Rancher Desktop 1.12.1

This is the 1.12.1 release of Rancher Desktop, an open source desktop application to bring Kubernetes and container management to Mac, Windows, and Linux.

Installers

• Windows
• macOS x86_64
• macOS aarch64
• Linux install notes

What has changed in 1.12.1

The 1.12.1 patch release fixes a single memory corruption issue on Windows for importing CA certificates (#6308). There are no changes (except for the version number bump) on macOS and Linux.

Release notes for 1.12.0

Below are the release notes for 1.20.0:

Notable Features & Changes

Windows WSL Installation

For Windows users that have previously overridden the WSL installation check, please use WSLINSTALLED instead of WSLKERNELINSTALLED.

Windows tunnelling networking mode is no longer experimental

It has feature parity with the legacy networking mode and will become the default setting for new installations (and factory reset) in the 1.13 release. We expect to remove the legacy networking support in 1.14.

macOS builds for aarch64 are now native binaries

The VM code has always been platform-native, but the UI used to require Rosetta because it was still an x86_64 binary. Now everything except for kuberlr and the kubectl versions managed by it are aarch64 binaries. The problem with kuberlr and kubectl is that there are no native binaries available from upstream for older Kubernetes versions.

macOS socket_vmnet networking is no longer experimental

socket_vmnet is a replacement for vde_vmnet, which is deprecated upstream. It was never supported in VZ emulation mode, so Rancher Desktop already uses socket_vmnet in VZ mode when admin access is enabled.

socket_vmnet will become the default for QEMU as well in the 1.13 release; in 1.14, vde_vmnet will be removed.

Deployment Profiles

This release now requires deployment profiles to have an explicit version field (which is 10, as of release 1.11.0).

The version of rdctl that ships with this release will have the version field in any generated deployment files. However, this means that existing files will either need to be regenerated or manually edited in place.

• For Linux, add "version": 10, at the very start of the JSON-formatted deployment file immediately after
  the initial open brace {.

• For macOS, add <key>Version</key><integer>10</integer> after the initial <dict> tag.

• For Windows, add a DWORD value named version with value 10 (hexadecimal a) at the top level of each profile that needs updating.

Important Bug Fixes

Snapshots

Improvements and fixes regarding executing multiple application actions while a snapshot is undergoing a management activity (#5846, #5848, #5849, and #5854).

Known Issues

Apple M3 CPUs

Apple M3 CPUs are not supported (yet) by QEMU. Please use VZ emulation instead (#5943).

Snapshots

There is a known issue with the Snapshot Cancel operation in the UI. It is possible that the operation can no longer be cancelled when the button is pressed. In that case, the operation may succeed but the UI will still claim that it has been cancelled (#6159).

Windows Networking

There is a known issue with the new network not including all aliased domains (#5239).

Container Dashboard

There are known issues with the Container Dashboard when using the nerdctl container engine; one is that the "Started" field shows an inaccurate time for containers starting up. The dashboard also has an issue updating when container states have changed or new containers are introduced (#6191, #6189, #5877, and #5775).

Provisioning Scripts - Windows

The location for provisioning scripts on Windows has changed from %AppData%\rancher-desktop\provisioning to %LocalAppData%\rancher-desktop\provisioning. The files are not automatically migrated when Rancher Desktop is updated, so they must be manually moved or copied to the new location.

9p - Linux OS

There is a known issue with some Linux distributions and using the experimental mount type 9p (#4943).

Extensions Install - Allowed Images

When using the Allowed Images feature and also specifying extensions in a deployment profile, the extension images must be included in both lists (#4920).

Updates to Bundled Utilities

• helm 3.12.3 → 3.13.3
• docker 24.0.6 → 24.0.7
• docker-buildx 0.11.2 → 0.12.0
• docker-compose 2.22.0 → 2.23.3
• docker-credential-ecr-login 0.7.1 → 0.7.1
• nerdctl 1.6.2 → 1.7.1
• moby/buildkit 0.12.3 → 0.12.4
• trivy 0.46.0 → 0.46.0

Connect with the developers

• The issue queue

• Rancher Users Slack in the #rancher-desktop channel

Changelog

The full version changelog, from v1.12.0, can be found using GitHub compare and the details of the release can be found in the v1.12.0 milestone.

