rancher-desktop

This is the 1.6.1 release of Rancher Desktop, an open source desktop application to bring Kubernetes and container management to Mac, Windows, and Linux.

This patch release fixes 3 regressions in the 1.6.0 release

• On Windows, the host.rancher-desktop.internal and host.docker.internal names did not resolve.

• On macOS, the bridged interface was not being used, even when running with administrative rights, and only port forwarding to localhost was active.

• On macOS and Linux, upgrades from a previous release did not update all files inside the VM. In particular, nerdctl would stay at the previous version (e.g. 0.22.2 in Rancher Desktop 1.5.1) instead of being upgraded to 0.23.0.

Connect with the developers

• The issue queue

• Rancher Users Slack in the #rancher-desktop channel

Changelog

The full version changelog, from v1.6.0, can be found using GitHub compare and the details of the release can be found in the v1.6.1 milestone.

This is the 1.6.0 release of Rancher Desktop, an open source desktop application to bring Kubernetes and container management to Mac, Windows, and Linux.

Important Updates

Forwarding ports to external interfaces on Windows

Automatic port forwarding has been re-implemented by Rancher Desktop and no longer relies on the builtin forwarding from WSL. It is now possible to specify the interface to bind to, and binds to 0.0.0.0 (all host interfaces) by default. To keep a port bound to localhost only, you have to specify it explicitly:

docker run -d -p 127.0.0.1:8081:80 nginx

Port forwarding now works the same way on macOS and Windows (Linux does not yet support binding to external ports).

Note that you will still need to open up the port in the firewall to allow other machines on the local network to access it.

New Diagnostics feature

Rancher Desktop has a new Diagnostics tab. If there are any failed tests, It will display a red badge with the number of failures in the left-hand menu. This is supposed to work like the "Check Engine" light in a car: to alert you to potential issues with Rancher Desktop or your environment. You can "mute" diagnostics that are not applicable to your situation.

In this release, we only have a handful of diagnostics related to PATH settings and the online state of the host machine. We will add more diagnostics in the future.

Experimental support for faster ingress on macOS

When running with administrative privileges, Rancher Desktop will create a bridged interface on the local network for ingress using a separate IP address from the host machine. This functionality is provided by the vde_vmnet daemon.

The new socket_vmnet daemon has supported 2 to 3 times the throughput of vde_vmnet during testing. However, we found during testing that VMNET may get locked up, and the only way to recover was to reboot the host. Therefore the new daemon must be enabled manually right now:

rdctl api --method PUT --body '{"kubernetes":{"experimental":{"socketVMNet":true}}}' settings

Please file a Github issue including log files if you test the new socket_vmnet daemon and run into any problems!

Updated Utilities

• docker-buildx has been upgraded from 0.8.2 → 0.9.1
• docker-compose has been upgraded from 2.6.1 → 2.11.1
• helm has been upgraded from 3.9.1 → 3.9.4
• nerdctl has been upgraded from 0.22.0 → 0.23.0
• trivvy has been upgraded from 0.30.0 → 0.32.0

Important bug fixes

Updated DNS resolver

There have been fixes to the DNS resolver on all platforms regarding truncated responses.

On Windows, we discovered that due to a configuration error the 1.5.x builds did not include the DNS bug fixes we had developed for it, so there a multiple other DNS related fixes in this Windows version. Please re-test if you had problems with DNS and create/update Github issues if the problems still persist!

Factory Reset on Windows no longer restarts Rancher Desktop automatically

This makes it possible to use it to remove (most of) the data files installed by Rancher Desktop without them being recreated immediately.

Changelog

The full version changelog, from v1.5.1, can be found using GitHub compare and the details of the release can be found in the v1.6.0 milestone.

This is the 1.5.1 release of Rancher Desktop, an open source desktop application to bring Kubernetes and container management to Mac, Windows, and Linux. The patch release mainly contains fixes to below bugs:

• Automatic forwarding of NodePorts to the host not working with recent releases of Kubernetes
• Problems with pushing images to Docker Hub using nerdctl
• Issue running amd64 images on Mac M1

Known Issues

• There's an inconsistent issue related to running nerdctl commands. Please check https://github.com/rancher-sandbox/rancher-desktop/issues/2689 for more details and a quick workaround.

