Porthole

A fast desktop client for Kubernetes. Browse every cluster in your kubeconfig, follow logs, open shells, see what each node and workload is using, and edit or delete resources. It never creates resources.

Built with Tauri 2 (Rust, the system web view) and React. It does not bundle a browser engine: the macOS app is about 10 MB, a 5 MB download.

Features

• Applications. Deployments, StatefulSets, DaemonSets, CronJobs, Jobs and standalone pods in one live table, with pod counts, CPU and memory usage, and the status that matters (a crash-looping pod surfaces on its Deployment).
• All resources. Every type the cluster serves, custom resources included, grouped the way you think about them, with kind-specific columns.
• Resource pages. Overview, utilization against requests and limits, pods or containers with live usage, labels and annotations, and the Services, Ingresses, Config Maps and claims that belong to the workload. Tabs for logs, events and YAML.
• Overview. Cluster version, nodes and pods, cluster and per-node CPU, memory and pod capacity; switch nodes and pods between usage, requests and limits. Usage needs metrics-server; without it the app says why usage is missing.
• Logs. Follows every container of every pod of a workload at once and picks up new pods during a rollout. JSON lines are shown as level, message and coloured fields; plain lines get their level word coloured. Filter, timestamps, wrapping.
• Shells. Interactive terminals into containers, docked under the current view so they keep running while you browse.
• Edit and delete, never create. The YAML tab saves over the object it opened, like kubectl edit: the save must keep its kind, name, namespace and resourceVersion, so it can neither create an object nor overwrite a change made since you loaded it. Delete anything from its right-click menu; namespaces, and anything on a cluster labelled to ask, need the name typed back.
• Live, and instant. Watches, not polling. Each context keeps one cluster-wide watch per resource type, started when you pick the context and shared by every view, so switching views or namespaces never waits. The last lists and resource types are saved locally, so the app opens on them while the live data catches up.
• Cluster labels. Give any cluster a tag and colour (Production, Staging, a team name) from the cluster menu, and optionally require typing the name before every delete on it. Nothing is guessed from context names.
• Comfort. Light, dark and auto themes; drag column headers to reorder them (remembered per table); resizable sidebar; back and forward navigation; namespace filter; search for resource types by kind, short name or API group.

Install

Download the latest build from Releases:

Builds are not code-signed yet. On macOS, after copying the app to Applications, clear the download quarantine once:

xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine /Applications/Porthole.app

On Windows, SmartScreen asks for confirmation the first time.

Porthole reads the same kubeconfig as kubectl ($KUBECONFIG or ~/.kube/config). Exec credential plugins such as aws eks get-token or kubelogin work as they do in your terminal: when the app starts from Finder or the Dock, it borrows PATH and KUBECONFIG from your login shell.

Documentation

Building from source, working on the code and cutting a release are covered in docs: Building from source, Development and Releasing.

License

Copyright 2026 Dmytro Matviichuk. Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0.