Creating a Podman machine

On macOS and Windows, running the Podman container engine requires running a Linux virtual machine.

By default, Podman Desktop initializes a Podman machine with a standard configuration.

Consider creating a custom Podman machine to:

• Control the assigned resources: CPUs, memory, and disk size.
• Use a custom boot image.
• Use the rootful connection by default, for example to run Kind.
• (On Windows) Route the traffic through the network connection from your Windows session.

Prerequisites

• The Podman executable is installed.

  note

  On the macOS ARM64 platform, you might get a warning that the krunkit binary is unavailable on the Create Podman machine page. To resolve the warning, install krunkit manually or install Podman using the GitHub installer.

Procedure

1. Go to Settings > Resources.
2. In the Podman tile, click Create new.
3. In the Create a Podman machine screen:

   1. Name: Enter a name, such as podman-machine-default.

   2. CPU(s): Select the number of CPUs.

   3. Memory: Select the memory size.

   4. Disk size: Select the disk size.

   5. Optional: Provide a bootable image using one of the following options:

      • Image Path: Select an image, such as podman-machine.aarch64.applehv.raw.zst from your local machine.
      • Image URL or image reference: Enter an image URL or a registry path. You can use an image URL from the Podman releases page or use a valid registry path in the format registry/repo/image:version.

   6. Machine with root privileges: Enable to use the rootful connection by default. Required to use Kind on Windows.

   7. Additional settings based on your operating system:

      • (On Windows)
        • User mode networking (traffic relayed by a user process): Enable to route the traffic through the network connection from your Windows session. This setting is required to access resources behind your VPN connection.
        • Provider Type: The setting is visible only to administrators, and its default value is wsl.
      • (On macOS) Provider Type:
        • For the macOS ARM64 platform, the default value is GPU enabled (LibKrun). However, you can switch to Apple HyperVisor when needed.
        • For the macOS AMD64 platform, the default value is Apple HyperVisor, and you cannot use the GPU enabled (LibKrun) provider.

   8. Click Create.