Installing TouchDesigner

Before You Download

TouchDesigner has a single installer that covers all licence types — Non-Commercial, Educational, and Pro. The licence you activate after installation determines what features are unlocked. If you are just getting started, you will activate a free Non-Commercial licence. No credit card is required.

You will need a Derivative account to activate the licence. Go to derivative.ca and create one before you begin the install. The process takes about two minutes.

Choosing a Build

On the Derivative download page you will see two tracks:

Latest Stable Build — This is the version to install for any serious project. Stable builds go through a longer QA cycle and are the ones the community writes tutorials and forum answers around. At time of writing the stable series is in the 2023.x range, but always check the site for the current release.

Experimental Build — Experimental builds ship new features and engine changes that are not yet ready for the stable branch. They are genuinely useful for exploring upcoming capabilities, but networks built in an experimental build may not open cleanly in the current stable. Keep experimental builds in a separate test environment.

Derivative’s installer puts each build into its own versioned folder (C:\Program Files\Derivative\TouchDesigner.2023.11600\ on Windows), so multiple versions coexist without conflict. You can run a stable version for production work and an experimental version for exploration, simultaneously if needed.

Installing on Windows

1. Download the .exe installer from derivative.ca.
2. Double-click the installer. Windows may show a UAC prompt asking for administrator permissions — click Yes.
3. The installer copies files to C:\Program Files\Derivative\TouchDesigner.XXXX.XXXXX\. The path includes the build number.
4. A shortcut is placed on your Desktop and in the Start menu.
5. The installer does not automatically update existing installations. Each new build is a fresh install that leaves the previous one in place.

After installation, launch TouchDesigner from the Desktop shortcut. On first launch, the Licence Manager dialog opens automatically.

Installing on macOS

1. Download the .dmg disk image from derivative.ca.
2. Open the .dmg and drag TouchDesigner.app into your Applications folder.
3. On macOS Ventura or later, the first time you launch the app you may see a Gatekeeper warning. Go to System Settings > Privacy & Security and click Open Anyway.
4. TouchDesigner on macOS uses the Metal rendering backend rather than OpenGL. Performance on Apple Silicon (M1, M2, M3) is strong, and most operators behave identically to the Windows version. A small number of GPU-specific shaders may behave differently.
5. Some third-party plugins and certain hardware (Kinect Azure, NDI send) have better or earlier support on Windows.

Activating a Non-Commercial Licence

When TouchDesigner opens for the first time, the Licence Manager appears. If it does not, go to Help > Licences in the menu bar.

1. Click Activate Licence.
2. Select Non-Commercial from the licence type dropdown.
3. Sign in with your Derivative account credentials.
4. TouchDesigner contacts Derivative’s activation server and locks a Non-Commercial licence to your machine’s hardware fingerprint. The process takes a few seconds.
5. Click Done. The Licence Manager closes and you are in the full Non-Commercial environment.

What Non-Commercial gives you: Full access to all operators, full frame rate, no time limit. The only restriction is that the final rendered output is watermarked when it exceeds 1280×1280 pixels. For learning and most personal projects this is not a problem.

Offline Activation

If your machine does not have an internet connection (a common situation for dedicated show computers), you can activate offline:

1. On a connected machine, log in to derivative.ca, go to your account page, and generate an offline activation key for your hardware fingerprint.
2. The site gives you a .key file. Copy it to the offline machine via USB or local network.
3. In the Licence Manager on the offline machine, choose Offline Activation and point it at the .key file.

Educational and Pro Licences

If you have purchased an Educational or Pro licence, the activation flow is identical — choose the appropriate licence type in the Licence Manager. Pro licences also enable TouchEngine, the API for embedding TouchDesigner networks inside other applications, and network rendering.

GPU Check

TouchDesigner is a GPU-first application. Before your first creative session, confirm your GPU setup:

• Open TouchDesigner and go to Help > About TouchDesigner. The dialog lists the detected GPU and driver version.
• For NVIDIA cards, you want a Game Ready Driver or Studio Driver version from the past 12 months. Download directly from nvidia.com, not through Windows Update, to get the most current version.
• AMD Radeon cards are supported but test the exact combination of TD build and driver version on your machine. The Derivative forum has threads tracking known AMD driver issues.
• Intel integrated graphics will run TouchDesigner in a limited capacity but are not suitable for real-time visual work. If your laptop has both integrated Intel and a discrete NVIDIA/AMD GPU, confirm that TouchDesigner is using the discrete card via NVIDIA Control Panel > Manage 3D Settings > Program Settings.

First Launch Checklist

Before you start building networks, run through these settings:

1. FPS setting. The default is 60 FPS. Press F1 or look at the bottom timeline. If your monitor is 30 Hz or your project is video-based, you may want to change this under Edit > Project Settings > FPS.
2. Resolution. The default canvas resolution is set by the Out TOP operator you add to your network. There is no global canvas size the way there is in After Effects.
3. Performance Monitor. Open Dialogs > Performance Monitor (Ctrl+Shift+P) now so you know where it is. You will need it later when you diagnose frame drops.
4. Textport. Open Dialogs > Textport (Alt+T). This is TouchDesigner’s Python console and error output. Keep it in a corner of your workspace.

Updating TouchDesigner

There is no automatic updater. When a new build is released, download the new installer from derivative.ca and run it. The new build installs alongside the old one. Open your .toe project files in the new version to confirm they work, then keep the old version around for a few weeks as a fallback.

The File > Recent Projects menu is per-build, so after updating you will need to navigate to your .toe files manually the first time.

With installation and activation complete, the next tutorial takes you on a guided tour of the TouchDesigner interface.