Project Kestrel Release v(Sparrow-2026.02.12)

Announcing Project Kestrel release v(Sparrow-2026.02.12)!

Kestrel is now available for download on both Windows and MacOS (arm)!

Windows Users

Download Project Kestrel v(Sparrow.2026.02.16) Windows Installer.exe to install Kestrel on your computer.

If you would prefer to directly run Kestrel executables, download Project kestrel v(Sparrow.2026.02.16) Windows-Executables.zip and extract the archive. It contains both .exe files.

MacOS (arm) Users

Download Project Kestrel v(Sparrow.2026.02.12) MacOS Installer.pkg to install Kestrel on your computer.

NOTE: Kestrel is not currently signed and MacOS security may block installation.
Instead of installing Kestrel on your system, you can directly run the executables instead. Download Project Kestrel v(Sparrow.2026.02.12) MacOS-Executables.zip and extract the files to reveal the executables, which you can open by Right-Clicking and selecting "Open..."
You do NOT need ImageMagick. Please ignore the warning if installing from the .pkg installer.

2/15/2026 Update: A hot fix has been released for Kestrel Visualizer on Windows, fixing a bug preventing the visualizer from loading images correctly.
2/16/2026 Update: The aforementioned hot fix was not successful, so a new fix has been issued. A hot fix for the MacOS Executables has also been issued.

Please send any bugs to support@projectkestrel.org

Kestrel Analyzer may take 1-2 minutes to load.

Key Release Notes

• macOS Release
• Full Removal of ImageMagick dependency
• Upgrade to PyQt6 and rawpy leading to significant performance improvements
• Several bug fixes and behavioral tweaks