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HTML rendering created 2025-09-06 by Michael Kerrisk, author of The Linux Programming Interface. For details of in-depth Linux/UNIX system programming training courses that I teach, look here. Hosting by jambit GmbH. |
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NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | OPTIONS | COMMANDS | FILE FORMATS | ENVIRONMENT | SEE ALSO | COLOPHON |
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FLATPAK(1) flatpak FLATPAK(1)
flatpak - Build, install and run applications and runtimes
flatpak [OPTION...] {COMMAND}
Flatpak is a tool for managing applications and the runtimes they
use. In the Flatpak model, applications can be built and
distributed independently from the host system they are used on,
and they are isolated from the host system ('sandboxed') to some
degree, at runtime.
Flatpak can operate in system-wide or per-user mode. The
system-wide data (runtimes, applications and configuration) is
located in $prefix/var/lib/flatpak/, and the per-user data is in
$HOME/.local/share/flatpak/. Below these locations, there is a
local repository in the repo/ subdirectory and installed runtimes
and applications are in the corresponding runtime/ and app/
subdirectories.
System-wide remotes can be statically preconfigured by dropping
flatpakrepo(5) files into /usr/share/flatpak/remotes.d/ and
/etc/flatpak/remotes.d/. If a file with the same name exists in
both, the file under /etc will take precedence.
In addition to the system-wide installation in
$prefix/var/lib/flatpak/, which is always considered the default
one unless overridden, more system-wide installations can be
defined via configuration files in /etc/flatpak/installations.d/,
which must define at least the id of the installation and the
absolute path to it. Other optional parameters like DisplayName,
Priority or StorageType are also supported.
Flatpak uses OSTree to distribute and deploy data. The
repositories it uses are OSTree repositories and can be
manipulated with the ostree utility. Installed runtimes and
applications are OSTree checkouts.
Basic commands for building flatpaks such as build-init, build and
build-finish are included in the flatpak utility. For higher-level
build support, see the separate flatpak-builder(1) tool.
Flatpak supports installing from sideload repos. These are partial
copies of a repository (generated by flatpak create-usb) that are
used as an installation source when offline (and online as a
performance improvement). Such repositories are configured by
creating symlinks to the sideload sources in the sideload-repos
subdirectory of the installation directory (i.e. typically
/var/lib/flatpak/sideload-repos or
~/.local/share/flatpak/sideload-repos). Additionally symlinks can
be created in /run/flatpak/sideload-repos which is a better
location for non-persistent sources (as it is cleared on reboot).
These symlinks can point to either the directory given to flatpak
create-usb which by default writes to the subpath .ostree/repo, or
directly to an ostree repo.
The following global options are understood. Individual commands
have their own options.
-h, --help
Show help options and exit.
-v, --verbose
Show debug information during command processing. Use -vv for
more detail.
--ostree-verbose
Show OSTree debug information during command processing.
--version
Print version information and exit.
--default-arch
Print the default arch and exit.
--supported-arches
Print the supported arches in priority order and exit.
--gl-drivers
Print the list of active gl drivers and exit.
--installations
Print paths of system installations and exit.
--print-system-only
When the flatpak --print-updated-env command is run, only
print the environment for system flatpak installations, not
including the user’s home installation.
--print-updated-env
Print the set of environment variables needed to use flatpaks,
amending the current set of environment variables. This is
intended to be used in a systemd environment generator, and
should not need to be run manually.
Commands for managing installed applications and runtimes:
flatpak-install(1)
Install an application or a runtime from a remote or bundle.
flatpak-update(1)
Update an installed application or runtime.
flatpak-uninstall(1)
Uninstall an installed application or runtime.
flatpak-mask(1)
Mask out updates and automatic installation.
flatpak-pin(1)
Pin runtimes to prevent automatic removal.
flatpak-list(1)
List installed applications and/or runtimes.
flatpak-info(1)
Show information for an installed application or runtime.
flatpak-history(1)
Show history.
flatpak-config(1)
Manage flatpak configuration.
flatpak-repair(1)
Repair flatpak installation.
flatpak-create-usb(1)
Copy apps and/or runtimes onto removable media.
