Heads up — on first launch, Windows will probably show a “Windows protected your PC” warning. This is normal for any new signed installer and doesn’t mean anything is wrong. The rest of this page tells you what to expect, what to do, and how to verify the installer is genuinely ours.
Required: enable Arena’s detailed logs first
Draft Sense reads MTG Arena’s log files. Without the detailed-logs setting on, Arena writes nothing useful and the overlay can’t see your packs.
The setting persists, so this is a one-time step. Same mechanism 17Lands and other log-watchers use.
Draft Sense signs in with a free account to give you live picks — create one first so you’re ready to draft.
~74 MB · Windows 10/11
When you run the installer, Windows pops up a blue dialog headed “Windows protected your PC” (Microsoft’s SmartScreen feature). It looks scary; it isn’t.
Before clicking Run anyway, you can confirm the installer is genuinely signed by us:
If any of that doesn’t match, don’t run it — drop into our Discord and let us know.
Windows builds per-publisher reputation based on install volume. Our signing certificate istrusted by Windows (issued via Azure Trusted Signing), but until roughly 50–100 people have downloaded and run a given version, Windows still flags the publisher as “unrecognized” — that’s a friction signal, not a danger signal.
This isn’t fixable by buying a more expensive certificate. Microsoft removed Extended Validation (EV) certificates’ automatic SmartScreen bypass in 2024, so all cert types build reputation identically by download volume. The only way to skip the warning entirely is the Microsoft Store, which doesn’t currently fit an app that reads MTG Arena’s log files and uses a custom URL scheme for desktop sign-in.
The warning fades naturally as the alpha grows.
Every release is also submitted to VirusTotal for scanning by 70+ antivirus engines. The link to the current release’s scan is pinned in our Discord’s #install-help channel.
Ask in our Discord’s #install-helpchannel — usually someone (often me) is around to help within a few minutes.
~74 MB · Windows 10/11
