A simple terminal dashboard for Kubernetes built with Rust

• What's new in 2.0
• Installation
• Usage
• Keybindings
• Configuration
• Flags
• Limitations / Known issues
• Features
• Screenshots

• Resource management actions let you act on what you're watching without leaving KDash: delete any resource (Ctrl-d), edit any resource in your $EDITOR (e), rollout restart workloads (r), view previous container logs (p), scale workloads, and cordon nodes or suspend/resume/trigger CronJobs from a new action menu (m). Impactful actions are guarded by a confirmation prompt.
• Port-forward a Pod or Service with f, then list and stop active forwards with Shift+F. Forwards run in the background and are stopped when you quit KDash.
• Log view options toggle timestamps (t) and line wrap (w) while viewing container logs.
• More themes and runtime cycling added Gruvbox Dark, Solarized Dark, and Mono alongside Catppuccin Macchiato and Latte, switchable on the fly with t/Alt+t, plus an optional custom theme.
• Refreshed UI cleans up hints, headers, help, notifications, and gauges, lays the help page out in two columns, and adds a cluster summary pane to the utilization view.

Thanks to the sponsors of @deepu105 who makes maintaining projects like KDash sustainable. Consider sponsoring if you like the work.

brew tap kdash-rs/kdash
brew install kdash

# If you need to be more specific, use:
brew install kdash-rs/kdash/kdash

To upgrade

brew upgrade kdash

scoop bucket add kdash-bucket https://github.com/kdash-rs/scoop-kdash

scoop install kdash

Chocolatey package is located here. Since validation of the package takes forever, it may take a long while to become available after a release. I would recommend using Scoop instead for Windows.

choco install kdash

# Version number may be required for newer releases, if available:
choco install kdash --version=2.0.2

To upgrade

choco upgrade kdash --version=2.0.2

KDash is on the AUR in two flavors. Install with an AUR helper like yay or paru:

# Prebuilt release binary (no compile)
yay -S kdash-bin

# Build from the released source
yay -S kdash

# Build from the latest git main
yay -S kdash-git

If you have Cargo installed then you install KDash from crates.io

cargo install kdash

# if you face issues with k8s-openapi crate try the below
cargo install --locked kdash

You can also clone the repo and run cargo run or make to build and run the app

Try out kdash via nix run nixpkgs#kdash or add kdash to your configuration.nix for permanent installation.

The quickest way to grab the latest release binary without a package manager. The script downloads the right build for your platform and verifies it against the published SHA-256 checksum before installing.

Linux and macOS (installs to ~/.local/bin by default, no sudo needed):

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/kdash-rs/kdash/main/scripts/install.sh | sh

Useful flags:

• --version vX.Y.Z: install a specific release instead of the latest
• --prefix <dir>: install somewhere else, e.g. --prefix /usr/local/bin
• --quiet: only print errors

Pass flags through the pipe with sh -s --:

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/kdash-rs/kdash/main/scripts/install.sh | sh -s -- --prefix ~/bin

Windows (installs to %LOCALAPPDATA%\Programs\kdash):

irm https://raw.githubusercontent.com/kdash-rs/kdash/main/scripts/install.ps1 | iex

To also append the install directory to your user PATH, run it with -AddToPath:

& ([scriptblock]::Create((irm https://raw.githubusercontent.com/kdash-rs/kdash/main/scripts/install.ps1))) -AddToPath

Note: The older deployment/getLatest.sh script still works but is deprecated in favor of install.sh, which adds checksum verification and --version pinning.

Binaries for macOS (x86_64, arm64), Linux GNU/MUSL(x86_64, armv6, armv7, aarch64) and Windows (x86_64, aarch64) are available on the releases page

1. Download the latest binary for your OS.
2. For Linux/macOS:
   1. cd to the file you just downloaded and run tar -C /usr/local/bin -xzf downloaded-file-name. Use sudo if required.
   2. Run with kdash
3. For Windows:
   1. Use 7-Zip or TarTool to unpack the tar file.
   2. Run the executable file kdash.exe

Run KDash as a Docker container by mounting your KUBECONFIG. For example the below command for the default path

docker run --rm -it -v ~/.kube/config:/root/.kube/config deepu105/kdash
# If you want localhost access from the container
docker run --network host --rm -it -v ~/.kube/config:/root/.kube/config deepu105/kdash

You can also clone this repo and run make docker to build a docker image locally and run it using the above command

Note: This may not work properly if you run Kubernetes locally using Minikube or Kind

Note: On Debian/Ubuntu you might need to install libxcb-xfixes0-dev and libxcb-shape0-dev. On Fedora libxcb and libxcb-devel would be needed.

