Multipass is a lightweight VM manager for Linux, Windows and macOS. It's designed for developers who want to spin up a fresh Ubuntu environment with a single command. It uses KVM on Linux, Hyper-V on Windows and QEMU on macOS to run virtual machines with minimal overhead. It can also use VirtualBox on Windows and macOS. Multipass will fetch Ubuntu images for you and keep them up to date.
Since it supports metadata for cloud-init, you can simulate a small cloud deployment on your laptop or workstation.
| Service | Status |
|---|---|
| CI |  |
| Snap |  |
| Codecov |  |
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On Linux, Multipass is available as a snap:
sudo snap install multipass -
On macOS, download the installer from GitHub.
Alternatively, you can use Homebrew. Please note that this method is not officially supported, as it is not maintained by the Multipass team, but by the community. Multipass is available as a cask:
brew install --cask multipassPlease note that you may be required to enter your password for some sudo operations during installation. You may also need to disable the firewall to launch a multipass instance successfully on macOS.
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On Windows, download the installer from GitHub.
For more information, see How to install Multipass.
Here are some pointers to get started with Multipass. For a more comprehensive learning experience, please check out the Multipass Tutorial.
$ multipass find
Image Aliases Version Description
20.04 focal 20240731 Ubuntu 20.04 LTS
22.04 jammy 20240808 Ubuntu 22.04 LTS
24.04 noble,lts 20240806 Ubuntu 24.04 LTS
Blueprint Aliases Version Description
anbox-cloud-appliance latest Anbox Cloud Appliance
charm-dev latest A development and testing environment for charmers
docker 0.4 A Docker environment with Portainer and related tools
jellyfin latest Jellyfin is a Free Software Media System that puts you in control of managing and streaming your media.
minikube latest minikube is local Kubernetes
ros-noetic 0.1 A development and testing environment for ROS Noetic.
ros2-humble 0.1 A development and testing environment for ROS 2 Humble.
$ multipass launch lts
Launched: dancing-chipmunk
$ multipass list
Name State IPv4 Image
dancing-chipmunk Running 192.168.64.8 Ubuntu 24.04 LTS
phlegmatic-bluebird Stopped -- Ubuntu 22.04 LTS
docker Running 192.168.64.11 Ubuntu 22.04 LTS
172.17.0.1
$ multipass info dancing-chipmunk
Name: dancing-chipmunk
State: Running
Snapshots: 0
IPv4: 192.168.64.8
Release: Ubuntu 24.04 LTS
Image hash: e2608bfdbc44 (Ubuntu 24.04 LTS)
CPU(s): 1
Load: 5.70 4.58 2.63
Disk usage: 3.3GiB out of 4.8GiB
Memory usage: 769.0MiB out of 953.0MiB
Mounts: --
$ multipass shell dancing-chipmunk
Welcome to Ubuntu 24.04 LTS (GNU/Linux 6.8.0-39-generic aarch64)
...
Don't forget to logout (or Ctrl-D) or you may find yourself heading all the way down Inception levels... ;)
$ multipass exec dancing-chipmunk -- lsb_release -a
No LSB modules are available.
Distributor ID: Ubuntu
Description: Ubuntu 24.04 LTS
Release: 24.04
Codename: noble
$ multipass stop dancing-chipmunk
$ multipass delete dancing-chipmunk
The instance will now show up as deleted:
$ multipass list
Name State IPv4 Image
dancing-chipmunk Deleted -- Ubuntu 24.04 LTS
phlegmatic-bluebird Stopped -- Ubuntu 22.04 LTS
docker Running 192.168.64.11 Ubuntu 22.04 LTS
172.17.0.1
If you want to completely get rid of it:
$ multipass purge
multipass help
multipass help <command>
Here's a set of steps to build the Multipass source code on Linux.
Please note that these instructions do not support building packages for macOS or Windows systems.
Note: if building on arm, s390x, ppc64le, or riscv, environment variable VCPKG_FORCE_SYSTEM_BINARIES must be set:
export VCPKG_FORCE_SYSTEM_BINARIES=1
cd <multipass>
sudo apt install devscripts equivs
mk-build-deps -s sudo -i
cd <multipass>
git submodule update --init --recursive
mkdir build
cd build
cmake ../
make
Please note that if you're working on a forked repository that you created using the "Copy the main branch only" option, the repository will not include the necessary git tags to determine the Multipass version during CMake configuration. In this case, you need to manually fetch the tags from the upstream by running git fetch --tags https://github.com/canonical/multipass.git in the <multipass> source code directory.
First, install Multipass's runtime dependencies. On AMD64 architecture, you can do this with:
sudo apt update
sudo apt install libgl1 libpng16-16 libqt6core6 libqt6gui6 \
libqt6network6 libqt6widgets6 libxml2 libvirt0 dnsmasq-base \
dnsmasq-utils qemu-system-x86 qemu-utils libslang2 iproute2 \
iptables iputils-ping libatm1 libxtables12 xterm
Then run the Multipass daemon:
sudo <multipass>/build/bin/multipassd &
Copy the desktop file that Multipass clients expect to find in your home:
mkdir -p ~/.local/share/multipass/
cp <multipass>/data/multipass.gui.autostart.desktop ~/.local/share/multipass/
Optionally, enable auto-complete in Bash:
source <multipass>/completions/bash/multipass
Now you can use the multipass command from your terminal (for example <multipass>/build/bin/multipass launch --name foo) or launch the GUI client with the command <multipass>/build/bin/multipass.gui.
The Multipass team appreciates contributions to the project, through pull requests, issues, or discussions and questions on the Discourse forum.
Please read the following guidelines carefully before contributing to the project.
When contributing, you must adhere to the Code of Conduct.
The code in this repository is licensed under GNU General Public License v3.0. See LICENSE for more information.
All contributors must sign the Canonical contributor license agreement (CLA), which gives Canonical permission to use the contributions. Without the CLA, contributions cannot be accepted.
Changes to this project should be proposed as pull requests. Proposed changes will then go through review and once approved, be merged into the main branch.