Google’s Antigravity IDE ships a Linux tarball from the official download page. On Arch Linux and on Omarchy (including Omarchy 4 “Quattro”), that archive is often the cleanest install path: you keep the IDE in your home directory, you do not fight a half-broken AUR package, and you can delete the whole tree later without touching the rest of the system.

This is the method I use on a daily Arch/Omarchy box. It covers extracting the archive into ~/.local/share, putting antigravity on your $PATH, creating a .desktop launcher so Hyprland, Rofi, Walker, or a traditional menu can find it, and the troubleshooting that usually shows up the first time you launch it.

Official download: https://antigravity.google/download

If you landed here because you are also setting up a workstation around Omarchy, the companion posts How to Change Your Cursor Theme in Omarchy and How to Install DaVinci Resolve on Omarchy cover the same “user-local first” style.

Why a tarball instead of pacman or the AUR?

Arch users reach for pacman or yay by habit. For a fast-moving proprietary IDE, that is not always the best first move:

  • The vendor tarball is what Google actually tests. AUR PKGBUILDs lag, rename binaries, or assume a path that does not exist yet.
  • Omarchy is an opinionated Arch desktop. Layering a heavy IDE into the system image is unnecessary when a per-user install works.
  • A tarball in ~/.local/share survives Omarchy updates and pacman -Syu without a rebuild. When Google ships a new archive, you extract over the old directory (or side-by-side) and keep your config.

You still need the usual 64-bit GNU/Linux userspace: glibc, a working GPU stack (Mesa or NVIDIA), and enough disk for the IDE plus its Chromium-ish helper processes. A few gigabytes free under $HOME is plenty.

Prerequisites

Before you extract anything, confirm the basics:

  • You are on x86_64 Arch Linux, Omarchy, or another Arch-based system with a normal /usr userspace.
  • tar, gzip, and a text editor (nano, nvim, or Kate) are installed. They already are on a default Omarchy ISO.
  • ~/.local/bin exists and is on your $PATH. Omarchy usually sets this; vanilla Arch might not.
  • You downloaded the official Antigravity IDE .tar.gz from Google, not a random mirror.

Check PATH first so you do not finish the install and then wonder why antigravity is “command not found”:

echo "$PATH" | tr ':' '\n' | grep -E '\.local/bin|/usr/local/bin'
mkdir -p ~/.local/bin ~/.local/share ~/.local/share/applications

If ~/.local/bin is missing from the output, add it in ~/.bashrc or ~/.zshrc:

export PATH="$HOME/.local/bin:$PATH"

Then open a new terminal (or source the file). Hyprland/Omarchy sessions inherit the environment from your login shell or from ~/.config/hypr/ env stanzas — if the CLI works in a terminal but the desktop launcher does not, that is usually the cause. We will cover it later.

1. Extract the archive

Move the downloaded .tar.gz somewhere obvious, then extract it into the XDG data directory. For a single-user setup I use ~/.local/share/ so the IDE sits next to other per-user apps:

# Extract to your home directory's local applications folder
tar -xvf Antigravity\ IDE.tar.gz -C ~/.local/share/

Why this directory? /opt needs root and fights atomic/immutable workflows. ~/Applications works, but Arch and freedesktop conventions already look in ~/.local/share. Putting the tree there keeps the desktop file, icons, and binary in one mental map.

Expected output: tar lists every file as it extracts. At the end you should have a directory whose name matches the product, typically:

ls -ld ~/.local/share/Antigravity\ IDE
ls ~/.local/share/Antigravity\ IDE/bin

You want an executable in bin/ (the original archive I used called it antigravity-ide). If ls says no such file, the vendor renamed the inner folder. Run:

find ~/.local/share -maxdepth 2 -iname '*antigravity*'

and use that path for the rest of the guide. Do not guess; a wrong Exec= line in the desktop file is the number one “it does not appear in my menu” bug.

Variant: extract to /opt (multi-user)

If several accounts on the same machine need the IDE:

sudo mkdir -p /opt
sudo tar -xvf Antigravity\ IDE.tar.gz -C /opt/
sudo ln -sf "/opt/Antigravity IDE/bin/antigravity-ide" /usr/local/bin/antigravity

Then point the desktop file at /opt/... instead of /home/chris/.... Stick to the home-directory method on a laptop you alone use.

To launch the IDE from a terminal by typing antigravity, link its executable into your local bin path:

ln -s "$HOME/.local/share/Antigravity IDE/bin/antigravity-ide" ~/.local/bin/antigravity

Why a symlink instead of copying the binary? The real binary loads resources relative to the install tree (Electron/VS Code-style apps do this). Copying only the executable into ~/.local/bin produces a launch that immediately dies looking for resources/ or chrome_crashpad_handler. A symlink keeps argv0 and the install prefix honest.

Confirm it:

command -v antigravity
ls -l ~/.local/bin/antigravity
antigravity --help || true

command -v should print /home/<you>/.local/bin/antigravity. If it prints nothing, PATH is still wrong. If it prints a path but the process exits immediately, skip ahead to troubleshooting — missing libnss, GPU sandbox, or a Wayland/X11 mismatch are the usual suspects on Hyprland.