Note: On Linux you might need to have package xorg-dev (Debian/Ubuntu) or xorg-x11-server-devel (Fedora) or equivalent installed for the copy to clipboard features to work

Note: If you are getting compilation error from openSSL. Make sure perl and perl-core are installed for your OS.

kdash

Press ? while running the app to see keybindings.

KDash is keyboard-driven. Press ? in the app for the full, always-current list (it also reflects any overrides from your config). The common keys:

KDash supports config-based keybinding and theme overrides, plus a configurable default for historical log lines fetched before live streaming starts.

By default it reads config from:

• ~/.config/kdash/config.yaml

You can also point it at a specific file with:

KDASH_CONFIG=/path/to/config.yaml kdash

KDash ships five built-in themes — macchiato (default), latte, gruvbox-dark, solarized-dark, and mono — plus an optional user-defined custom theme. Cycle through them at runtime with t (next) and Alt+t (previous).

Pick the theme KDash starts on:

default_theme: gruvbox-dark # macchiato | latte | gruvbox-dark | solarized-dark | mono | custom

The semantic colour roles are: panel borders use primary (the focused panel's border uses a brighter highlight tone), panel titles use secondary, inactive tabs and help/hint text use muted, table column labels use label/blue, and body text uses text. The title bar paints text in on_accent over the accent bar. Table rows are coloured by status: healthy/active (e.g. pod Running, node Ready, bound volumes) → success/green, finished (Completed/Succeeded) → muted/dim, in-progress (Pending, ContainerCreating, <pending>) → warning/amber, failures (CrashLoopBackOff, Error, NotReady, Lost/Failed) → failure/red, and rows without a status → text.

Define a full custom theme that joins the cycle. Every slot is optional and falls back to base (default macchiato):

custom_theme:
  base: macchiato
  accent: "#89B4FA" # panel borders / primary
  secondary: "#F9E2AF" # panel titles
  label: "#94E2D5" # column labels
  muted: "#9399B2" # hints
  highlight: "#F5C2E7" # focused panel border
  bg: "#11111B"
  fg: "#CDD6F4"

Keybindings are overridden by binding name:

keybindings:
  filter: f
  help: h
  describe_resource: i
  resource_yaml: v

Log streaming history can also be tuned:

log_tail_lines: 250

The top status bar can also be customized:

# Hide the KDash logo block in the top bar. Defaults to false.
hide_logo: true
# Start with the entire info bar collapsed (namespaces, context, CLI info, logo).
# Toggle it back on at any time with the `toggle_info` keybinding (default `i`). Defaults to false.
hide_info_on_start: true

CLI Info entries can be configured too. Built-in entries remain enabled by default, missing binaries are hidden by default, you can disable any built-in by label, and you can add custom probes with a label plus command:

cli_info:
  hide_missing_binaries: false
  disable_defaults:
    - docker
  custom:
    - label: istioctl
      command: ["istioctl", "version"]
      regex: '\b(v?[0-9]+\.[0-9]+\.[0-9]+)\b'

Set hide_missing_binaries: false if you want missing CLIs to stay visible as Not found.

Built-in labels are: kubectl client, kubectl server, docker, docker-compose, podman, containerd, helm, and kind. For custom commands, regex is optional: if provided, the first capture group is shown; otherwise the first non-empty stdout line is shown.

See the sample config in assets/kdash.sample-config.yaml for a complete example with both custom keybindings and custom light/dark theme overrides.

