Einstein@home is a large distributed computing project that analyzes data gathered by huge telescopes and detectors in searches for pulsars and gravitational waves. It is based in the US and Europe, and harnesses computing resources from participants around the world. Participation in this project is free, easy, and greatly encouraged.

Launch the BOINC Manager on the desktop (or start menu).

Tools >> Add project

Next >> choose Einstein@home from list

Note: the project URL changed a few months ago to: https://einsteinathome.org/

Enter an email and password as a new user (you’ll need this whenever you login to this project)

A web browser will startup to allow you to connect to the project’s web site and let you finish the account setup for this new user

Enter a user name (will be shown in stats pages), country, and optionally a postal code. You can join a team if you like. You can search for teams by criteria or name. The geopense.EAH team is shown as an example. Team stats are kept additionally, they don’t replace individual stats. Team stats can be viewed on project web sites, and on several third party sites such as boincstats.com

Once you find a team, click on its name to view details

Join this team if you like.

You will be greeted with a project Welcome page showing your current account details. You can change teams, but accumulated points might not move to the new team with you. Other items can be changed at any time by logging into your project account page.
The BOINC Manager app will show the projects you’ve connected to, now including Einstein@home, and tabs for monitoring your computer’s participation

You need to Update a project to load the account and team settings that you just entered at the project’s web site before any new project will use them.
You can watch new project files & tasks being downloaded with the Transfers tab

You can watch work in progress with the Tasks tab

This computer is configured to only let 2 of its 4 cores run BOINC (in Activity >> Computing preferences), so only 2 tasks are currently active. In most settings in BOINC Manager, 0 means ignore that setting (so selecting 0 cores actually assigns all 4 cores to BOINC).

Once a work unit is finished, it will be uploaded to the project’s servers and credit will be added for your contribution(s). This information is displayed in the Projects tab.

By default, BOINC tasks will continue to run in the background even after you exit the BOINC Manager. You can override this behavior with the File >> Exit BOINC dialog

Now sit back and enjoy having Einstein@home contributions racked up by your computer, and hope that an announcement of discovery appears for your account name in Notices !