Commands for finding applications and runtimes:
flatpak-search(1)
Search for applications and runtimes.
Commands for managing running applications:
flatpak-run(1)
Run an application.
flatpak-kill(1)
Stop a running application.
flatpak-override(1)
Override permissions for an application.
flatpak-make-current(1)
Specify the default version to run.
flatpak-enter(1)
Enter the namespace of a running application.
Commands for managing file access:
flatpak-document-export(1)
Grant an application access to a specific file.
flatpak-document-unexport(1)
Revoke access to a specific file.
flatpak-document-info(1)
Show information about a specific file.
flatpak-documents(1)
List exported files.
Commands for managing the dynamic permission store:
flatpak-permission-remove(1)
Remove item from permission store.
flatpak-permissions(1)
List permissions.
flatpak-permission-show(1)
Show app permissions.
flatpak-permission-reset(1)
Reset app permissions.
flatpak-permission-set(1)
Set app permissions.
Commands for managing remote repositories:
flatpak-remotes(1)
List all configured remote repositories.
flatpak-remote-add(1)
Add a new remote repository.
flatpak-remote-modify(1)
Modify properties of a configured remote repository.
flatpak-remote-delete(1)
Delete a configured remote repository.
flatpak-remote-ls(1)
List contents of a configured remote repository.
flatpak-remote-info(1)
Show information about a ref in a configured remote
repository.
Commands for building applications:
flatpak-build-init(1)
Initialize a build directory.
flatpak-build(1)
Run a build command in a build directory.
flatpak-build-finish(1)
Finalizes a build directory for export.
flatpak-build-export(1)
Export a build directory to a repository.
flatpak-build-bundle(1)
Create a bundle file from a ref in a local repository.
flatpak-build-import-bundle(1)
Import a file bundle into a local repository.
flatpak-build-sign(1)
Sign an application or runtime after its been exported.
flatpak-build-update-repo(1)
Update the summary file in a repository.
flatpak-build-commit-from(1)
Create a new commit based on an existing ref.
flatpak-repo(1)
Print information about a repo.
Commands available inside the sandbox:
flatpak-spawn(1)
Run a command in another sandbox.
File formats that are used by Flatpak commands:
flatpakref(5)
Reference to a remote for an application or runtime
flatpakrepo(5)
Reference to a remote
flatpak-remote(5)
Configuration for a remote
flatpak-installation(5)
Configuration for an installation location
flatpak-metadata(5)
Information about an application or runtime
Besides standard environment variables such as XDG_DATA_DIRS and
XDG_DATA_HOME, flatpak consults some of its own.
FLATPAK_BINARY
Path to the flatpak executable that will be written into
exported .desktop files and scripts when an app is installed.
The default is /usr/bin/flatpak, unless overridden at build
time by --bindir.
FLATPAK_BWRAP
Path to the bwrap(1) executable that will be used to create
the sandbox. Depending on how Flatpak was configured at
build-time, the default is either to search the PATH, or use a
vendored copy which is normally installed as
/usr/libexec/flatpak-bwrap.
FLATPAK_CONFIG_DIR
The location of flatpak site configuration. If this is not
set, /etc/flatpak is used (unless overridden at build time by
--sysconfdir).
FLATPAK_DATA_DIR
The location of Flatpak's OS-level defaults and integration
hooks. If this is not set, /usr/share/flatpak is used, unless
overridden at build time by --datadir.
FLATPAK_DBUSPROXY
Path to the xdg-dbus-proxy(1) executable that will be used to
filter D-Bus traffic between the sandbox and the host system.
Depending on how Flatpak was configured at build-time, the
default is either to search the PATH, or use a vendored copy
which is normally installed as
/usr/libexec/flatpak-dbus-proxy.
FLATPAK_DOWNLOAD_TMPDIR
Path to a directory that will be used temporarily when
downloading OCI layers, and potentially for other downloads in
future. The standard TMPDIR is not used for this, because
Flatpak apps are frequently too large to fit on a tmpfs.
FLATPAK_FANCY_OUTPUT
May be set to 0 to avoid fancy formatting when outputting to a
terminal. This feature is also disabled automatically when
standard output is not a terminal, or when G_MESSAGES_DEBUG is
set.
