Hex Desktop basics

Install the Hex desktop crawler, render JavaScript, sign in for backlink data and sync crawls to your workspace.

Hex Desktop runs the Hex crawler on your Mac or Windows PC. Data is stored on your computer: in ~/Library/Application Support/Hex on macOS and %APPDATA%\Hex on Windows.

Your first crawl

Enter a URL, open Configuration to set limits, threads, rendering, include and exclude rules or authentication, then start the crawl. Save configurations as profiles for next time.

JavaScript rendering

The first time you turn rendering on, the app offers to download a headless Chromium (about 100 MB). Rendering can then run automatically on thin pages and app shells, or on every page.

Signing in to Hex

You can crawl without an account. Sign in with your Hex account to:

• load backlinks for Link Score, TIPR and the link flow map through your workspace,
• send issues to your roadmap with Add to roadmap,
• copy a whole crawl into the web app with Sync to Hex.

Log files

Open Log files in the explorer and import Apache, nginx, CloudFront or Cloudflare logs (gzip is fine). Hex verifies Googlebot and Bingbot by DNS, lists AI crawlers, and shows the pages bots fetch and the ones they never reach.