Don’t fancy endless kubectl port-forward commands and manual reconnections when your Pod dies? This nice GUI is to the rescue!

kftray is a tool for simplifying Kubernetes port-forwarding settings. It interacts with the Kubernetes API directly (not relying on kubectl) and offers two interfaces: desktop (kftray) and terminal (kftui). Its features include:

- Simple (“one-click”) configuration for several port-forwarding instances;
- Access to internal or external servers using the kftray’s proxy relay server deployed in your Kubernetes cluster, with TCP and UDP port forwarding support;
- Automatic reconnection to the Pod when it dies;
- Desktop app-only features: HTTP logs support and storing your configurations on GitHub.

Language: Rust | License: GPL 3 | 877 ⭐️

▶️ GitHub repo
📢 Reddit announcement

#tools #networking #gui

This visualisation tool for Kubernetes differentiates from other GUIs by aiming to provide helpful insights about your clusters.

Karpor, dubbed “Intelligence for Kubernetes,” implements a clean web UI with three major features: cluster management, insights, and search. Here’s what it offers:

- Managing multiple K8s clusters from a single UI;
- Aggregated resource view and resource topology view;
- Inspecting specific resources and resource groups;
- Summary cards for clusters, resources, namespace, and resource groups;
- Compliance reports, highlighting existing risks according to the kubeaudit output;
- Finding resources via SQL-style queries;
- AI-assisted insights and diagnostics (PR #707).

Language: Go | License: Apache 2.0 | 858 ⭐️

▶️ GitHub repo

#tools #gui

Like to experiment with various GUIs for Kubernetes or still looking for the most suitable option? Here’s a project to consider.

KubeUI is a Kubernetes UI featuring a tabbed interface for your desktop based on the Avalonia UI framework for .NET. It supports multi-monitor setups, works on Linux, macOS, and Windows, and allows you to:

- View, create, and edit Kubernetes resources in the YAML format;
- Work with CRDs;
- Filter resources by names and namespaces;
- View overall cluster stats and its events;
- Manage pods by viewing CPU/memory usage, console, logs, and configuring port-forwarding;
- Manage nodes by performing codon and drain.

Language: C# | License: MIT | 163 ⭐️

▶️ GitHub repo

#tools #gui

Many Kubernetes users liked Lens (or even still do). After it became not Open Source and Lens ID was introduced, many switched to OpenLens. Unfortunately, that fork did not last long and hasn’t issued any releases since July 2023. However, it turned out to be another fork, which is currently active: Freelens.

This project started around January of this year, and released its v1.0.0 in February and further v1.1.0 just five days ago. Today, Freelens:

- is fully compatible with the latest Kubernetes version (1.32);
- comes with kubectl v1.32.3 and Helm v3.17.2;
- is based on Electron 34.3.3 with Node 20.18.3 and Chrome 132.0.6834.210;
- requires GNU C Library 2.34+ for Linux (i.e. Debian 12, Ubuntu 22.04, Fedora 35, openSUSE Leap 15.4), macOS 11+ or Windows 10+ to run.

Language: TypeScript | License: MIT | 607 ⭐️

▶️ GitHub repo

#news #tools #gui

During today’s KubeCon keynotes, it was announced that Headlamp became a part of Kubernetes SIG UI. You can already see that its official repository is now kubernetes-sigs/headlamp.

SIG UI is a Kubernetes Special Interest Group that “covers all things UI related” to K8s. Originally, its efforts were focused on the Kubernetes dashboard, and now they would be extended to Headlamp. Headlamp was originally created in Kinvolk (acquired by Microsoft in 2021) and became a CNCF Sandbox project in 2023.

#news #cncfprojects #gui

A brief update on the Freelens project, which is an active Open Source fork of Lens IDE.

It now features a Flux CD extension, making it another UI option for Flux users*. Currently, the extension offers a dashboard for Application components and Events, detailed views of Flux CD resource information, and menus for reconciling, syncing, and automating Flux CD resources. Find more details in this GitHub repo.

* It’s also worth reminding that last year, another Kubernetes GUI, Headlamp, released a Flux plugin that provides an overview of the Flux installation for its users.

#news #tools #gui #gitops

Sometimes, examining custom resources in Kubernetes becomes challenging. This tool makes things much easier.

CR(D) Wizard is a UI for exploring Custom Resource Definitions (CRDs) and corresponding Custom Resources (CRs). Being available in two interfaces, a web-based UI and TUI (including a plugin for k9s), this tool:

- displays CRD’s schema as browsable documentation;
- shows information about existing CRs in the cluster;
- draws a resource relationship graph.

Language: Go and TypeScript | License: GPL 3.0 | 81 ⭐️

▶️ GitHub repo
💬 Reddit announcement

#tools #gui

There are various ways to simplify creating Kubernetes manifests, and GUIs are surely one of them. If that’s something you’ve been looking for, consider this new project.

Kube Composer is a Web UI for generating YAML manifests for Kubernetes. It allows you to easily create numerous resources by filling out visual forms and download the resulting YAMLs. Here’s what you can do with it:

- Create Deployments, Services, Ingress, Namespaces, ConfigMaps, Secrets, and Volumes;
- Configure multiple containers per Deployment, specify resource limits, environment variables, and volume mounts for containers;
- Configure multiple ingress classes, HTTPS with certificate management, and port mapping;
- See your YAML output in real time, as well as diagrams with resource relationships and request routing from Ingress to Pods.