Rancher Desktop 1.12

This is the 1.12 release of Rancher Desktop, an open source desktop application to bring Kubernetes and container management to Mac, Windows, and Linux.

Installers

• Windows
• macOS x86_64
• macOS aarch64
• Linux install notes

Notable Features & Changes

Windows WSL Installation

For Windows users that have previously overridden the WSL installation check, please use WSLINSTALLED instead of WSLKERNELINSTALLED.

Windows tunnelling networking mode is no longer experimental

It has feature parity with the legacy networking mode and will become the default setting for new installations (and factory reset) in the 1.13 release. We expect to remove the legacy networking support in 1.14.

macOS builds for aarch64 are now native binaries

The VM code has always been platform-native, but the UI used to require Rosetta because it was still an x86_64 binary. Now everything except for kuberlr and the kubectl versions managed by it are aarch64 binaries. The problem with kuberlr and kubectl is that there are no native binaries available from upstream for older Kubernetes versions.

macOS socket_vmnet networking is no longer experimental

socket_vmnet is a replacement for vde_vmnet, which is deprecated upstream. It was never supported in VZ emulation mode, so Rancher Desktop already uses socket_vmnet in VZ mode when admin access is enabled.

socket_vmnet will become the default for QEMU as well in the 1.13 release; in 1.14, vde_vmnet will be removed.

Deployment Profiles

This release now requires deployment profiles to have an explicit version field (which is 10, as of release 1.11.0).

The version of rdctl that ships with this release will have the version field in any generated deployment files. However, this means that existing files will either need to be regenerated or manually edited in place.

• For Linux, add "version": 10, at the very start of the JSON-formatted deployment file immediately after
  the initial open brace {.

• For macOS, add <key>Version</key><integer>10</integer> after the initial <dict> tag.

• For Windows, add a DWORD value named version with value 10 (hexadecimal a) at the top level of each profile that needs updating.

Important Bug Fixes

Snapshots

Improvements and fixes regarding executing multiple application actions while a snapshot is undergoing a management activity (#5846, #5848, #5849, and #5854).

Known Issues

Apple M3 CPUs

Apple M3 CPUs are not supported (yet) by QEMU. Please use VZ emulation instead (#5943).

Snapshots

There is a known issue with the Snapshot Cancel operation in the UI. It is possible that the operation can no longer be cancelled when the button is pressed. In that case, the operation may succeed but the UI will still claim that it has been cancelled (#6159).

Windows Networking

There is a known issue with the new network not including all aliased domains (#5239).

Container Dashboard

There are known issues with the Container Dashboard when using the nerdctl container engine; one is that the "Started" field shows an inaccurate time for containers starting up. The dashboard also has an issue updating when container states have changed or new containers are introduced (#6191, #6189, #5877, and #5775).

Provisioning Scripts - Windows

The location for provisioning scripts on Windows has changed from %AppData%\rancher-desktop\provisioning to %LocalAppData%\rancher-desktop\provisioning. The files are not automatically migrated when Rancher Desktop is updated, so they must be manually moved or copied to the new location.

9p - Linux OS

There is a known issue with some Linux distributions and using the experimental mount type 9p (#4943).

Extensions Install - Allowed Images

When using the Allowed Images feature and also specifying extensions in a deployment profile, the extension images must be included in both lists (#4920).

Updates to Bundled Utilities

• helm 3.12.3 → 3.13.3
• docker 24.0.6 → 24.0.7
• docker-buildx 0.11.2 → 0.12.0
• docker-compose 2.22.0 → 2.23.3
• docker-credential-ecr-login 0.7.1 → 0.7.1
• nerdctl 1.6.2 → 1.7.1
• moby/buildkit 0.12.3 → 0.12.4
• trivy 0.46.0 → 0.46.0

Connect with the developers

• The issue queue

• Rancher Users Slack in the #rancher-desktop channel

Changelog

The full version changelog, from v1.12.0, can be found using GitHub compare and the details of the release can be found in the v1.12.0 milestone.

