Requirements

Before installing vacs, make sure your system meets the requirements for your platform. vacs is lightweight and doesn't need any special hardware - if you can run a radar client, you can almost certainly run vacs.

VATSIM Account

Since vacs authenticates through VATSIM Connect, you need to have an active VATSIM account - in good standing - to use our software. No separate registration is required.

Operating system

Windows

• Windows 10 or newer (64-bit)
• No additional software required - the installer will take care of everything for you

Linux

• Ubuntu 24.04 or newer, Fedora 40 or newer, Debian 13 or newer, or a comparable current distribution (64-bit x86_64)
• All Linux packages, including the AppImage, are built on Ubuntu 24.04 and need a system C library (glibc) of version 2.39 or newer. Older releases such as Ubuntu 22.04 or Debian 12 cannot run vacs, whichever package you pick
• Required system libraries are automatically installed by your package manager when you install vacs via the provided .deb or .rpm packages
• If your distribution supports neither, an AppImage is also provided. It bundles the libraries vacs needs, so it runs on any distribution that meets the requirement above without installing anything, at the cost of a noticeably larger download. See Installation
• An ALSA-compatible audio backend is required. This is usually automatically satisfied if you're running PulseAudio or Pipewire, which most modern Linux desktops use by default. The suggested audio packages are also included as dependencies for our packages

Wayland users

If you're running a Wayland-based desktop (common on recent GNOME and KDE setups), there are some known issues and limitations. See the Wayland section of the Known Issues & Limitations page for details.

The most noticeable ones concern key bindings: on Wayland, keyboard shortcuts are managed by your desktop environment rather than by vacs, or are unavailable on desktops whose portal offers no global shortcuts, and the Audio for VATSIM radio integration cannot be used. See Platform support for the full picture.

X11 desktops are fully supported as of vacs 2.6.0, including global hotkeys and the Audio for VATSIM radio integration. Earlier versions did not support global key bindings on X11 at all.

macOS

• macOS 10.13 (High Sierra) or newer
• Both Intel and Apple Silicon Macs are supported
• On first launch, macOS will ask you to grant microphone access, input monitoring, and accessibility permissions. All three are required for vacs to fully function

macOS security notice

Current vacs releases are not code-signed with an Apple certificate, so macOS will flag the app as "corrupted" when you try to open it for the first time. See Installation for instructions on how to bypass this warning and open the app successfully.

Audio devices

vacs works with most microphones and headsets, but a few points are worth noting:

• Input: Almost any microphone should work. For best quality, use a device that supports 48 kHz sampling rate. Since vacs transmits voice in mono, stereo microphones will work fine, but spatial information won't carry over
• Output: Once again, almost any headphones, headset or speakers should work. 48 kHz stereo output is ideal, but vacs will resample to whatever your device supports, if necessary. Note that audio quality may be reduced if your output device only supports a low sampling rate
• Echo cancellation: vacs currently does not have built-in echo cancellation, so using a headset/headphones is highly recommended to prevent your microphone from picking up the other controller's voice during calls