• -h, --help: Prints help information
• -V, --version: Prints version information
• -t, --tick-rate <tick-rate>: Set the tick rate (milliseconds): the lower the number the higher the FPS.
• -p, --poll-rate <poll-rate>: Set the network call polling rate (milliseconds, should be multiples of tick-rate): the lower the number the higher the network calls.
• --log-tail-lines <log-tail-lines>: Set how many historical log lines to fetch before live streaming starts.
• -d, --debug[=<debug>]: Enables debug mode and writes logs to kdash-debug-<timestamp>.log file in the current directory. Default behavior is to write INFO logs. Pass a log level to overwrite the default [possible values: info, debug, trace, warn, error]

• [Linux/Docker] Copy to clipboard feature is OS/arch dependent and might crash in some Linux distros and is not supported on aarch64 and arm machines.
• [macOS] KDash looks better on iTerm2 since macOS's default Terminal app makes the colors render weird.
• [Windows] KDash looks better on CMD since Powershell's default theme makes the colors look weird.
• [Windows] If using k3d for local clusters, set the server URL to 127.0.0.1 as 0.0.0.0 doesn't work with kube-rs. You can use k3d cluster create --api-port 127.0.0.1:6550 or change the cluster.server value in your .kube/config for the k3d cluster to 127.0.0.1:<port>.

• CLI info shows local tool versions (kubectl, docker, helm, and more). Disable built-in probes or add custom commands with optional regex-based version extraction.
• Live resource watch polls and refreshes Kubernetes resources at a configurable interval (-p flag).
• Custom resource definitions are discovered and browsable alongside built-in kinds.
• Describe and YAML views for any resource, with syntax highlighting and copy to clipboard.
• Container logs stream live with toggles for timestamps (t) and line wrap (w), and can aggregate logs from every pod owned by a workload into one stream.
• Deep drill-down navigation moves from workloads to owned Pods, from Pods to Containers, and from Nodes to the Pods scheduled on them.
• Shell into a container from the Containers view. KDash suspends the UI while the shell is active and restores it when you exit.
• Resource management actions, each guarded by a confirmation prompt for impactful changes:
  • Delete any resource (Ctrl-d)
  • Edit any resource in your $EDITOR (e)
  • View previous (restarted) container logs (p)
  • Rollout restart Deployments/StatefulSets/DaemonSets (r)
  • Scale Deployments/StatefulSets/ReplicaSets/ReplicationControllers to a replica count (via the action menu)
  • Cordon/uncordon nodes, suspend/resume/trigger CronJobs (via the action menu)
• Port-forward a Pod or Service (f), then list and stop active forwards (Shift+F).
• Action menu (m) lists every action available for the selected resource; the most-used ones also have dedicated hotkeys shown as hints.
• Troubleshoot tab surfaces severity-ranked findings for Pods, PVCs, and ReplicaSets, then lets you jump straight into containers, logs, describe, and YAML.
• Events tab shows Kubernetes events with namespace, involved kind, reason, count, message, and age, with the same describe/YAML workflows as other resources.
• Context management shows context info, watches for changes, and lets you switch context or change namespace.
• Resource metrics and utilization for nodes, pods, and namespaces, with grouping. Requires metrics-server on the cluster.
• Resource tables show counts in tabs and menus (hiding zero-count badges), cache counts with ? for not-yet-fetched Dynamic kinds, and reveal all columns with w when the viewport is wide enough.
• Inline / filtering works across resource tables and views, including Contexts, Help, Utilization, Troubleshoot, More, and Dynamic resource menus.
• Built-in themes include Catppuccin Macchiato/Latte, Gruvbox Dark, Solarized Dark, and Mono, plus an optional custom theme, cycled at runtime with t/Alt+t.
• Configurable and keyboard-driven with sensible default shortcuts you can override, theme overrides, and a configurable initial log history (log_tail_lines).
• Diagnostics and reliability include dumping recent errors to a file, live kubeconfig reload, friendlier error messages, and smooth log and render performance.

• ratatui
• crossterm
• clap
• tokio
• duct.rs
• kube-rs
• serde
• kubectl-view-allocations
• copypasta

MIT

• The Software shall be used for Good, not Evil.
• This software shall not be used for any military purposes including intelligence agencies.

• Deepu K Sasidharan