Rancher Desktop 1.11.1

This is the 1.11.1 release of Rancher Desktop, an open source desktop application to bring Kubernetes and container management to Mac, Windows, and Linux.

Installers

• Windows
• macOS x86_64
• macOS aarch64
• Linux install notes

The Linux packages and AppImage are not yet available due to technical issues. They will be released within the next 2 days. Note that there are no changes between 1.11.0 and 1.11.1 for the Linux binaries, so there isn't any reason to install the patch release on Linux.

This patch release fixes two issues in Rancher Desktop 1.11.0

Windows

This patch fixes potential corruption of the Windows kube config file in the case whereby a WSL distro uses a symlink to the host file and WSL integration is enabled for this distro. Note that these symlinks may have been created by earlier releases of Rancher Desktop (#5981, #5946).

Rancher Desktop 1.11.1 will replace such symlinks with a separate file. This is necessary because the Kubernetes endpoint is now different between the Windows host and inside a WSL2 distro.

macOS

On macOS in Rancher Desktop 1.11.0, the VM would no longer get a routable IP address even when running with "Administrative Access" (related to vde_vmnet and socket_vmnet drivers). This issue has been fixed (#6051).

Linux

There are no changes related to Linux in this release compared to 1.11.0.

Known Issues

Apple M3 CPUs

There have been multiple reports that QEMU does not work with the latest Apple Silicon. Please use VZ emulation instead (#5943).

Snapshots

Currently there are known issues regarding executing multiple application actions while a snapshot is undergoing a management activity (#5846, #5848, #5849, and #5854). Please don't perform snapshot operations through the GUI and the CLI at the same time.

Container Dashboard

There are known issues with the Container Dashboard with filtering table items, ports being displayed correctly, and if using the nerdctl container engine, there is an issue with the "Started" field showing an inaccurate time for containers starting up. The dashboard also has an issue updating when container states have changed or new containers are introduced (#5759, #5893, #5877, and #5775).

Provisioning Scripts - Windows

The location for provisioning scripts on Windows has changed from %AppData%\rancher-desktop\provisioning to %LocalAppData%\rancher-desktop\provisioning. The files are not automatically migrated when Rancher Desktop is updated, so they must be manually moved or copied to the new location.

9p - Linux OS

There is a known issue with some Linux distributions and using the experimental mount type 9p (#4943).

Extensions Install - Allowed Images

When using the Allowed Images feature and also specifying extensions in a deployment profile, the extension images must be included in both lists (#4920).

Please check the Rancher Desktop 1.11.0 release notes for a comprehensive list of new features and bug fixes.

Connect with the developers

• The issue queue

• Rancher Users Slack in the #rancher-desktop channel

Changelog

The full version changelog, from v1.11.0, can be found using GitHub compare and the details of the release can be found in the v1.11.0 milestone.

Rancher Desktop 1.11.0

This is the 1.11.0 release of Rancher Desktop, an open source desktop application to bring Kubernetes and container management to macOS, Windows, and Linux.

Windows and macOS Installers

• Windows
• macOS x86_64
• macOS aarch64
• Linux install notes

Notable Features & Changes

Snapshots (Experimental)

Rancher Desktop now has the ability to take snapshots which store the current configuration of your virtual machine and all associated settings. Snapshots can be managed both from the application GUI under the Snapshots tab or on the command line using rdctl snapshot.

Management activities include creating, deleting, and restoring of saved snapshots. Please note that management activities should complete before performing other actions in the application. Concurrent actions are not supported at the moment. Please see the documentation and reference page for more information and known issues below for current limitations

Container Dashboard (Experimental)

The new Containers tab offers quick access to view and manage containers from the application GUI. You can perform control activities such as stop, start, and delete as well as bulk selection/actions on containers that have a similar state. Please view the documentation for more information and known issues below for current limitations.

macOS Networking

You can now use the network configuration socket-vmnet with VZ emulation applied and administrative access enabled.

