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Install Lens K8S IDE#

Lens K8S IDE is lightweight and simple to install on all major platforms. Download Lens K8S IDE and start managing your Kubernetes clusters comfortably and efficiently. This page contains installation instructions for various platforms and covers other related topics.

System requirements#

Before installing Lens K8S IDE, verify that your computer meets the system requirements.

Minimum hardware requirements:

  • 2 GHz or faster processor
  • 1 GB of RAM
  • 1 GB of disk space

Supported operating systems#

Warning

Lens K8S IDE may work on operating systems that are beyond their end-of-life date. However, we recommend staying on supported versions of the operating system. See details about support life cycle of various operating systems on endofline.date .

Minimum supported operating system versions:

OS Version Release
CentOS Stream CentOS Stream 9 -
Fedora Linux Fedora Linux 41 -
macOS macOS 13 (Ventura) macOS Ventura 13.7.6
RHEL RHEL 9 RHEL 9.5
Ubuntu Ubuntu 22.04 LTS (Jammy Jellyfish) Ubuntu 22.04.5 LTS (Jammy Jellyfish)
Windows 10 22H2 10.0.19045
Windows Server Windows Server 2022 (LTSC) 10.0.20348

Allowlists#

Some Lens K8S IDE features, such as Lens K8S IDE Kube, require stable internet connection. If your network configuration restricts outbound connections, add the following URLs to your allow list:

  • https://api.k8slens.dev/*
  • https://downloads.k8slens.dev/*

If your network configurations require specifying allowed IP addresses, please refer to the list of required IP addresses.

Integrity checks#

At initial start, there might be a checksum verification error, we suggest installing the latest stable version of Lens K8S IDE to avoid the integrity check failure. See Integrity check error for details.

Install Lens K8S IDE on macOS#

  1. On lenshq.io/download , select and download a suitable .dmg file.
  2. Double-click the .dmg file and drag Lens.app to the Applications folder, making it available in Launchpad.
  3. Control-click the Lens K8S IDE icon and choose Options > Keep in Dock.

Info

Lens K8S IDE requires entry to Keychain Access to securely store your user credentials. Authorize Lens K8S IDE when prompted.

Install Lens K8S IDE on Windows#

  1. On lenshq.io/download , download the Lens K8S IDE installer for Windows.
  2. Install Lens K8S IDE by running the Lens-Setup-<VERSION>.exe installer. The default Lens K8S IDE installation path is C:\users\<username>\AppData\Local\Programs\Lens.

Silent installation#

Lens K8S IDE supports silent installation. The silent mode allows installing the application without user interaction through command-line parameters.

To complete silent installation, open the folder with the installer and run the Lens.Setup.<RELEASE-ID>.exe file using the following options:

Parameter Description
/S Required to specify. Specifies the silent mode.
/allusers Installs Lens K8S IDE for all users of the computer. Requires the Administrator user to perform the action.
/currentuser Installs Lens K8S IDE for the current user. This option is default, and you can skip specifying it.
/D="path" Specifies the installation directory.

To install Lens K8S IDE with the default parameters, run:

Lens.Setup.<RELEASE-ID>.exe /S

or

Lens.Setup.<RELEASE-ID>.exe /S /currentuser
The application can be found by the following path: 
C:\Users\<USER-NAME>\AppData\Local\Programs

To install Lens K8S IDE for all users of the computer, run:

Lens.Setup.<RELEASE-ID>.exe /S /allusers
The application can be found by the following path:

C:\Program Files\Lens

Installation options on Linux#

Lens K8S IDE for Linux is available for the AMD64 (x86_64) architecture. You can choose from the following installation options:

  • Debian (APT) repository
  • RPM repository
  • AppImage file
  • .snap file

Info

For the Debian and RPM repository options the name of the installed Lens K8S IDE executable is now lens-desktop

Install Lens K8S IDE from the APT repository#

  1. Get the Lens K8S IDE public security key and add it to your keyring:

    curl -fsSL https://downloads.k8slens.dev/keys/gpg | gpg --dearmor | sudo tee /usr/share/keyrings/lens-archive-keyring.gpg > /dev/null

  2. Add the Lens K8S IDE repo to your /etc/apt/sources.list.d directory:

    echo "deb [arch=amd64 signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/lens-archive-keyring.gpg] https://downloads.k8slens.dev/apt/debian stable main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/lens.list > /dev/null

    Info

    Ubuntu 20.04 reaches EOL in May 2025. To keep receiving security updates and full support for Lens K8S IDE, please upgrade your system to Ubuntu 22.04 LTS or newer. See Ubuntu official announcement for details.

