# NSIS

12 Hacker News commenters recommended NSIS and 0 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 3 of 13 months.

**Verdict:** Free Windows installer builder that people recommend for reliable silent installs, good compression and easy scripting, and it is still supported after two decades.

## Why people recommend it

- Silent, reliable installs across Windows (3 comments): "I figured out what registry keys the .exe needed and created a NSIS installer that could be run silently, quickly, and remotely - fun stuff." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48100616)) "NDIS is extremely elegant and runs on just about every windows version" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48110212)) "has somehow just-worked for decades" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48782594))
- Still supported and widely used (3 comments): "Yep, NSIS is awesome and my team is still using it to package Windows builds of at least two apps." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48100066)) "It was quite the fun experience and I'm pleasantly surprised that NSIS is supported to this day" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48099710)) "its still 20 years later one of the most sane and popular ways of distributing apps" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46497152))
- Simple and easy to use (2 comments): "I worked with both Installshield and NSIS and vastly prefered the latter, it just got the job done." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48100028)) "simple tooling that makes NSIS/InnoSetup/etc shockingly easy to use" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48783007))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [jpackage](https://hackerapproved.com/p/jpackage.md): 7 recommend

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "NSIS", https://hackerapproved.com/p/nsis/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).