An Ubuntu machine, opened with one command

Getting a clean Ubuntu environment onto a laptop the old way means installing virtualisation software, hunting for an image, and walking through a setup wizard, which together eat a quarter of an hour before anything interesting happens. Multipass compresses that into a single command. Type the start instruction and it fetches a prepared cloud image of Ubuntu, boots it with sensible defaults, and a few seconds later the prompt in front of you is the virtual machine's own. That feeling of having moved a cloud host onto the notebook is why the tool has kept its reputation among developers since it was released in 2018.

Cloud images on tap, and plenty of systems to choose from

A full image catalogue is built in. It runs from the two earlier long term support releases of Ubuntu, 22.04 and 24.04, through the newest 26.04 LTS, and on to the various versions of the stripped-down variant used for appliances. As of September 2026 the catalogue also carries two other distributions, one of them a community favourite that updates often and the other aimed at enterprise use, and even daily builds can be pulled directly. The images are kept current by the publisher, so there is no local image file to look after: what you get is the version as it stands today rather than whatever was downloaded a year ago.

Rehearse a cloud deployment on the desk first

The clearest statement of what the tool is for lives in its support for the standard cloud initialisation format. Hand an instance a YAML file and it performs the first boot the way a public cloud would: packages installed, users created, configuration changed, all in one pass and without anyone clicking through a wizard. Paired with directory mounting, which maps a code folder from the host into the machine, the rhythm of development survives intact: edit on the host with the tools already open, run inside the instance where the dependencies live. Snapshots and restores are there as well, so a destructive experiment can be recorded before it starts and rolled back afterwards instead of costing an afternoon.

A graphical client lowers the first step

The command line remains the primary way in, but the newer graphical client is competent enough to matter. It sits in the tray, manages the list of instances visually, and opens a terminal in one click, and the flows for starting and mounting were redesigned rather than bolted on. Version 1.15 added cloning, which copies a working environment whole so an experiment or a second parallel job does not begin from nothing, and the Windows build moved to a standard installer package, which makes installing, repairing and removing behave the way the system expects.

In daily use the frequent operations all have subcommands of their own: listing instance state, stepping into a terminal, running a command remotely. The output is clean enough to be read by another program, which is what makes the tool worth scripting around. Resources are set per instance as well, so a compile job can be given two extra cores while a light test environment is cut down to the minimum, and that elasticity stays in the hands of the person rather than in one global setting.

Instances do not touch each other

Each instance is isolated, so an environment whose dependencies have been ruined is not a disaster but a deletion and a few tens of seconds of waiting. That single property removes most of the hesitation around trying something reckless: there is no half-broken system left behind to repair. A blueprint mechanism sits on top, opening an environment with a common development stack already installed from one command, which saves the work of assembling the framework by hand. For a team the practical version is even simpler: send a new colleague the start command and the YAML file, and every machine ends up holding an environment of the same shape.

Free, open source, on three platforms

Multipass is released under the GPL v3 licence and is free for individual use. It is particular about how it reaches the virtualisation of the host system: KVM on Linux, Hyper-V on Windows, QEMU on macOS, with VirtualBox available as an alternative backend on all of them, and the resource cost is far below that of a traditional desktop virtual machine. One caveat is worth stating plainly. The tool is focused on the Ubuntu ecosystem and does not try to cover every operating system scenario. If Ubuntu is what you work with, and what you need is a sandbox that appears when called and disappears when finished, it is close to being made for exactly that.