You can connect with the developers via:

• The issue queue

• Rancher Users Slack in the #rancher-desktop channel

Changelog

The full version changelog, from v1.5.0, can be found using GitHub compare and the details of the release can be found in the v1.5.1 milestone.

This is the 1.5.0 release of Rancher Desktop, an open source desktop application to bring Kubernetes and container management to Mac, Windows, and Linux. The release contains some new features along with various bug fixes.

Important Updates

Preferences dialog

Rancher Desktop now has a dedicated preferences dialog containing application, virtual machine, container engine, and Kubernetes settings. Changes are applied only after the "Apply" button is pressed, minimizing the time it takes to switch between configurations.

Offline operation

Rancher Desktop has been updated to work better in an offline environment. During initial setup a network connection is required to e.g. download the Kubernetes version to be deployed. But if Rancher Desktop is later run offline, then only the already cached versions will be available, and there should no longer be any delays or errors trying to fetch additional information online.

This mode can also be used to setup air-gapped operation. Documentation for this is still being prepared.

Other changes

• The host resolver (DNS) on Windows is no longer considered experimental and is now enabled by default. It helps to resolve hostnames over VPN connections.

• The "Port Forwarding" feature now allows the user to pick a specific port instead of choosing one randomly.

Updated utilities

• docker has been upgraded to 20.10.17.
• docker-compose has been upgraded to 2.6.1.
• nerdctl has been upgraded to 0.22.0.
• helm has been upgraded to 3.9.1.
• trivy has been upgraded to 0.30.0.

Known Issuses

• Due to upstream Kubernetes changes the automatic forwarding of NodePorts to the host no longer works for Kubernetes 1.22.10+, 1.23.7+, or any 1.24.1+ release (this also affects all previous Rancher Desktop releases).

• It is not possible to push images to Docker Hub with nerdctl.

Both of these issues will be addressed in a patch release later in August.

You can connect with the developers via:

• The issue queue
• Rancher Users Slack in the #rancher-desktop channel

Changelog

The full version changelog, from v1.4.1, can be found using GitHub compare and the details of the release can be found in the v1.5.0 milestone.

This is the 1.4.1 release of Rancher Desktop, an open source desktop application to bring Kubernetes and container management to Mac, Windows, and Linux. The release contains some new features along with various bug fixes.

Important Updates

• Rancher Desktop now ships with registry credential helpers and configures them automatically: It uses pass on Linux, osxkeychain on macOS, and wincred on Windows. The ecr-login helper is also included but not automatically configured.

  For nerdctl (which has to run inside the VM for technical reasons) a credential forwarder will redirect all credential requests to the helper on the host, so no credentials are installed inside the VM.

• The Images list now supports bulk deletion of images.

• Various bug fixes to the still experimental host resolver (DNS). We expect to be able to make it the default resolver in the 1.5.0 release.

Updated utilities

• docker has been upgraded to 20.10.16.
• docker-buildx has been upgraded to 0.8.2.
• docker-compose has been upgraded to 2.5.1.
• nerdctl has been upgraded to 0.20.0.
• helm has been upgraded to 3.9.0.
• trivy has been upgraded to 0.28.0.

You can connect with the developers via:

• The issue queue
• Rancher Users Slack in the #rancher-desktop channel

Changelog

The full version changelog, from v1.3.0, can be found using GitHub compare and the details of the release can be found in the v1.4.1 milestone (1.4.1 is the first public release from the release-1.4 branch).

This is the 1.3.0 release of Rancher Desktop, an open source desktop application to bring Kubernetes and container management to Mac, Windows, and Linux. The release contains some new features along with various bug fixes.

Important Updates

• On macOS and Linux, supporting utilities are no longer symlinked into /usr/local/bin, but into ~/.rd/bin which can be added to the PATH automatically or manually in the shell profile files.

• On macOS Rancher Desktop can be configured to run without administrative rights, in which case it will not create the routable interfaces. It will also not be able to create a symlink at /var/run/docker.sock, but will set up an alternate docker context.

• nerdctl has been upgraded to 0.19.0.

