Warning

This document is for Red's development version, which can be significantly different from previous releases. If you're a regular user, you should read the Red documentation for the current stable release.

Installing Red on Windows

We support hosting Red on computers running an x86-64 version of this system.
You can read more about systems and processor architectures we support in our End-user Guarantees.

Installing the pre-requirements

Please install the pre-requirements by following instructions from one of the following subsections.



Manually installing dependencies

Attention

There are additional configuration steps required which are not documented for installing dependencies manually. These dependencies are only listed separately here for reference purposes.

Attention

Please make sure that the box to add Python to PATH is CHECKED, otherwise you may run into issues when trying to run Red.

Attention

Please choose the option to “Git from the command line and also from 3rd-party software” in Git’s setup.

From here, continue onto Creating a Virtual Environment.


Creating a Virtual Environment

Tip

If you want to learn more about virtual environments, see page: About Virtual Environments.

We require installing Red into a virtual environment. Don’t be scared, it’s very straightforward.

First, choose a directory where you would like to create your virtual environment. It’s a good idea to keep it in a location which is easy to type out the path to. From now, we’ll call it redenv and it will be located in your home directory.

Start with opening a command prompt (open Start, search for “command prompt”, then click it).

Note

You shouldn’t run command prompt as administrator when creating your virtual environment, or running Red.

Warning

These commands will not work in PowerShell - you have to use command prompt as said above.

Then create your virtual environment with the following command

py -3.11 -m venv "%userprofile%\redenv"

And activate it with the following command

"%userprofile%\redenv\Scripts\activate.bat"

Important

You must activate the virtual environment with the above command every time you open a new Command Prompt to run, install or update Red.

Installing Red

Attention

You may need to restart your computer after installing dependencies for the PATH changes to take effect.

Run one of the following set of commands, depending on what extras you want installed

  • Normal installation:

    python -m pip install -U pip wheel
    python -m pip install -U Red-DiscordBot
    
  • With PostgreSQL support:

    python -m pip install -U pip wheel
    python -m pip install -U Red-DiscordBot[postgres]
    

Setting Up and Running Red

After installation, set up your instance with the following command:

redbot-setup

This will set the location where data will be stored, as well as your storage backend and the name of the instance (which will be used for running the bot).

Once done setting up the instance, run the following command to run Red:

redbot <your instance name>

It will walk through the initial setup, asking for your token and a prefix. See how to obtain a token.

Tip

If it’s the first time you’re using Red, you should check our Getting started guide that will walk you through all essential information on how to interact with Red.