Install Lens Desktop#
Lens Desktop is lightweight and simple to install. You will be up and running in just a few minutes.
For a complete list of available installation options, check out the Lens web site.
System requirements#
Before you proceed with Lens installation, verify that your system meets the system requirements.
Hardware requirements#
Lens is a less than 300 MB download and has a disk footprint of 600 MB. Lens is lightweight and runs easily on any modern hardware.
Minimum hardware requirements:
- 2 GHz or faster processor
- 1 GB of RAM
Platforms#
Lens has been tested on the following platforms:
- macOS
- Windows
- Linux
Install Lens Desktop on macOS#
- Download Lens Desktop from the Lens web site for macOS.
- Double-click Lens-{version}.dmg and drag Lens.app to the Applications folder, making it available in the macOS Launchpad.
- Add Lens to your Dock by right-clicking on the icon to bring up the context menu and choosing Options, Keep in Dock.
Install Lens Desktop on Windows#
- Download the Lens Desktop installer for Windows.
- Install Lens Desktop by running the
Lens-Setup-{version}.exe
installer. By default, Lens Desktop installs underC:\users\{username}\AppData\Local\Programs\Lens
.
Install Lens Desktop on Linux#
You have the following downloading options for Linux:
.rpm
and.deb
filesAppImage
file.snap
file
Default package formats#
This example shows how to install Lens Desktop on Ubuntu 20.04:
- Download the
.deb
file here. -
In the Linux command line, type the following:
You can also use one of the applications forsudo apt install <path-to-deb-file>
.deb
file installations.Note
For RPM-based distributions, the procedure is similar with slight differencies in terminal commands.
AppImage#
- Download the
AppImage
file here. - Navigate to the directory where you have the file downloaded and right-click the
AppImage
file and select Properties > Permissions. -
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.
-
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>
After installing Lens manually (not using a package manager file such as .deb
or .rpm
) the following will need to be done to allow protocol handling.
This assumes that your linux distribution uses xdg-open
and the xdg-*
suite of programs for determining which application can handle custom URIs.
-
Create a file called
lens.desktop
in one of the following directions: -
~/.local/share/applications/
to install for all users -
/usr/share/applications
to install for your user -
That file should have the following contents, with
<path/to/executable>
being the absolute path to where you have installed the unpackedLens
executable:[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;
- Then run the following command:
xdg-settings set default-url-scheme-handler lens lens.desktop
- If that succeeds (exits with code
0
) then your Lens install should be set up to handlelens://
URIs.
Snap#
- Download the Lens package for Snap.
-
In the Linux command line, type the following:
sudo snap install Lens-{version}.amd64.snap --dangerous --classic
Update cadence#
Lens releases a new product version with new features and important bug fixes at least once a month. Lens supports auto-updating. You will be prompted to install the new release when it becomes available.
Note
Auto-updates are avalailable only for exe
, dmg
, and AppImage
installations.
Otherwise, you should update manually.
To stay current with the Lens features, review Lens release notes.
Backup and restore data#
If you are updating to a major Lens version, any existing user data including clusters, workspaces, preferences, and so on, will be migrated to new data structures.
To be able to safely roll back to your previous Lens versions, consider backing up your user data before updating. The user data is typically stored in the following directions:
- For MacOS,
~/Library/Application Support/Lens/
- For Windows,
%APPDATA%\Lens\
- For Linux,
~/.config/Lens/
or$XDG_CONFIG_HOME/Lens