Windows Networking Tunnel (Experimental)

With the WSL networking tunnel enabled, the WSL integrations have received an update to allow distributions access to the Kubernetes API server hosted in Rancher Desktop's namespace network.

Important Bug Fixes

BuildX Error

• Fixes #5363 where newly created BuildX instances were failing with "cgroup" errors.

WSL Updates

• Fixes #4560 during startup for Rancher Desktop where the WSL integration was executing distributions not explicitly marked for integration and causing startup issues.

• Fixes #5805 where WSL integrations could not be disabled from the UI.

• Fixes #5551 where the WSL version was unable to be properly parsed causing application errors.

Locked No-Proxy Field UI Update

• Fixes #5468 where the No proxy hostname list was editable in the UI after being locked via deployment policy.

VZ Emulation

• Fixes #5542 where an incompatible mount type could be set for VZ emulation using the command line and rdctl.

Deployment Profile - Windows

• Fixes #5857 where deployment profiles created via rdctl with locked fields were not able to initialize the application.

Known Issues

Apple M3 CPUs

There have been multiple reports that QEMU does not work with the latest Apple Silicon. Please use VZ emulation instead (#5943).

Snapshots

Currently there are known issues regarding executing multiple application actions while a snapshot is undergoing a management activity (#5846, #5848, #5849, and #5854).

Container Dashboard

There are known issues with the Container Dashboard with filtering table items, ports being displayed correctly, and if using the nerdctl container engine there is an issue with the "Started" field showing an inaccurate time for containers starting up. The dashboard also has an issue updating when container states have changed or new containers are introduced (#5759, #5893, #5877, and #5775).

Provisioning Scripts - Windows

The location for provisioning scripts on Windows has changed from %AppData%\rancher-desktop\provisioning to %LocalAppData%\rancher-desktop\provisioning. The files are not automatically migrated when Rancher Desktop is updated, but must be manually moved or copied to the new location.

9p - Linux OS

There is a known issue with some Linux distributions and using the experimental mount type 9p (#4943).

Extensions Install - Allowed Images

When using the Allowed Images feature, and also specifying extensions in a deployment profile, then the extension images must be included in both lists (#4920).

Updates to Bundled Utilities

• helm 3.12.3 → 3.13.1
• docker 24.0.5 → 24.0.6
• docker-buildx 0.11.2 → 0.12.0
• docker-compose 2.20.3 → 2.22.0
• docker-credential-ecr-login 0.7.1 → 0.7.1
• nerdctl 1.5.0 → 1.6.2
• moby/buildkit 0.11.6 → 0.12.3
• trivy 0.44.1 → 0.46.0

Connect With the Developers

• The issue queue

• Rancher Users Slack in the #rancher-desktop channel

Changelog

The full version changelog, from v1.10.0, can be found using GitHub compare and the details of the release can be found in the v1.11.0 milestone.

Rancher Desktop 1.10.0

This is the 1.10.0 release of Rancher Desktop, an open source desktop application to bring Kubernetes and container management to macOS, Windows, and Linux.

Windows and macOS Installers

• Windows
• macOS x86_64
• macOS aarch64
• Linux install notes

New Features

Deployment Profile Updates

• Rancher Desktop now supports generating Windows .reg or macOS .plist files using the rdctl create-profile [options] command. Please see the command reference for documentation.

Mount Type virtiofs Available on Linux & macOS

• Initially available for macOS, this release adds the virtiofs mount type for Linux environments as well. This can be set as an option on the Virtual Machine | Volumes tab.

Windows Proxy Update

• The WSL noproxy list is now displayed in a text area from the preferences dialog via Preferences > WSL > Proxy.

Important Bug Fixes

Desktop Extensions - Switching Container Engines

• Fixes #4788 where Rancher Desktop will now silently remove incompatible extensions when switching container engines between the moby and containerd options.

Deployment Profile Updates

• Fixes #4952 where an incorrect Kubernetes version value in a deployment profile was not terminating the application.

• Fixes #5047 with editable Kubernetes fields in locked deployment profiles.