Language: TypeScript, Node.js | License: MIT | 384 ⭐️

▶️ GitHub repo
💬 Reddit announcement

#tools #gui

AI chatbot assistant right in the Argo CD UI? Here we come…

A few days ago, the assistant-for-argocd project was announced. It’s an Argo CD extension that adds a chatbot to the Argo CD UI. It relies on llama-stack as a backend and adds the Assistant tab to the resources view, where you can ask your LLM of choice about this resource.

Language: TypeScript | License: Apache 2.0 | 35 ⭐️

▶️ GitHub repo
💬 LinkedIn announcement

#tools #gui #gitops #genai

While we’ve seen many GUIs for Kubernetes lately, new projects still keep appearing. Here’s a small Web client that went public this August.

teleskopio is a new Web UI for K8s that emerged as a result of personal research. It allows you to access your clusters as admin or viewer and comes with numerous features:
- Managing cluster workloads (Deployments, StatefulSets, Jobs, etc.), networking, storage, and access control;
- Embedded Monaco editor with syntax highlighting for creating/editing resources;
- A cluster overview for seeing its overall health and activity;
- Displaying live resource changes, Pod logs and event history;
- Customisable UI: configurable fonts, light and dark themes.

Language: TypeScript, Go | License: Apache 2.0 | 64 ⭐️

▶️ GitHub repo
💬 Reddit announcement

#tools #gui

Azure released AKS desktop based on Headlamp

Yesterday, the AKS desktop application was announced. It provides a self-service UI based on Headlamp (a Kubernetes SIG UI project) for deploying and managing workloads on Azure Kubernetes Service.

Currently, v0.1.0-alpha is the only publicly available release of AKS desktop. It supports Azure RBAC and allows you to:

- Create and use AKS cluster projects;
- Visualise the Kubernetes resources in your project;
- Deploy applications and configure their scaling via HPA or manual settings;
- View metrics and logs.

Language: TypeScript | License: Apache 2.0 | 12 ⭐️

▶️ GitHub repo
📣 Project announcement

#tools #gui #Azure #news

No matter how tired you are from seeing all those Kubernetes dashboards. It’s Friday, so why not share yet another GUI… especially since it’s pretty neat! 🤪

Kite is a new Kubernetes dashboard, featuring a modern, responsive UI. While its initial public release happened less than 4 months ago, it already offers a lot for Kubernetes administrators:

- Complete resource management for all popular resources (from Pods to PVCs) and CRDs, including built-in editor (Monaco) for YAML manifests and resource relationships visualisation;
- Multi-cluster management with fine-grained permissions and automatic cluster discovery based on kubeconfig entries;
- RBAC and user management, OAuth integration;
- Powerful observability capabilities, including a general cluster overview, detailed Pod and Node monitoring, real-time metrics, and live logs streaming with filtering and search;
- An ability to execute commands directly in Pods or Nodes.

▶️ GitHub repo
💬 Reddit announcement

Language: TypeScript, Go | License: Apache 2.0 | 1802 ⭐️

#tools #gui

Kubernetes Dashboard is getting archived

Yesterday, the Kubernetes Dashboard maintainers announced that the “project will be archived and sunset in the coming days/weeks.” It has been developed in the Kubernetes SIG UI but lacked active contributors and maintainers for a while.

The authors recommend Headlamp as an alternative to Kubernetes Dashboard, since it became a Kubernetes SIG UI project last year.

#news #gui

Kubernetes-based alternatives to Heroku are real. Here’s one of them.

Canine positions itself as a “developer-friendly PaaS for your Kubernetes”. It’s focused on small development teams and simplifies using Kubernetes for them by providing:

- container builds performed via Docker BuildKit or Buildpacks;
- automatic deployment to GitHub and GitLab;
- web UI to deploy, scale, and manage (e.g., configure resource constraints) apps running in Kubernetes;
- integration with existing K8s tools, such as Helm, cert-manager, and Telepresence;
- single sign-on via SAML, OIDC, and LDAP.

▶️ GitHub repo

Language: Ruby | License: Apache 2.0 | 2716 ⭐️

#tools #gui

This new UI aims to ensure “modern Kubernetes visibility” by providing comprehensive information on your cluster and its workloads, along with several management features.

Radar is a dashboard that is intended to be “blazing fast”, displays real-time information, and runs as a single binary, not requiring to be installed on a cluster. It comes with:

- General cluster overview, including the stats for existing resources, resource utilisation, and unhealthy workloads.
- Detailed interactive graphs for Kubernetes resources with their full hierarchy and an image filesystem viewer for Pods.
- Live network traffic visualisation (via Hubble or Caretta).
- Timeline of Kubernetes events and resource changes.
- Management for Helm releases and GitOps (Argo CD and Flux) resources.
- Automatic discovery of CRDs and integrations for Gateway API, Karpenter, KEDA, cert-manager, Prometheus Operator, and Trivy.
- MCP server for AI integration.

▶️ GitHub repo

Language: TypeScript, Go | License: Apache 2.0 | 863 ⭐️

#tools #gui

Watching your Kubernetes Pods in real-time 3D space sounds like a deal for Friday, doesn’t it? 🙃

Observatory is a visualisation dashboard that makes this possible. Originally built for K3s, it works with other Kubernetes distros as well, allowing you to watch your containers like never before. What it offers:

- Displaying your Kubernetes nodes and Pods in the 3D space where you can travel;
- Showing sidecars as orbiting moons for multi-container Pods;
- Providing the current and continuously updated state of Pods (running, pending, etc.) as well as their memory and CPU usage visualised as size and colours.

▶️ GitHub repo
💬 Reddit announcement

Language: Go, TypeScript | License: GPL v3 | 28 ⭐️

#tools #gui