Freelens

Freelens is a free and open-source user interface designed for managing Kubernetes clusters. It provides a standalone application compatible with macOS, Windows, and Linux operating systems, making it accessible to a wide range of users. The application aims to simplify the complexities of Kubernetes management by offering an intuitive and user-friendly interface.

Requirements

Kubernetes 1.22 or later. Older clusters fall back to the bundled kubectl, which may not work correctly; a different one can be set in Preferences.

Downloads

See the releases page and download the right package for your system.

macOS

macOS 12 or later is required.

Download either the PKG (installer) or DMG (image) package from the releases page. Both arm64 (M1 chip or newer) and amd64 (Intel) variants are available.

All binary packages are built on macOS 15 and should be compatible with newer systems.

Homebrew

Run the following command:

brew install --cask freelens

Linux

Linux with GNU C Library 2.34 or later is required. It is provided ie. by Debian 12, Fedora 35, Mint 21, openSUSE Leap 15.4, Ubuntu 22.04 and by rolling release distributions like Arch, Manjaro or Tumbleweed.

Download DEB or RPM (package) or AppImage (executable) from the releases page. Both arm64 (aarch64) and amd64 (x86_64) variants are available.

All binary packages are built on Ubuntu 22.04 and should be compatible with new systems.

AppImage

The Linux AppImage file requires libz.so and libfuse.so.2. You can add them by running:

sudo apt install libfuse2 zlib1g-dev

Run the application with additional arguments:

./Freelens*.AppImage --no-sandbox --ozone-platform-hint=auto --enable-features=WebRTCPipeWireCapturer --enable-features=WaylandWindowDecorations --disable-gpu-compositing

Flatpak

The package is available on the Flathub App Store for Linux.

Use GNOME Software application or run the following commands:

flatpak install flathub app.freelens.Freelens
flatpak run app.freelens.Freelens

The application is sandboxed. It includes bundled kubectl and helm commands and uses the ~/.kube/config file by default.

Flatpak adds wrappers for the aws, doctl, gke-gcloud-auth-plugin, and kubelogin tools, running them as commands from the host system.

The terminal uses /bin/sh by default, but it can be switched to, for example, /bin/bash for a sandboxed environment or /app/bin/host-spawn for a host environment.

Snap

The package is available on the Snap Store for Linux.

Use App Center application or run the following command:

snap install freelens --classic

APT repository

Run the following commands:

curl -L https://raw.githubusercontent.com/freelensapp/freelens/refs/heads/main/freelens/build/apt/freelens.asc | sudo tee /etc/apt/keyrings/freelens.asc
curl -L https://raw.githubusercontent.com/freelensapp/freelens/refs/heads/main/freelens/build/apt/freelens.sources | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/freelens.sources
sudo apt update
sudo apt install freelens

Arch User Repository

The package is available on the Arch User Repository (AUR).

Check the freelens-bin package page.

Windows

Windows 10 or later is required.

Download the EXE (NSIS) or MSI installers from the releases page.

Both the x64 (amd64) and arm64 versions of the Windows binaries are provided. However, an EXE installer (NSIS) itself is x86 binary only even if it installs arm64 application and then installs to C:\Program Files (x86)\Freelens path by default.

The version of the MSI package has the last 4th digit always 0 and this is a limitation of this package format.

Portable

Download the Portable EXE from the releases page. It is a self-contained executable that can be run without installation.

WinGet

The package is available in WinGet Community repository.

Run the following command:

winget install Freelensapp.Freelens

The --silent option is supported to suppress all UI.

The --scope user or --scope machine option can be used to install it either to local user directory or to C:\Program Files.

WinGet installs the application from EXE installer (NSIS).

Scoop

The package is available in the Scoop command-line installer for Windows.

Run the following command:

scoop bucket add extras
scoop install freelens

Scoop uses MSI package to install the application.

Development

Visit the Development document to see how to build the application from source. Check out the Freelens Docs to contribute to development or create your own extension.

Extensions

Anyone can develop extensions for Freelens and many extensions previously used with Open Lens have already been converted. Visit the Extensions discussion to see them and write in the appropriate discussion if you also want to propose yours.

Community

Get updates about Freelens & keep in touch with our community

• Follow us on LinkedIn
• Follow us on Bluesky
• Follow us on X
• Join our Discussions
• Chat on Discord
• Discuss on Reddit
• Watch us on YouTube
• Open an Issue

Adopters

Freelens is used by many individuals, companies, and organizations.

We have created the adopters file for anyone who would like to be part of the official list.

Anyone is welcome to request to be added to the official list by opening a dedicated Pull Request.

Contributing

Anyone is welcome to collaborate to advance the Freelens project. Read CONTRIBUTING.md to see how you can help.

Expenses and Donations

Anyone can support the Freelens project by making donations to cover maintenance costs and invest in its development.

For more information, see our dedicated discussion: Expenses and Donations

Fund an issue or earn money by developing

Anyone who wishes can also make targeted donations, funding their preferred issues alone or with others via BountyHub.

At the same time, anyone who wishes can apply by doing PR to earn the bounty.

Features are, in any case, decided democratically according to the community's wishes and overseen by the Freelens core team.

For more information, see our dedicated discussion: Fund an issue or earn money by developing

The Freelens Teams

Core Team

Each member of the core team is focused on specific roles. You can contact us at any time according to them.

• Roberto Bandini - @robertobandini - Founder
  General organization management, relationships, product management, community, marketing, freelens-ai extension
• Piotr Roszatycki - @dex4er - Maintainer
  Development direction, architecture and release management, flux-cd extension, freelens-ai extension
• Mario Offertucci - @mariomamo - Maintainer
  UI, Docs, freelens-ai extension development management
• Leopoldo Capuano - @leo-capvano - Maintainer
  GenAI solutions & freelens-ai extension development management

Release Engineering Team

This team is responsible for driving Freelens releases forward, reviewing PRs, and making decisions about the architecture and technical roadmap under the supervision of the core team.

• Piotr Roszatycki - @dex4er - Maintainer
  Release Engineering Team Lead
• Omar Alani - @omarluq - Maintainer
  Release Engineering Team Member
• Matías Roje - @MatiasRoje - Maintainer
  Release Engineering Team Member

The project is growing very quickly and everyone is welcome!

If you also want to be part of it, visit the We want you! discussion.

Or contact us at [email protected] for any questions or suggestions!

License

This repository is a fork of Open Lens, the core of Lens Desktop, with the aim of carrying forward its open-source version.

Copyright (c) 2024-2026 Freelens Authors.

Copyright (c) 2022 OpenLens Authors.

MIT License