Note: Make sure ~/.local/bin is added to your system’s $PATH environment variable in your .bashrc or .zshrc.

On Omarchy, I also keep a Hyprland env line so GUI-launched terminals and the IDE itself see the same PATH. The exact config file name has moved around (.conf vs .lua depending on your Omarchy generation). The idea is the same: PATH must include ~/.local/bin for non-interactive launches, not just login shells.

3. Create a desktop entry (application shortcut)

To make the IDE appear in your application launcher (Rofi, dmenu, Walker, GNOME, KDE, or Omarchy’s launcher), create a custom .desktop file:

nano ~/.local/share/applications/antigravity.desktop

Paste the following configuration, ensuring you adjust the paths if you extracted the files elsewhere:

[Desktop Entry]
Name=Antigravity IDE
Comment=Google Antigravity Development Environment
Exec="/home/chris/.local/share/Antigravity IDE/bin/antigravity-ide"
Icon=/home/chris/.local/share/Antigravity IDE/resources/app/resources/linux/code.png
Terminal=false
Type=Application
Categories=Development;IDE;
StartupWMClass=antigravity-ide

(Remember to replace chris with your actual Linux username).

Use $HOME in your head, but .desktop Exec= keys do not expand shell variables on all launchers. Hard-code the absolute path. Icon= should point at a real PNG/SVG; if code.png is missing, run:

find ~/.local/share/Antigravity\ IDE -iname '*.png' | head

and pick a 128×128-ish icon. StartupWMClass helps Hyprland and the dock group windows under one icon instead of spawning a generic Wayland surface.

Update the desktop database so picky launchers notice the file immediately:

update-desktop-database ~/.local/share/applications/ 2>/dev/null || true

Then search for “Antigravity” in your launcher. On Omarchy you should see it without logging out. If you do not, log out and back in so the session re-reads ~/.local/share/applications.

First launch: what “good” looks like

From a terminal:

antigravity

A window should open. The first start can be slow while the app unpacks caches under ~/.config and ~/.cache. That is expected. Subsequent launches are quicker.

If you are on NVIDIA with Hyprland, you already know the usual dance: current proprietary drivers, nvidia-smi healthy, and no leftover nomodeset from a recovery ISO. If you had to patch the Omarchy installer ISO just to see a display, read How to install Omarchy ISO with nomodeset first — an IDE will not save a black screen at the compositor.

Troubleshooting

antigravity: command not found

PATH. Confirm the symlink target exists (ls -l ~/.local/bin/antigravity). If you use fish, add fish_add_path ~/.local/bin. If you use a login manager that does not source .bashrc, put the PATH in ~/.profile or your compositor env file.

The launcher icon is missing or does nothing

Exec= path is wrong, or the file is not executable:

ls -l "$HOME/.local/share/Antigravity IDE/bin/antigravity-ide"
chmod +x "$HOME/.local/share/Antigravity IDE/bin/antigravity-ide"
desktop-file-validate ~/.local/share/applications/antigravity.desktop

Quotes around the Exec= path are required because of the space in Antigravity IDE.

It opens, then immediately closes

Run it from a terminal so you see stderr. Common messages:

  • GPU / sandbox: try antigravity --disable-gpu-sandbox once as a test. If that is the only way it starts, you have a driver or user-namespace issue, not an Antigravity bug. Fix the GPU stack; do not live on the flag.
  • Wayland: some Electron builds still prefer XWayland. env ELECTRON_OZONE_PLATFORM_HINT=auto antigravity or =x11 is a reasonable experiment. Put the working env prefix into the desktop Exec= line if you need it permanently.
  • Missing libraries: ldd on the binary will show not found lines. On Arch, that is usually an incomplete base install (nss, alsa-lib, gtk3). Install the missing package with pacman; do not copy random .so files from another distro.

“Another instance is running” after a crash

Stale lock files under ~/.config for the product. Close every window, check ps aux | grep -i antigravity, then remove only the lock/socket files — not your entire config directory.

Upgrading to a newer tarball

Download the new archive, extract to a temporary folder, confirm bin/ still exists, then replace the old tree:

mv ~/.local/share/Antigravity\ IDE ~/.local/share/Antigravity\ IDE.bak
tar -xvf Antigravity\ IDE.tar.gz -C ~/.local/share/
# when the new build is fine:
rm -rf ~/.local/share/Antigravity\ IDE.bak

The symlink and desktop file keep working if the inner paths did not change. If Google renames the binary, update both.

Wrap-up

You now have a user-local Antigravity IDE on Arch or Omarchy: extracted under ~/.local/share, on your PATH as antigravity, and visible in the application launcher. No root, no AUR rebuild loop, and an uninstall that is rm -rf plus deleting the desktop file.

If this box is also your video or gaming workstation, keep going with the Arch Linux with NVIDIA Drivers workstation setup or the Omarchy-specific DaVinci Resolve install. Same machine, same “make the GUI app actually launch” energy.

Best regards,

The Linux IT Guy