Windows Network Update

• Fixes #5396 where port binding to localhost failed when using a moby backend engine and allows for exposed ports to be discoverable in the namespaced network.

Windows Proxy Update

• Fixes #5366 where users were unable to delete a host from the No proxy hostname list.

Known Issues

Allowed Images List & rdctl create-profile --output=reg

• There is a known issue #5466 where an empty allowed images list is not being output while using the command rdctl create-profile --output=reg --from-settings.
  A workaround is to add at least one image to the allowed images list, which can point to a non-existing image or registry.

Updates to Bundled Utilities

• helm 3.12.0 → 3.12.3
• docker 24.0.2 → 24.0.5
• docker-buildx 0.10.5 → 0.11.2
• docker-compose 2.18.0 → 2.20.3
• docker-credential-ecr-login 0.7.1 → 0.7.1
• nerdctl 1.4.0 → 1.5.0
• moby/buildkit 0.12.0 → 0.11.6 (downgrade due to an issue with cgroups)
• trivy 0.42.0 → 0.44.1

Connect With the Developers

• The issue queue

• Rancher Users Slack in the #rancher-desktop channel

Changelog

The full version changelog, from v1.9.1, can be found using GitHub compare and the details of the release can be found in the v1.10.0 milestone.

Rancher Desktop 1.9.1

This is the 1.9.1 release of Rancher Desktop, an open source desktop application to bring Kubernetes and container management to macOS, Windows, and Linux.

Windows and macOS Installers

• Windows
• macOS x86_64
• macOS aarch64
• Linux install notes

Important bug fixes in this patch release

Locked settings could be unlocked

When the main application window was closed and re-opened without terminating the application, then all settings locked by a deployment profile could be edited again. They were only reset to their locked values when Rancher Desktop was restarted.

Uncaught proxy handling errors

The module handling https proxies inside Rancher Desktop was updated to its latest version, which contained a bug tied to handling proxy error messages that contained additional error information in addition to the HTTP status code. This bug would throw an exception that Rancher Desktop would not handle. The module has been downgraded to the previous version again until the bug is fixed upstream.

Other fixes

New networking stack on Windows

• The new networking code would break when the user name contained a space.

• Port forwarding did not work with the new networking code.

Buildkit support on Windows

The Rancher Desktop WSL distro did not include the necessary tools to use buildkit on Windows.

Apple Virtualization Framework could not be enabled on macOS 13.0 (Intel) and 13.3 (M1)

This was due to an incorrect version comparison and has been fixed.

Rancher Desktop failed silently when ~/.docker/config.json was invalid

It now displays an error message during startup.

Known issue

The Kubernetes version can be modified via rdctl start --kubernetes.version 1.XX.Y even when it is otherwise locked down by a deployment profile. This is the only setting affected by this bug; Kubernetes versions are updated later once the list of available versions is known.

Updates to bundled utilities

• helm 3.12.0 → 3.12.1
• docker-buildx 0.10.5 → 0.11.0
• docker-compose 2.18.1 → 2.19.0
• trivy 0.42.0 → 0.42.1

Connect with the developers

• The issue queue

• Rancher Users Slack in the #rancher-desktop channel

Changelog

The full version changelog, from v1.9.0, can be found using GitHub compare and the details of the release can be found in the v1.9.1 milestones.

Rancher Desktop 1.9

This is the 1.9.0 release of Rancher Desktop, an open source desktop application to bring Kubernetes and container management to macOS, Windows, and Linux.

Windows and macOS Installers

• Windows
• macOS x86_64
• macOS aarch64
• Linux install notes

New features

Docker Extensions

This release provides support for Docker Extensions. They can be installed via the UI from a catalog, or via the CLI from any registry.

The extensions in the bundled catalog have been tested to work with Rancher Desktop 1.9. Some extensions only work with the moby container engine; they will not be displayed in the catalog when using containerd.

The Epinio extension only works when Kubernetes has been enabled.

Additional extensions can be installed via the CLI but may not work with Rancher Desktop.

