Back

How to Install Google Ads Editor on Linux in 2026 (Working Method)

Published on May 12, 2026

Google Ads Editor doesn't have a Linux version. Google ships it for Windows and macOS, and that's it. If you run Linux full-time and manage Google Ads campaigns, you've probably seen the usual suggestions: spin up a Windows VM, dual-boot, or use a cheap Windows laptop just for the editor.

You don't have to do any of that. Google Ads Editor runs fine on Linux through Bottles, with the default Soda runner. Login works. MCC accounts download. Posting changes works. This guide walks through the exact setup that worked on Debian 13 with KDE Plasma, and the same steps apply to Ubuntu, Fedora, Arch, Mint, or anything else where Flatpak runs.

What you need

  • Any modern Linux distro with Flatpak installed
  • Bottles (the Flatpak version from Flathub)
  • About 15 minutes
  • A Google Ads account, obviously

That's it. No Wine repos to add, no PPAs, no PlayOnLinux. Bottles handles the Wine layer for you, and its default runner (Soda, a Valve-Wine fork) is what actually makes this work in 2026.

Step 1: Install Bottles

Bottles is officially distributed only as a Flatpak. The developers don't provide a .deb, PPA, Snap, or AppImage. Some distros have community-maintained packages (like the AUR on Arch), but Flatpak is the only officially supported route and it works on every mainstream distribution.

If Flatpak and Flathub aren't already set up on your machine, do that first. On Debian and Ubuntu:

sudo apt install flatpak
flatpak remote-add --if-not-exists flathub https://flathub.org/repo/flathub.flatpakrepo

Then install Bottles:

flatpak install flathub com.usebottles.bottles

Launch it from your application menu. On first launch, Bottles will download its default runner (Soda) automatically. Let it finish.

Step 2: Create a new bottle

In Bottles, click the + button to create a new bottle. Settings:

  • Name: something like "Google Ads Editor"
  • Environment: Application (not Gaming - the editor isn't a game and doesn't need DXVK or VKD3D loaded)
  • Runner: Soda (the default - leave it alone)

Click Create. Bottles will set up the prefix. This takes a minute or two.

Step 3: Install the dependencies

This is the part nobody documents clearly, and it's the part that decides whether the editor will launch or just hang silently.

Open your new bottle, go to the Dependencies tab, and install these, one at a time, waiting for each to finish before starting the next:

  • dotnet48 - Google Ads Editor is a .NET app, this is the critical one
  • dotnet (the latest version available in the list) - covers newer .NET runtime calls
  • vcredist2022 - Visual C++ runtime
  • gdiplus - graphics rendering, needed for the UI
  • webview2 - needed for the login flow that opens a browser inside the app

Install them in roughly that order. dotnet48 can take a while and occasionally looks frozen - it's not, just let it run.

Step 4: Set Windows version to 11

In the bottle's settings, find Windows Version and set it to Windows 11. Older guides will tell you to use Windows 10 - that used to be the recommendation, but Windows 11 works better with current versions of Google Ads Editor and avoids a few signing/cert warnings during install.

Step 5: Fix the DPI before you start

If you're on a 1440p, 4K, or any HiDPI display, the editor's UI will be tiny by default. Fix this now so you don't have to deal with it later.

In Bottles, open your bottle → Settings → Display section → set DPI to 144. For 4K displays, try 192 instead.

You can change this later if it's wrong, but doing it before first launch means the editor opens at a readable size right away.

Step 6: Download the MSI installer (not the .exe)

This is the single most important detail in the entire guide, and it's the reason most people fail when they try to install Google Ads Editor on Linux.

If you go to the official Google Ads Editor download page at ads.google.com/home/tools/ads-editor/, you get a file called GoogleAdsEditorSetup.exe. That's the default installer Google offers everyone. It will not work in Bottles, in Wine, or in any Linux setup.

The reason: GoogleAdsEditorSetup.exe is a bootstrapper, not the actual installer. When you run it, it makes Windows-specific API calls to check your system, downloads the real MSI from Google's servers, then hands off to the Windows Installer service. Several things in that chain don't translate cleanly to Wine — the bootstrapper either silently fails, hangs forever during the "preparing to install" stage, or crashes without an error message. People have been hitting this exact issue for years.

