Installation

System requirements

The OVITO Basic and OVITO Pro desktop applications require a system supporting the OpenGL 3D graphics interface (version 2.1 or newer). For optimal performance, it is recommended to install the latest graphics driver from your hardware vendor, as older drivers may cause compatibility or stability issues.

Operating System Compatibility:

Windows:: 64-bit Windows 10 (21H2 or later), Windows 11 (21H2 or later) on x86_64 processor architecture.
Linux:: Ubuntu 21.04+, ALT Linux 10+, RHEL 9+, Debian 11+, Fedora 34+, or compatible distributions with glibc >= 2.28, running on x86_64 processors.
macOS:: macOS 11.0+, Apple Silicon (arm64).

Installation instructions

Download a binary program package for OVITO Basic or OVITO Pro from www.ovito.org.

Linux:: Extract the downloaded .tar.xz archive using the tar utility: tar xJfv ovito-3.12.2-x86_64.tar.xz. This creates a subdirectory containing the program files. Change to that directory and run the application: ./bin/ovito.
Windows:: Run the installer program ovito-3.12.2-win64.exe to install OVITO in a directory of your choice. Follow the on-screen instructions to install OVITO. Note: Windows may prompt you to confirm before running an installer downloaded from a website.
macOS:: Double-click the downloaded .dmg disk image file to open it, agree to the license terms, and drag the Ovito bundle into your Applications folder. You can then launch OVITO by double-clicking the application bundle.

Anaconda installation: You can install the software also via the Anaconda package manager from the conda-forge channel (OVITO Basic) or from our own conda channel (OVITO Pro).

Unattended installation: The Windows installers support unattended installation via command-line parameters /S and /D from an administrator command prompt. Furthermore, Windows versions of OVITO are available as .zip archives here and can simply be extracted to a directory of your choice (Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributable may need to be installed separately).

Installing the OVITO Python module

To use OVITO Pro’s functionality in standalone Python scripts, install the OVITO Python module in your Python environment. It can be used for free and doesn’t require a license key. Refer to this section for detailed instructions.

Running OVITO remotely

You may want to visualize simulation data stored on a high-performance computing (HPC) cluster. For remote use, consider the following options:

Linux remote desktop with VirtualGL + VNC:

Use a VirtualGL + VNC setup to enable OVITO to leverage the remote machine’s graphics hardware. Consult the VirtualGL website for setup details. Ensure the remote machine supports running desktop applications and ask your HPC cluster administrator about compatibility.

Local installation with remote file access:

Install OVITO on your local computer and use its integrated SSH file transfer feature to open files stored on the remote machine.

Note

The OVITO desktop application cannot function via SSH connections using X11 forwarding, as it requires direct access to graphics hardware (OpenGL direct rendering mode). Starting ovito from an SSH terminal without further measures will likely result in errors or a blank application window.

Troubleshooting

If you experience installation issues, visit the OVITO user forum for support. OVITO Pro users can also contact customer support directly. The OVITO team will be happy to help you.

Common installation issues and solutions:

Linux troubleshooting

Windows troubleshooting

macOS troubleshooting

Linux

Missing shared object files or broken links

Error

Starting the desktop application ovito or the script interpreter ovitos may fail with the following error:

./ovito: error while loading shared libraries: libQt5DBus.so.5:
        cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

This error is typically caused by broken symbolic links in the lib/ovito/ sub-directory of the OVITO installation after extracting the installation package for Linux on a Windows computer.

Solution

Reinstall OVITO by extracting the .tar.xz archive on the target machine. Do not transfer the directory tree between different computers after it has been extracted, because this can easily break symbolic links between files.

Missing XCB system libraries

Error

You may see the following error when running ovito on a Linux machine:

qt.qpa.plugin: Could not load the Qt platform plugin "xcb" in "" even though it was found.
This application failed to start because no Qt platform plugin could be initialized.
Reinstalling the application may fix this problem.
Available platform plugins are: minimal, offscreen, vnc, xcb.

In this case OVITO cannot find the required libxcb-*.so set of system libraries, which might not be preinstalled on new Linux systems.