Preferences for experimental settings

The following settings were previously only configurable via rdctl. They have been added to the Preferences dialog, which has been extended with additional tabs:

Windows

• A new networking stack implementation can be selected that works better in VPN environments. This new stack now automatically configures port forwarding as well.

macOS

• Virtual machine type can be set to qemu or vz (Apple Virtualization Framework). vz requires macOS 13.0 Ventura on Intel and macOS 13.3 on Arm (M1, M2) machines. Rosetta can be enabled to run Intel container images on M1/M2 computers under vz emulation.

• Directory mounting can use virtiofs instead of the default reverse-sshfs mode when using vz.

• The socket-vmnet driver can be selected instead of the default vde-vmnet driver. It is only being used when running with administrative privileges to provide a routable (bridged) IP address on the local network.

macOS and Linux

• Directory mounting can use 9p instead of reverse-sshfs. Various parameters of the 9p protocol can be configured as well.

Windows Proxy support

• Many thanks to @tperale for contributing an implementation of proxy support on Windows. The proxy settings can be configured via the Preferences dialog and via rdctl.

Locked Settings in Deployment Profiles

• For enterprise deployments, an administrator can now lock any setting globally to enforce company policy. Locked settings get a 🔒 icon in the Preferences dialog and cannot be modified.

Important bug fixes

Apple Virtualization Framework

• Several fixes to support for VZ emulation mode have been applied.

• Rosetta is now configured correctly.

• The 3 minute timeout during VM shutdown has been fixed.

Kubernetes service port forwarding

Fixes an issue that was introduced in 1.8 in Rancher Desktop Agent where if Kubernetes sends updates for services and the port mappings had not changed, the existing maps are deleted.

Other changes

• The default window size of the application has been increased.

• The default container engine has been changed from containerd to moby. This only affects new installations, and factory-reset.

• By default, Rancher Desktop will no longer request administrative access. That is need for a routable (bridged) IP address, and for creating the Docker socket in the default /var/run/docker.sock location.

  Rancher Desktop also sets up a rancher-desktop docker context and selects it, so having the socket in the default location is not necessary in most situation. Administrative access can be requested via the Preferences dialog.

  This change also only affects new installations, and factory reset. Existing configurations will not be modified.

Updates to bundled utilities

• helm 3.11.2 → 3.12.0
• docker 23.0.1 → 24.0.2
• docker-buildx 0.10.4 → 0.10.5
• docker-compose 2.16.0 → 2.18.1
• docker-credential-ecr-login 0.6.0 → 0.7.1
• nerdctl 1.2.1 → 1.4.0
• trivy 0.38.2 → 0.42.0

Connect with the developers

• The issue queue

• Rancher Users Slack in the #rancher-desktop channel

Changelog

The full version changelog, from v1.8.1, can be found using GitHub compare and the details of the release can be found in the v1.9.0-tech-preview and v1.9.0 milestones.

Rancher Desktop 1.9.0 Tech Preview

This is the 1.9.0-tech-preview release of Rancher Desktop, an open source desktop application to bring Kubernetes and container management to macOS, Windows, and Linux.

⚠️	Being a tech preview, this release will not be installed by the auto-update feature; you will have to download and install it manually.

New feature

This release provides a preview of the upcoming support for Docker Desktop Extensions. They can be installed via the UI from a catalog, or via the CLI from any registry.

Implementation of extension support is on-going, and this tech preview comes with a catalog of 3 extensions that are known to work with the support already in place:

• Epinio
• Logs-Explorer
• Tachometer

Additional extensions can be installed via rdctl extension install ..., but may possibly not work (yet).

Please use the moby container engine to try out the extensions; "Logs Explorer" and "Tachometer" currently do not work with containerd.

The Epinio extension only works when Kubernetes has been enabled.

Windows and macOS Installers

• Windows
• macOS x86_64
• macOS aarch64

Linux Installation

Because this is not a full release, it cannot be installed as described in the official Rancher Desktop documentation. Instead, follow the developer documentation (scroll past the explanation of version format). This will let you install a development version of Rancher Desktop that has the features associated with the technical preview.