• helm has been upgraded to 3.8.2.

Experimental Features

• The rdctl CLI remains experimental and has added new subcommands:

  • rdctl start --kubernetes-version 1.23.1 will start RD if it isn't running, or modify the configuration to match.
  • rdctl shell runs commands or opens an interactive shell inside the Rancher Desktop VM.

• An alternative DNS resolver for Windows has been implemented. It should support DNS lookup over VPN connections. It has to be enabled manually by editing an internal configuration file.

• On macOS an alternative file sharing mechanism using 9p instead of reverse-sshfs has been implemented. It is disabled by default. Talk to us on Slack if you want to help us testing it.

Important Fixes

• The metrics performance issue when using the moby runtime has been fixed.
• Certificate handling on Windows has be fixed to deal with large numbers of certificates.
• Image scanning now displays all the reported vulnerabilities.

You can connect with the developers via:

• The issue queue
• Rancher Users Slack in the #rancher-desktop channel

Changelog

The full version changelog, from v1.2.1, can be found using GitHub compare and the details of the release can be found in the v1.3.0 milestone.

Rancher Desktop 1.2.1 is a security (patch) release. Rancher Desktop is an open source desktop application to bring Kubernetes and container management to Mac, Windows, and Linux. The release contains a bug fix where steve, an internal component of Rancher Desktop, was sometimes causing a firewall rule prompt. More detail is available in the advisory.

You can connect with the developers via:

• The issue queue
• Rancher Users Slack in the #rancher-desktop channel

Changelog

The full version changelog, from v1.2.0, can be found using GitHub compare and the details of the release can be found in the v1.2.1 milestone.

⚠️ This release includes a security vulnerability. Please use the fixed version 1.2.1 instead! ⚠️

This is the 1.2.0 release of Rancher Desktop, an open source desktop application to bring Kubernetes and container management to Mac, Windows, and Linux. The release contains some new features along with various bug fixes.

Feature Preview

This release includes 2 new features still considered experimental:

• Rancher Dashboard for kubernetes

  It can be opened from the system tray icon menu and runs in a separate window.

• Commandline access via rdctl program

  This is still a prototype with limited functionality. Examples:

  • rdctl list-settings
  • rdctl set --container-engine docker --kubernetes-version 1.21.2
  • rdctl shutdown

  Long term all functionality should be available both through the UI and the CLI.

Important Updates & Fixes

• Works with macOS 12.3
• Support for kubernetes 1.24 on docker via cri-dockerd
• DNS improvements on all platforms (work-in-progress)
• nerdctl updated to 0.17.1

You can connect with the developers via:

• The issue queue
• Rancher Users Slack in the #rancher-desktop channel

Changelog

The full version changelog, from v1.1.1, can be found using GitHub compare and the details of the release can be found in the v1.2.0 milestone.

⚠️ This release is not working correctly on macOS Monterey 12.3. There is a workaround and a fix should be released next week. ⚠️

This is the 1.1.1 release of Rancher Desktop, an open source desktop application to bring Kubernetes and container management to Mac, Windows, and Linux. The release contains 2 bug fixes:

• DNS not working correctly in some Windows environments
• The docker-buildx symlink was incorrect

You can connect with the developers via:

• The issue queue
• Rancher Users Slack in the #rancher-desktop channel

Changelog

The full version changelog, from v1.1.0, can be found using GitHub compare and the details of the release can be found in the v1.1.1 milestone.

This is the 1.1.0 release of Rancher Desktop, an open source desktop application to bring Kubernetes and container management to Mac, Windows, and Linux. The release contains some feature changes along with various bug fixes.

Important Updates & Fixes

• Kubernetes can be disabled to run just containerd or dockerd by itself for reduced resource consumption.
• traefik can be disabled to free up port 80 and 443 for alternate ingress configuration.
• Internal container port forwarding support has been enabled again on Linux and macOS.
• docker compose is included when docker is selected in the "Supporting Utilities".
• Improved support for DNS over VPN on Windows (tunnelling only, no split-DNS support yet).
• host.docker.internal is defined inside containers for compatibility.
• Ports bound to 127.0.0.1 are no longer exposed externally.

