Installing IDA

You can use HCLI to install IDA Pro unattended, non-interactively, or just conveniently. This is great for CI/CD pipelines that rely on IDA Pro, such as testing tools that use idalib.

First, lets check what licenses are associated with our account:

$ hcli license list

Subscription Licenses (2):
┏━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┓
┃ ID              ┃ Edition          ┃ Type  ┃ Status ┃ Expiration ┃ Addons                           ┃
┡━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┩
│ 96-0000-0000-01 │ IDA Essential PC │ named │ Active │ 2026-08-25 │ 2 decompiler(s)                  │
│ 96-0000-0000-01 │ IDA Ultimate     │ named │ Active │ 2026-07-02 │ 11 decompiler(s) + TEAMS, LUMINA │
└─────────────────┴──────────────────┴───────┴────────┴────────────┴──────────────────────────────────┘

Now lets download the IDA installer, though we'll see in a subsequent step we can also download it on-demand:

$ hcli download
Fetching available downloads...
Current path: /
? Select an item to navigate or download: 📁 release
Current path: /release
? Select an item to navigate or download: 📁 9.2
Current path: /release/9.2
? Select an item to navigate or download: 📁 ida-pro
Current path: /release/9.2/ida-pro
? Select an item to navigate or download: (Use arrow keys, type to filter)
   ← Go back
   📄 License Server 9.2 (hexlicsrv92_x64linux.run)
 » 📄 IDA Pro Mac Apple Silicon 9.2 (ida-pro_92_armmac.app.zip)
   📄 Lumina Server 9.2 (lumina92_x64linux.run)
   📄 Teams Server 9.2 (hexvault92_x64linux.run)
   📄 IDA Pro Windows 9.2 (ida-pro_92_x64win.exe)
   📄 IDA Pro Linux 9.2 (ida-pro_92_x64linux.run)
   📄 IDA Pro Mac Intel 9.2 (ida-pro_92_x64mac.app.zip)
Getting download URL for: release/9.2/ida-pro/ida-pro_92_armmac.app.zip
Starting download of release/9.2/ida-pro/ida-pro_92_armmac.app.zip...
Using cached file: /Users/user/Library/Caches/hex-rays/hcli/downloads/release/9.2/ida-pro/ida-pro_92_armmac.app.zip
Download complete! File saved to: ida-pro_92_armmac.app.zip
Successfully downloaded 1 file(s)

$ ls -lah *.app.zip
-rw-r--r--@ 1 user  staff   539M Sep 12 13:47 ida-pro_92_armmac.app.zip

For a little context, here are the options that the automated installer supports:

$ hcli ida install --help

 Usage: hcli ida install [OPTIONS] [INSTALLER]

 Installs IDA unattended.
 The --download-id option supports tags for simplified version specification:
 - 'category:version' (e.g., 'ida-pro:latest') - OS is auto-detected
 - 'category:version:os' (e.g., 'ida-pro:9.2:x64linux') - explicit OS


 If install_dir is /tmp/myida, the ida binary will be located:
 - on Windows: /tmp/myida/ida
 - on Linux: /tmp/myida/ida
 - on Mac: /tmp/myida/Contents/MacOS/ida

╭─ Options ──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────╮
│ --create-python-environment                  After installing IDA, create a        │
│                                              virtual environment for its Python at │
│                                              $IDAUSR/venv (see `ida python         │
│                                              create-environment`).                 │
│ --yes                           -y           Auto-accept confirmation prompts      │
│ --dry-run                                    Show what would be done without       │
│                                              actually installing                   │
│ --set-default/--no-set-default               Mark this IDA installation as the     │
│                                              default                               │
│ --accept-eula/--no-accept-eula  -a/-A        Accept EULA                           │
│ --install-dir                   -i     TEXT  Install dir                           │
│ --license-id                    -l     TEXT  License ID (e.g., 96-0000-0000-01)    │
│ --download-id                   -d     TEXT  Full installer asset key, or tag      │
│                                              (e.g., 'ida-pro:latest',              │
│                                              'ida-essential:9.2')                  │
│ --help                                       Show this message and exit.           │
╰────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────╯

Now lets run the automated installer, which doesn't show any dialog or popups - really convenient!

Note:

--set-default and --accept-eula are on by default: the installation becomes the one idalib and the plugin manager use, and the EULA is accepted without prompting. Pass --no-set-default or -A/--no-accept-eula to opt out. The example spells both out for clarity, but they are redundant
the installer is cached, so a second run reuses the download. The per-platform cache locations and the HCLI_CACHE_DIR override are listed under Cache & Storage in Environment Variables
--create-python-environment sets up a virtualenv for IDAPython at $IDAUSR/venv and configures IDAPYTHON_VENV_EXECUTABLE; plugins that need Python packages are installed here (see IDA's Python Environment)
in this example we set --dry-run, but you should remove this in real-life
HCLI also fetches and installs the associated license key file so everything's ready to go

$ hcli ida install --set-default --create-python-environment --accept-eula --license-id 96-0000-0000-01 ida-pro_92_armmac.app.zip --dry-run

Installation details:
  Installer: /Users/user/code/hex-rays/ida-hcli/ida-pro_92_armmac.app.zip
  Destination: /Applications/IDA Professional 9.2.app
  License: 96-0000-0000-01
  Set as default: Yes

Dry run mode - no changes will be made

Would perform the following actions:
  1. Extract installer to: /Applications/IDA Professional 9.2.app
  2. Install license to: /Applications/IDA Professional 9.2.app/Contents/MacOS
  3. Update default IDA path in: /Users/user/.idapro/ida-config.json
  4. Accept EULA

Now, if you know exactly which version of IDA you want, you can download and install it in a single command. Note the use of --download-id release/9.2/ida-pro/ida-pro_92_armmac.app.zip, the path is derived from the hcli download output above.

$ hcli ida install --set-default --create-python-environment --license-id 96-0000-0000-01 --download-id release/9.2/ida-pro/ida-pro_92_armmac.app.zip --dry-run

Getting download URL for: release/9.2/ida-pro/ida-pro_92_armmac.app.zip
Starting download of release/9.2/ida-pro/ida-pro_92_armmac.app.zip...
Using cached file: /Users/user/Library/Caches/hex-rays/hcli/downloads/release/9.2/ida-pro/ida-pro_92_armmac.app.zip
Download complete! File saved to:
/var/folders/55/f4jb4y1d6b74cdrp_gp45hlw0000gn/T/ida-pro_92_armmac.app.zip
Successfully downloaded 1 file(s)

Installation details:
  Installer:
/var/folders/55/f4jb4y1d6b74cdrp_gp45hlw0000gn/T/ida-pro_92_armmac.app.zip
  Destination: /Applications/IDA Professional 9.2.app
  License: 96-0000-0000-01
  Set as default: Yes

Dry run mode - no changes will be made

Would perform the following actions:
  1. Extract installer to: /Applications/IDA Professional 9.2.app
  2. Install license to: /Applications/IDA Professional 9.2.app/Contents/MacOS
  3. Update default IDA path in: /Users/user/.idapro/ida-config.json
  4. Accept EULA

--download-id also accepts a tag instead of a full asset key, so you do not have to look the key up. A tag is category:version, which resolves the OS automatically, or category:version:os to pin it:

hcli ida install --license-id 96-0000-0000-01 --download-id ida-pro:9.2 --dry-run
hcli ida install --license-id 96-0000-0000-01 --download-id ida-pro:latest:x64linux --dry-run