Since the technical preview changes are in the release-1.9 branch, you need to install a version of Rancher Desktop that has release1.9 in it. For example, if installing via rpm, you would use a version that looks like 0.release1.9.1681519864.1234567-7.1.

Important bug fix

Fixes an issue that was introduced in 1.8 in Rancher Desktop Agent, where If Kubernetes sends updates for services and the port mappings had not changed, the existing maps are deleted.

Other changes

There are no other new features in this release (compared to 1.8.1).

The default window size of the application has been increased.

There are some bug fixes related to deployment profiles and the first-run dialog.

Updates to bundled utilities

• helm 3.11.2 → 3.11.3
• docker 23.0.1 → 23.0.3
• docker-compose 2.16.0 → 2.17.2
• nerdctl 1.2.1 → 1.3.0
• trivy 0.38.2 → 0.39.1

Connect with the developers

• The issue queue

• Rancher Users Slack in the #rancher-desktop channel

Changelog

The full version changelog, from v1.8.1, can be found using GitHub compare and the details of the release can be found in the v1.9.0-tech-preview milestone.

Rancher Desktop 1.8.1

This is the 1.8.1 release of Rancher Desktop, an open source desktop application to bring Kubernetes and container management to Mac, Windows, and Linux.

Installers

• Windows
• macOS x86_64
• macOS aarch64
• Linux install notes

This patch release fixes one issue in Rancher Desktop 1.8.0

The new experimental deployment profile functionality was broken on Windows. This has been fixed.

There are no other changes in this release compared to 1.8.0

Please check the Rancher Desktop 1.8.0 release notes for a comprehensive list of new features and bug fixes.

Connect with the developers

• The issue queue

• Rancher Users Slack in the #rancher-desktop channel

Changelog

The full version changelog, from v1.8.0, can be found using GitHub compare and the details of the release can be found in the v1.8.1 milestone.

Rancher Desktop 1.8.0

This is the 1.8.0 release of Rancher Desktop, an open source desktop application to bring Kubernetes and container management to Mac, Windows, and Linux.

Installers

• Windows
• macOS x86_64
• macOS aarch64
• Linux install notes

New Features

Configurable application behavior, e.g. auto-start at login

Some aspects of application behavior can now be configured via the Application | Behavior preferences:

• Automatically start at login
• Start in the background
• Quit when closing the application window
• Hide notification icon

All application settings can be changed via rdctl

Both rdctl start and rdctl set can be used to pass values for any configuration setting except

• diagnostics.showMuted
• WSL.integration

Use rdctl set --help to get list of settings supported on the current platform.

Deployment profile (experimental)

Deployment profiles can be used both by the user and by administrators to provide initial preference settings on first-run (or after a factory-reset), and to lock down settings, so they cannot be changed via the GUI or CLI.

New networking stack on Windows (experimental)

An experimental network stack on Windows should provide better compatibility with various VPN configurations. It also uses its own network namespace, providing better isolation from other WSL2 distros on the same machine. It is still a work-in-progress (port forwarding has to be performed manually) and has some limitations (WSL integration is not yet implemented). Please read the documentation section in the Epic to see how to enable and use it. Please provide feedback if you run into any problems beyond the documented limitations.

Support for Apple Virtualization framework on macOS (experimental)

On macOS, it is now possible to use experimental support for the Virtualization framework instead of QEMU for running the virtual machine. Unlike QEMU it supports more than 8 CPUs on aarch64 machines. There are several known performance and stability issues, so this is for evaluation purposes only. Virtual machine type can be switched with from QEMU to VZ with

rdctl set --virtual-machine.type vz

Important Bug fixes and enhancements

Kubernetes 1.26 and Moby

Kubernetes 1.26 now works again with both container engines.

Additional mount points on macOS

On macOS, the directories /Volumes and /var/folders are automatically mounted into the VM, so any directories under them can be bound into containers. This includes the $TMPDIR directory.