You can connect with the developers via:

• The issue queue
• Rancher Users Slack in the #rancher-desktop channel

Changelog

The full version changelog, from v1.0.1, can be found using GitHub compare and the details of the release can be found in the v1.1.0 milestone.

Rancher Desktop 1.0.1 is a bug fix release of Rancher Desktop, an open source desktop application to bring Kubernetes and container management to Mac, Windows, and Linux.

You can connect with the developers via:

• The issue queue
• Rancher Users Slack in the #rancher-desktop channel

Changelog

The full version changelog, from v1.0.0, can be found using GitHub compare and the details of the release can be found in the v1.0.1 milestone.

This is the 1.0.0 release of Rancher Desktop, an open source desktop application to bring Kubernetes and container management to Mac, Windows, and Linux. The release contains some feature changes along with various bug fixes.

Important Notes & Updates

• kim has been removed. You can build images using the nerdctl and docker command line tools.
• macOS networking has been updated to fall back to a shared mode when bridged mode is unable to get an IP address.
• On macOS the "everyone" group is used instead of the "staff" groups when permission setting is done.
• Electron and nodejs have been updated to the latest stable versions.
• Trivy, nerdctl, and other tools have been upgraded.
• New versions are now checked for hourly.
• A documented security policy and reporting mechanism has been added.
• Numerous bugs were fixed.

You can connect with the developers via:

• The issue queue
• Rancher Users Slack in the #rancher-desktop channel

Changelog

The full version changelog, from v0.7.1, can be found using GitHub compare.

This is a beta release of Rancher Desktop v1.0.0. Rancher Desktop is an open source desktop application to bring Kubernetes and container management to Mac, Windows, and Linux.

This pre-release is meant for testing purposes. You can read more about the release timeline for 1.0.0 on the Rancher blog.

This beta release is not included in the auto-update process and needs to be manually installed.

You can connect with the developers via:

• The issue queue
• Rancher Users Slack in the #rancher-desktop channel

Changelog

The full version changelog, from v0.7.1, can be found using GitHub compare.

This is a patch release of Rancher Desktop, an open source desktop application to bring Kubernetes and container management to Mac, Windows, and Linux. This release fixes a networking bug.

You can connect with the developers via:

• The issue queue
• Rancher Users Slack in the #rancher-desktop channel

Changelog

The full version changelog, from v0.7.0, can be found using GitHub compare.

This is a feature release of Rancher Desktop, an open source desktop application to bring Kubernetes and container management to Mac, Windows, and Linux. The release contains some feature changes along with various bug fixes.

You can read the announcement post on the SUSE Community site.

Highlighted Features

• Docker CLI / Moby / dockerd: When you first run Rancher Desktop, you will have the option to pick your container runtime. Alongside containerd, you can choose moby, which provides dockerd and enables the Docker CLI and tools that communicate with the Docker socket via Rancher Desktop. You can later change the container runtime in the Kubernetes Settings. Only one container runtime will function at a time.
• Apple Silicon (M1) Support: Rancher Desktop can now be installed on Apple Silicon (M1). In the downloads, choose the aarch64 version to get Apple Silicon support. Note: this version does require Rosetta 2 as some of the components needed by Rancher Desktop don’t yet have native builds.
• Linux Repositories: Linux RPM and deb packages are now available via package repositories. These can be using for installation and updates. Rancher Desktop is also available as an AppImage.
• macOS Bridged Networking: Networking has changes on Mac to enable the IP address to the virtual machine to be routable. This occurs via a bridged network.
• nerdctl Updates: nerdctl, the CLI for use with containerd, has added many new features. Rancher Desktop ships the latest version.

Important Notes

• Switching between container runtimes will leave you with a fresh environment. Containers and images you have running under one container runtime will not show up under the other one. If you switch back to a previous runtime the images you previously had, there will still be available. If you want to remove the containers and images from your unused runtime you will need to Reset Kubernetes and the container runtime.
• Apple Silicon builds of Rancher Desktop run Kubernetes and handle containers using an aarch64 (ARM) architecture.
• AppImage Linux builds do not have a built-in update support. This is in development.