  3. Install or update Lens K8S IDE:

    sudo apt update && sudo apt install lens

  4. Run Lens K8S IDE:

    lens-desktop

Install Lens K8S IDE from the RPM repository#

  1. Configure your system to use the Lens K8S IDE RPM repository using a package manager:

    Note

    We recommend using the DNF5 or DNF package managers as default options for the Lens K8S IDE installation.

    sudo dnf config-manager addrepo --from-repofile=https://downloads.k8slens.dev/rpm/lens.repo

    sudo dnf config-manager --add-repo https://downloads.k8slens.dev/rpm/lens.repo

    sudo yum-config-manager --add-repo https://downloads.k8slens.dev/rpm/lens.repo

  2. Install or update Lens K8S IDE using DNF:

    sudo dnf install lens

    If DNF is not available, use the YUM package manager:

    sudo yum install lens

  3. Run Lens K8S IDE:

    lens-desktop

  1. Configure your system to use the Lens K8S IDE RPM repository:

    sudo yum-config-manager --add-repo https://downloads.k8slens.dev/rpm/lens.repo

  2. Install or update Lens K8S IDE.

    sudo yum install lens-el7

  3. Run Lens K8S IDE:

    lens-desktop

Install Lens K8S IDE with Snap#

  1. Optional. Download and install snap. Find Linux distributions that do not have pre-installed snap and installation instructions in Snap tutorials: Installing snapd .

  2. Install the Lens K8S IDE snap:

    sudo snap install kontena-lens --classic

Install Lens K8S IDE from the AppImage#

  1. Download the AppImage file.
  2. Navigate to the directory where you have the file downloaded and right-click the AppImage file and select Properties > Permissions.

  3. Select the Allow executing file as a program check box.

    Note

    Some file managers might offer to unselect the Is executable check box or other similar actions.

  4. In the Linux command line, navigate to the directory where you have the file downloaded and type the following commands:

    chmod +x <FILE-NAME.AppImage>
./<FILE-NAME.AppImage>

Configure protocol handling#

Some features of Lens K8S IDE require protocol handling. For the AppImage, or other manually installed instances, protocol handling must be enabled separately.

Note

It is assumed that your Linux distribution uses xdg-open and the xdg-* suite of programs for determining which application can handle custom URIs.

  1. Create a file called lens.desktop in one of the following directories:

    ~/.local/share/applications/

    /usr/share/applications

  2. In lens.desktop, specify the absolute path to the unpacked Lens executable. Specify other parameters as follows:

    [Desktop Entry]
Name=Lens
Exec=<path/to/executable> %U
Terminal=false
Type=Application
Icon=lens
StartupWMClass=Lens
Comment=Lens - The Kubernetes IDE
MimeType=x-scheme-handler/lens;
Categories=Network;

  3. Set the default handler:

    xdg-settings set default-url-scheme-handler lens lens.desktop

    If xdg-settings returns an exit code of 0, Lens K8S IDE is capable of handling lens:// URIs.

Updating Lens K8S IDE#

By default, Lens K8S IDE updates automatically. Whenever a new version is available, a notification appears in the application interface.

In-app auto-updates are available for the following distributions:

  • exe (Windows)
  • dmg (macOS)
  • AppImage (Linux)

The Snap instances are automatically updated through the snapd daemon. Update other Lens K8S IDE distributions manually.

See Lens K8S IDE release notes for more information about features, maintenance updates, and other updates.

Backup and restore data#

When updating to a major Lens K8S IDE version, user data such as clusters, preferences, and other configurations migrates to new data structures. However, we recommend that you back up your user data. Below are the default user data locations:

OS Path
macOS ~/Library/Application Support/Lens/
Windows %APPDATA%\Lens\
Linux ~/.config/Lens/ or $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/Lens

Launch Lens K8S IDE