your Program Files directory and a startup icon will be added to the Windows start menu.