The fix is to skip the bootstrapper entirely and download the MSI directly. Google hosts it at a public URL:

https://dl.google.com/adwords_editor/google_ads_editor.msi

This is the same MSI the bootstrapper would have downloaded, except you're grabbing it yourself. Wine handles MSI files much better than .exe bootstrappers because the MSI uses standard Windows Installer routines that Wine implements well.

Download it with your browser, or from the terminal:

wget https://dl.google.com/adwords_editor/google_ads_editor.msi

Back in Bottles, in your bottle, click Run Executable and select the MSI you just downloaded. The installer runs like it would on Windows. Click through it, accept the defaults.

When it finishes, Google Ads Editor will show up as a program inside your bottle's program list.

Step 7: Launch and log in

Click Google Ads Editor in your bottle to launch it. First-run setup will ask you to sign in.

The login screen offers two options: an in-app browser, or "Open browser to sign in." Either one works in this setup — that's one of the reasons getting webview2 installed matters. If you skipped it, only the second option will work, and you'll need to copy the OAuth URL into Firefox or Chrome manually.

Sign in, pick the account or MCC you want, and the editor will pull down your campaigns. From here it behaves exactly like the Windows version.

What works, what to expect

Everything I've tested works:

  • Downloading accounts (including MCC with many child accounts)
  • Editing campaigns, ad groups, keywords, ads
  • Posting changes back to Google
  • Importing and exporting CSVs
  • The check-changes preview
  • Login with browser handoff

Performance is solid. Memory use is roughly comparable to the native Windows app. The editor doesn't hammer the CPU. Account downloads take about the same time as they would on Windows.

Troubleshooting

The .exe installer hangs or crashes. You're using GoogleAdsEditorSetup.exe instead of the MSI. Go back to Step 6 and download the direct MSI URL.

The MSI installer fails or hangs. Make sure dotnet48 finished installing before you tried the editor. The dotnet48 install isn't fast, and if you started the MSI too early, the install runs into missing .NET assemblies. Wipe the bottle, redo dependencies, and try again.

Login window is blank. webview2 didn't install. Go back to Dependencies and try again, or use the "Open browser to sign in" option as a workaround.

Fonts look pixelated, not just small. Don't push DPI higher than 192 unless you actually have a 5K+ display. Above that, Wine starts doing bitmap scaling instead of true DPI scaling, and everything turns blurry.

Editor crashes on startup with no error. Almost always a missing dependency. Reinstall vcredist2022 and gdiplus first, since those are the most common culprits.

Wineserver keeps running after closing the editor. Normal. Bottles cleans this up the next time you interact with the bottle. If it's bothering you, restart the bottle from the menu.

Why this works in 2026 when older guides don't

Most older guides telling you how to run Google Ads Editor on Linux are doing one of two things: either using plain Wine from the WineHQ repo (which works, but the configuration is brittle), or using PlayOnLinux with an ancient editor version like 9.0.1, which Google deprecated years ago.

Bottles plus Soda is a different approach. Soda is based on Valve's Wine fork, which includes Staging and Proton patches. It handles .NET applications noticeably better than upstream Wine, and Bottles handles the prefix configuration for you - dependencies, Windows version, registry tweaks, the whole thing - through a clean GUI.

That's why this setup is short. You're not fighting Wine; you're using a layer that's been tuned to deal with exactly these kinds of Windows-only business apps.

Summary

For anyone scanning, here's the entire setup:

    1. Install Bottles via Flatpak
    2. Create an Application bottle with Soda runner
    3. Install dependencies: dotnet48, latest dotnet, vcredist2022, gdiplus, webview2
    4. Set Windows version to 11
    5. Set DPI to 144
    6. Download the MSI directly from dl.google.com/adwords_editor/google_ads_editor.msi — not the .exe bootstrapper
    7. Run the MSI from inside the bottle, launch the editor, log in

Tested on Debian 13 with KDE Plasma. Same approach may be also working on Ubuntu 24.04, Fedora 41, Linux Mint, and Arch-based distros. If Flatpak runs, this could work.

Published on May 12, 2026 by The Web Makers editorial team