You can connect with the developers via:

• The issue queue
• Rancher Users Slack in the #rancher-desktop channel

Changelog

The full version changelog, from v0.6.1, can be found using GitHub compare.

This is a patch release of Rancher Desktop, an open source desktop application to bring Kubernetes and container management to Mac, Windows, and Linux. The release contains bug fixes associated with the automated update feature.

You can connect with the developers via:

• The issue queue
• Rancher Users Slack in the #rancher-desktop channel

Changelog

The full version changelog, from v0.6.0, can be found using GitHub compare.

This is a feature release of Rancher Desktop, an open source desktop application to bring Kubernetes and container management to Mac, Windows, and Linux. The release contains some feature changes along with various bug fixes.

You can read the announcement post on the SUSE Community site.

Highlighted Features

• A Technical Preview of Linux support. Rancher Desktop is coming to Linux desktops. Attached to this release you'll find a Debian package and an RPM. You can install Rancher Desktop on various Linux distributions. With this tech preview the deb and rpm are attached to the release. In the future they will be served out of repositories.
• On Mac and Linux, the home directory is mounted as writable. This impacts volume mounts.
• The Images user interface now supports containerd namespaces. Containerd namespaces are separate from Kubernetes namespaces.
• Better status messages as Kubernetes and containerd come online.

You can connect with the developers via:

• The issue queue
• Rancher Users Slack in the #rancher-desktop channel

Changelog

The full version changelog, from v0.5.0, can be found using GitHub compare.

This is a feature release of Rancher Desktop, an open source desktop application to bring Kubernetes and container management to Mac and Windows. The release contains some feature changes along with various bug fixes.

You can read the announcement post on the SUSE Community site.

Highlighted Features

• nerdctl, a mostly docker compatible CLI, is now included with Rancher Desktop. It includes features such as running and building containers. This is the next step in supporting more container features. nerdctl works with containerd, the current runtime. We plan to support more CLIs and runtimes in the future such as the Docker CLI and Moby (the open source project behind the Docker engine).
• Ports exposed by the containers are now accessible on localhost. For example, if you start a container and expose it on port 8000 you can access the container on localhost:8000. Note, on mac the ports are exposed on 0.0.0.0 which means they are accessible on all network connections (including your machines IP).
• Built-in updates. When the next release of Rancher Desktop comes out you will be notified, get to see the changes, and it will be installed. This is an opt-out feature so you can stay on a version of Rancher Desktop if you choose.
• You can now reset just Kubernetes or Kubernetes and Containers. When you reset just Kubernetes any container images you had pulled or built will remain in your environment. To wipe out the containers and images you will need to reset Kubernetes and Containers.

You can connect with the developers via:

• The issue queue
• Rancher Users Slack in the #rancher-desktop channel

Changelog

The full version changelog, from v0.4.1, can be found using GitHub compare.

This is a patch (bug fix) release of Rancher Desktop, an open source desktop application to bring Kubernetes and container management to Mac and Windows. You are encouraged to update to this version.

You can connect with the developers via:

• The issue queue
• Rancher Users Slack in the #rancher-desktop channel

Changelog

The full version changelog, from v0.4.0, can be found using GitHub compare.

This is a feature release of Rancher Desktop, an open source desktop application to bring Kubernetes and container management to Mac and Windows. The release contains some feature changes along with various bug fixes.

Highlighted Features

• Always have a version of kubectl that's supported with the version of Kubernetes you're using (provided by kuberlr)
• Built-in image security scanning (provided by Trivy)
• Can configure the port used for Kubernetes API server
• On MacOS Lima/QEMU is used to manage the virtual machine instead of Hyperkit. This means you ports above 1024 are automatically mapped to localhost.
• On Windows you can now select Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) distributions to expose Rancher Desktop Kubernetes into. This will make it available in the kubeconfig for that distribution. See the Kubernetes Settings for more details.

Note, due to the change to LIMA/QEMU there will be a new virtual machine. This means your workloads will be lost on upgrade. We hope to make this the last time this happens.

You can connect with the developers via:

• The issue queue
• Rancher Users Slack in the #rancher-desktop channel

Changelog

The full version changelog, from v0.3.0, can be found using GitHub compare.