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Installing Podman Desktop and Podman on Windows

Installing Podman Desktop​

To install Podman Desktop:

  1. Download the Windows installer.

  2. To start the Podman Desktop installer, open the downloaded file.

    Podman Desktop Setup installing

Alternate installation methods:

  • Silent Windows installer
  • Chocolatey
  • Scoop
  • Winget

Silent Windows installer​

  1. Download the Windows installer.

  2. To install without user interaction, run the Windows installer with the silent flag /S from the Command Prompt:

    > podman-desktop-1.6.4-setup-x64.exe /S

Chocolatey​

  1. Install the Chocolatey package manager.

  2. Install from the terminal:

    > choco install podman-desktop

Scoop package manager for Windows​

  1. Install the Scoop package manager.

  2. Install from the terminal:

    > scoop bucket add extras
    > scoop install podman-desktop

Winget​

  1. Install the Winget Package manager for Windows.

  2. Install from the terminal:

    > winget install -e --id RedHat.Podman-Desktop

Installing Podman​

On Windows, running the Podman container engine requires running a Linux distribution on a virtual machine.

Use WSL2 as machine provider​

Podman Desktop creates a Windows Subsystem for Linux version 2 (WSL 2) virtual machine: the Podman Machine.

Main benefits are:

  • Ease of use.
  • WSL 2 native virtualization performance.

Check that your environment has:

To install the Podman Machine:

  1. To prepare your system, enable the WSL feature, without installing the default Ubuntu distribution of Linux.

    Open the Command Prompt, and run:.

    > wsl --update
    > wsl --install --no-distribution
    note

    If you run the Podman Desktop setup on a Windows 10 LTSC version, you require to install a specific WSL distribution. See Troubleshooting Podman on Windows

  2. Restart your computer.

  3. The Dashboard screen displays: Podman needs to be set up.

    Podman needs set up screen

  4. Click the Set up button.

  5. Review and validate all confirmation screens to set up the Podman machine.

  6. When necessary, follow the instructions to install system prerequisites.

To verify that Podman is set up:

  • In the Dashboard, the Podman tile displays Podman is running.

    Podman is running screen

Use Hyper-V as machine provider​

Before creating a Podman machine, you can use one of the following ways to enable it to use Hyper-V:

Configuring an environment variable

  1. Perform one of the following steps:

    • As a normal user, set the following variable at session level:

      > $env:CONTAINERS_MACHINE_PROVIDER = 'hyperv'

    • As an admin user, set the following variable at system level:

      # [System.Environment]::SetEnvironmentVariable('CONTAINERS_MACHINE_PROVIDER','hyperv')

  2. Create and start a Podman machine using the UI.

Configuring the containers.conf file

  1. Open the containers.conf file on your machine. The file is usually placed at C:\Users\myuser\AppData\Roaming\containers\.

  2. Add the provider attribute and set its value to hyperv in the file.

    ...
    [machine]

    provider = "hyperv"
    ...

  3. Create and start a Podman machine using the UI.

Verification​

After configuration, you can confirm whether you are using a Podman machine with Hyper-V virtualization provider.

  1. Go to Settings > Resources.

  2. Click the Podman details icon in the Podman tile.

  3. Select the Logs tab to view the following notification message:

    time="2023-05-09T21:16:08+03:00" level=debug msg="Using Podman machine with `hyperv` virtualization provider"

Next steps​