FLATPAK_FORCE_TEXT_AUTH
May be set to 1 to force use of a simple built-in polkit(8)
agent when authentication is required to modify the
system-wide installation. By default, the desktop
environment's polkit agent is used, if one is available,
usually resulting in a graphical prompt.
FLATPAK_GL_DRIVERS
A colon-separated list of graphics driver extensions to try to
use for OpenGL, Vulkan and similar APIs, most-preferred first.
The default is to select a graphics driver automatically.
Values in this list match the last dot-separated component of
the names of extensions with the active-gl-driver condition.
Typical values are default, mesa-git or nvidia-550-120
(replacing the version number by the major and minor version
of the nvidia kernel module).
FLATPAK_RUN_DIR
The location of flatpak runtime global files. If this is not
set, /run/flatpak is used.
FLATPAK_SYSTEM_CACHE_DIR
The location where temporary child repositories will be
created during pulls into the system-wide installation. If
this is not set, a directory in /var/tmp/ is used. This is
useful because it is more likely to be on the same filesystem
as the system repository (thus increasing the chances for e.g.
reflink copying), and we can avoid filling the user's home
directory with temporary data.
FLATPAK_SYSTEM_DIR
The location of the default system-wide installation. If this
is not set, /var/lib/flatpak is used (unless overridden at
build time by --localstatedir or -Dsystem_install_dir).
FLATPAK_TTY_PROGRESS
May be set to 1 to enable reporting machine-readable progress
to the terminal. This feature is not currently enabled by
default because it uses the OSC 9;4 sequence, which some
terminal emulators interpret as a popup notification.
FLATPAK_USER_DIR
The location of the per-user installation. If this is not set,
$XDG_DATA_HOME/flatpak is used.
ostree(1), ostree.repo(5), flatpak-remote(5),
flatpak-installation(5), https://www.flatpak.org
This page is part of the flatpak (a tool for building and
distributing desktop applications on Linux) project. Information
about the project can be found at ⟨http://flatpak.org/⟩. It is
not known how to report bugs for this man page; if you know,
please send a mail to man-pages@man7.org. This page was obtained
from the project's upstream Git repository
⟨https://github.com/flatpak/flatpak⟩ on 2025-08-11. (At that
time, the date of the most recent commit that was found in the
repository was 2025-08-06.) If you discover any rendering
problems in this HTML version of the page, or you believe there is
a better or more up-to-date source for the page, or you have
corrections or improvements to the information in this COLOPHON
(which is not part of the original manual page), send a mail to
man-pages@man7.org
flatpak FLATPAK(1)
Pages that refer to this page: flatpak-build(1), flatpak-build-bundle(1), flatpak-build-commit-from(1), flatpak-build-export(1), flatpak-build-finish(1), flatpak-build-import-bundle(1), flatpak-build-init(1), flatpak-build-sign(1), flatpak-build-update-repo(1), flatpak-config(1), flatpak-create-usb(1), flatpak-document-export(1), flatpak-document-info(1), flatpak-documents(1), flatpak-document-unexport(1), flatpak-enter(1), flatpak-history(1), flatpak-info(1), flatpak-install(1), flatpak-kill(1), flatpak-list(1), flatpak-make-current(1), flatpak-mask(1), flatpak-override(1), flatpak-permission-remove(1), flatpak-permission-reset(1), flatpak-permissions(1), flatpak-permission-set(1), flatpak-permission-show(1), flatpak-pin(1), flatpak-ps(1), flatpak-remote-add(1), flatpak-remote-delete(1), flatpak-remote-info(1), flatpak-remote-ls(1), flatpak-remote-modify(1), flatpak-remotes(1), flatpak-repair(1), flatpak-repo(1), flatpak-run(1), flatpak-search(1), flatpak-spawn(1), flatpak-update(1), flatpak-metadata(5), flatpakref(5), flatpakrepo(5)
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HTML rendering created 2025-09-06 by Michael Kerrisk, author of The Linux Programming Interface. For details of in-depth Linux/UNIX system programming training courses that I teach, look here. Hosting by jambit GmbH. |
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