Vue.k8

A fast, lightweight Kubernetes dashboard. A minimal alternative to Lens.

vuek8 auto-discovers your kubeconfig files, connects to your clusters, and gives you a real-time view of your nodes and pods — without the bloat.

Download

Platform	Download
macOS (Apple Silicon)	Vue.k8-0.5.5.dmg
macOS (Intel)	vuek8-0.5.5-macos-amd64
Linux	vuek8-0.5.5-linux-amd64
Windows	vuek8-0.5.5-windows-amd64.exe

macOS Apple Silicon: mount the DMG, drag to Applications. All others: run with --browser flag.

Features

• Nodes view — See pods per machine, grouped by pool/role/subnet/label. Each pod is a colored dot (green = running, yellow = pending, red = error). Spot issues instantly.
• Workloads view — Same visual treatment, grouped by Deployment/StatefulSet. Live rollout progress bars, degraded detection, unavailable pod counts.
• Pods list — Sortable, resizable columns. Group by node, workload, or both. Filter by namespace, workload, or text search.
• Real-time — Uses the Kubernetes Watch API for instant updates. Rollouts animate as they happen.
• Deep links — Share pod URLs with colleagues (https://vuek8.app/open#pod/namespace/name). Opens the app, switches to the right cluster, shows the pod.
• Live logs — Stream logs with ANSI colors, tail in-app or pipe to your terminal. Search, filter, download.
• Multi-cluster — Auto-discovers all kubeconfigs in ~/.kube/. Switch clusters from the sidebar. Rename, hide, or set custom icons.
• Native desktop app — macOS app via Wails/WebKit. No Electron, no Chrome. 12MB DMG.
• Browser mode — Also works in any browser for development or headless environments.
• Fast — Built in Go, single binary, vanilla JS frontend. No lag, no spinners.

Quick Start

From source

# Clone
git clone https://github.com/amelki/vuek8.git
cd vuek8

# Run in browser (development)
make dev

# Or build the native macOS app
make dmg
open dist/Vue.k8.app

Requirements

• Go 1.21+ (use conda create -n vuek8 go -c conda-forge if needed)
• ~/.kube/config or any kubeconfig files in ~/.kube/
• macOS, Linux, or Windows

Usage

# Auto-discover kubeconfigs, open in browser
vuek8 --browser

# Use a specific kubeconfig
vuek8 --browser --kubeconfig ~/.kube/my-cluster.yaml

# Native desktop app (default when built with make build)
vuek8

Views

Nodes

Each node is a card, with its pods as colored dots inside. Group nodes by pool, role, subnet, or any label. Color the dots by status, CPU usage, or memory usage. Sort by age, name, or severity (hottest or most broken first).

Workloads

Each Deployment, StatefulSet, DaemonSet and Job is a card, with its pods as colored dots. Live rollout progress bars, degraded detection. Same color and sort modes as Nodes.

Pods

A table view with columns: Namespace, Name, Containers, Status, Ready, Restarts, Age, Tag. Columns are sortable and resizable by dragging. Group by:

• Flat — All pods in a single list
• Node — Pods grouped under their node
• Workload — Pods grouped by Deployment/StatefulSet/DaemonSet/Job
• Node / Workload — Two-level grouping
• Workload / Node — Two-level grouping

Settings

Click the gear icon to access settings:

• Show all contexts — By default, only the default context from each kubeconfig is shown. Enable this to see all contexts (control planes, etc.)

Cluster display names and visibility are managed from the sidebar (right-click menu).

Build

make dev        # Development: fast build + browser
make build      # Native desktop binary (requires CGO)
make app        # macOS .app bundle
make dmg        # macOS .dmg installer
make clean      # Clean build artifacts

Architecture

• Go backend — Uses client-go to talk to Kubernetes. Server-side cache refreshes every 3s in the background.
• Vanilla frontend — Plain HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. No React, no npm, no build step.
• Wails — Native desktop window via macOS WebKit. No Electron.
• Single binary — Static files embedded with go:embed. Everything ships as one file.

Telemetry

Vue.k8 sends an anonymous ping on startup to help us understand usage. This includes:

• A random install ID (UUID, not tied to you)
• App version
• OS and architecture (e.g. darwin, arm64)

No cluster data, no personal information, no IP tracking.

To opt out, run with --no-telemetry:

vuek8 --no-telemetry

License

Business Source License 1.1 — free for personal and non-commercial use. Converts to Apache 2.0 on 2030-03-22.