Kubernetes ingress binding to 0.0.0.0 on Windows

On Windows, the Kubernetes loadbalancer services are now bound to all interfaces, so they can be accessed from other machines on the local network (just like on macOS). The old behavior (binding only to 127.0.0.1) can be restored with

rdctl set --kubernetes.ingress.localhost-only true

This cannot yet be configured via the GUI.

socket_vmnet has been updated on macOS (experimental)

socket_vmnet is going to be the replacement for the current vde_vmnet driver that is responsible for creating routable IP addresses (requires running with "administrative access"). There have been several bug fixes to socket_vmnet. Select it with:

rdctl set --experimental.virtual-machine.socket-fmnet=true

File sharing via 9p on macOS (experimental)

On macOS, the alternate filesystem protocol 9p can now be selected via rdctl instead of creating a Lima override.yaml file

rdctl set--experimental.virtual-machine.mount.type 9p

9p mount options can also be configured; they will apply to all mounted volumes:

--experimental.virtual-machine.mount.9p.cache-mode string         (Allowed values: [none, loose, fscache, mmap])
--experimental.virtual-machine.mount.9p.msize-in-kb int           maximum packet size
--experimental.virtual-machine.mount.9p.protocol-version string   (Allowed values: [9p2000, 9p2000.u, 9p2000.L])
--experimental.virtual-machine.mount.9p.security-model string     (Allowed values: [passthrough, mapped-xattr, mapped-file, none])

Known issues

Experimental features can only be configured via rdctl

They are not exposed via the Preferences dialog yet.

Allowed Images

When the Allowed Images list is enabled, all images from *.pkg.dev (the Google CDN) are implicitly allowed to enable pulling from Google Cloud registries.

The format used to specify image patterns is still subject to change.

Long time to shut down Rancher Desktop when using the Virtualization framework

Due to a bug in the bindings, there is a "panic" in the shutdown of the VM (also visible in the logs), which will take an additional 3 minutes to time out.

Experimental Features

The following features are considered "experimental" and may change in incompatible ways (or be removed) without advance notice:

rdctl commandline syntax

If changes are made, the old syntax will continue to be supported if possible, but this cannot be guaranteed.

The output of rdctl command may also change in the future. E.g. rdctl list-settings currently just dumps out the settings object in JSON format, but could provide a better organized / readable format in the future.

API

The Rancher Desktop backend provides an API that is used both by the GUI frontend and by rdctl, and can also be used directly via rdctl api. The API is versioned, but the version might change without prior notice, and backward compatibility should not be expected.

Allowed Images

The allowed image list is still considered experimental, mostly because the pattern format is still going to change from extended regular expressions (intentionally under-documented) to simple wildcard matches.

New networking stack

The new networking stack implementation is still ongoing. It is not yet a full implementation on Windows, and not yet available on Linux and macOS at all.

Filesharing via 9p on macOS

socket_vmnet networking driver on macOS

Virtualization framework on macOS

This configuration is still considered experimental in the Lima project, which Rancher Desktop uses on macOS to implement the virtual machine. There are various known performance and stability problems that have to be resolved upstream.

Deprecated Features

This section provides a warning about features that will become unsupported in the future.

Catalina

Support for macOS Catalina will be removed in Rancher Desktop 1.10.

Kubernetes 1.24.1 to 1.24.3 with Moby engine

Kubernetes 1.24.1 to 1.24.3 will no longer work with the moby engine in Rancher Desktop 1.10. They will continue to work with containerd. Kubernetes 1.24.4 and later will continue to be supported with moby.

Removed Features

No features have been removed in this release

Updates to bundled utilities

• docker 20.10.21 → 23.0.1
• docker-buildx 0.9.1 → 0.10.4
• docker-compose 2.14.0 → 2.16.0
• helm 3.10.2 → 3.11.2
• nerdctl 1.0.0. → 1.2.1
• trivy 0.35.0 → 0.38.3

Connect with the developers

• The issue queue

• Rancher Users Slack in the #rancher-desktop channel

Changelog

The full version changelog, from v1.7.0, can be found using GitHub compare and the details of the release can be found in the v1.8.0 milestone.