To compile an application, click the Compiler button () in the Home toolbar’s Main section and specify the output directory, the platforms to compile for, a splash screen, and possibly some additional settings (see below); then click the Compile Application button () or press F8. You can also use the comsolcompile (Windows) and comsol compile (Linux and macOS) commands to compile an application on any supported platform (see The COMSOL Commands in the COMSOL Multiphysics Reference Manual).

When launching a compiled application for the first time, a COMSOL Runtime Installer appears. You need to run the installer before the splash screen appears and the application becomes active. For subsequent launches of applications, the splash screen appears directly. The complementary executable file used for the runtime environment when you run a compiled application is a COMSOL Application process, comsolapplication.exe.

The Compiler node’s Settings window contains the following sections:

In the Directory field, specify the output directory where the compiled application will be stored, or click the Browse button to browse for a location.

Under Runtime, from the Runtime library list choose Download (the default) or Embed, to embed the runtime library in the compiled application. If you choose Download, users can download and install the runtime library on demand, By excluding the COMSOL Runtime, you can create much smaller executable files.

Under Platforms, select the Windows; Linux; Linux, ARM; macOS, Intel; and macOS Apple silicon check boxes as desired (depending on the platforms where you want users to be able to run the applications). By default, only the Windows check box is selected.

To compile the application into an executable application, click the Compile Application button () at the top of the Settings window or press F8. The size of a created application is about 300 MB with an embedded runtime; with a downloaded runtime, it is just a few MB in addition to the model’s size.

The Icon for Windows and Icon for macOS lists appear when the corresponding check boxes for each platform have been selected under Platforms in the Executable section. From the lists you can select a number of available icons. Click the Add Image to Library and Use Here button () to add another icon to use. The following formats are supported:

Click the Export button () to export the image used for the icon to a file.

From the Splash list, select an image to use as the splash-screen image when launching an application. The Default splash screen is a generic default splash screen for compiled applications. Click the Add Image to Library and Use Here button () to add any other BMP image to the list of splash-screen images and use it. Under Preview, you can see what the currently selected splash-screen image looks like. Click the Export button () to export the image used for the splash screen to a file.

Custom-made physics interfaces, created with the Physics Builder, can be embedded into the compiled application, making it easy to share that type of applications. From the Physics interfaces list, choose the location of the custom-made physics interface: None (the default, if no such physics interfaces exist or should be included); Development files (physics interface files that you can add and test in a COMSOL Desktop session); External folder, which you specify in the Folder field (for physics interface files in an archive folder that has not been converted into a JAR archive); or External Java archive, which you specify in the File field (for physics interface files in JAR archives resulting from a Physics Builder compilation). See the Physics Builder Manual for more information about these file types.