Solution

Install the required system libraries using your system’s package manager:

# On Ubuntu/Debian systems:
sudo apt install libxcb1 libx11-xcb1 libxcb-glx0 libxcb-icccm4 libxcb-image0 libxcb-keysyms1 \
         libxcb-randr0 libxcb-render-util0 libxcb-render0 libxcb-shape0 libxcb-shm0 \
         libxcb-sync1 libxcb-xfixes0 libxcb-xinerama0 libxcb-xinput0 libxcb-xkb1 libxcb-cursor0 \
         libfontconfig1 libfreetype6 libopengl0 libglx0 libx11-6

# On CentOS/RHEL systems:
sudo yum install libxcb xcb-util-cursor xcb-util-image xcb-util-keysyms xcb-util-renderutil xcb-util-wm

Debian users should also pay attention to this thread in the OVITO support forum.

Missing OpenGL system libraries

Error

You may see the following errors when running ovito or importing the OVITO Python module on a Linux machine:

./ovito: error while loading shared libraries: libOpenGL.so.0: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

libEGL.so.1: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

Solution

Install the required system libraries using your system’s package manager:

# On Ubuntu/Debian systems:
sudo apt install libopengl0 libgl1-mesa-glx libegl1
# On CentOS/RHEL systems:
sudo yum install libglvnd-opengl libglvnd-glx

If an installation of the required system libraries is not possible due to restrictions on the target machine, you can set up a local conda environment and install the OVITO Pro package. Next, install the missing system libraries in the conda environment and make them available:

conda install -c conda-forge libglvnd-opengl-cos7-x86_64 libglvnd-cos7-x86_64 libglvnd-glx-cos7-x86_64 libglvnd-egl-cos7-x86_64
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=${LD_LIBRARY_PATH}:${CONDA_PREFIX}/x86_64-conda-linux-gnu/sysroot/usr/lib

This should allow you to at least run Python scripts that import the OVITO Python module. The OVITO desktop application will still not work, however, because your system is lacking true OpenGL graphics support.

Windows

Windows 7 no longer supported: Error

If you try to run OVITO 3.7 or later on a Windows 7 computer, it will fail with the error “The procedure entry point CreateDXGIFactory2 could not be located in the dynamic link library dxgi.dll”.

Solution

Modern versions of OVITO are based on the Qt6 cross-platform framework, which requires Windows 10 or later to run. Windows 7 has reached its end of life and is no longer supported. Please upgrade your Windows operating system.

macOS

OVITO Pro license activation fails

Error

License activation fails due to an issue with the local license information store (file path $HOME/.config/Ovito/LicenseStore.ini). Please check if file access permissions are correctly set. OVITO Pro requires read/write access to this filesystem path.

Solution

OVITO Pro requires read/write access to $HOME/.config/Ovito/ for storing the license activation.

If this directory does not exist, OVITO Pro will attempt to create it. If permission issues arise, check ownership of $HOME/.config/.
This directory may be owned by the system administrator (root), preventing modifications by applications running under your personal user account. In such cases, a system administrator must grant write access.

In many cases, the issue stems from the parent directory, $HOME/.config/, being owned by the wrong macOS user account. This directory serves as the canonical storage location for application configuration data on Linux/Unix systems. Unlike Linux, macOS does not create $HOME/.config/ by default; instead, individual applications such as OVITO create it when first run. As a result, its ownership and permissions may vary depending on which user account initiated its creation.

If $HOME/.config/ was originally created by the system administrator (root), your personal user account may lack write access, preventing OVITO Pro from modifying it. This causes license activation to fail. To fix this issue:

Ask your system administrator to create $HOME/.config/Ovito/ and grant write access to your user account.
Alternatively, follow this guide to correct ownership of $HOME/.config/ yourself.

If changing ownership is not possible, you can set the environment variable XDG_CONFIG_HOME (info) to point to a different writable directory:

export XDG_CONFIG_HOME=/path/to/writable/directory

This redirects OVITO Pro to store its licensing information in a user-specified location.