k3sm is a macOS-native Kubernetes distribution for Apple Silicon — the macOS/arm64 analog of
k3s. Pods run as native Darwin processes: real arm64 Mach-O
executables, Seatbelt-confined, on the same Mac as the control plane, which embeds the standard
Kubernetes apiserver, scheduler and controller-manager. There is no Linux, no container runtime,
and no VM in the default path. A Linux arm64 container image can run too, opt-in, in a per-pod
Virtualization.framework micro-VM through the vm RuntimeClass (runtimeClassName: vm) —
single-node, linux/arm64 only, not the default.
| Repo | What it does |
|---|---|
| k3sm | The distribution — CLI, Virtual Kubelet node, embedded control plane |
| runtimed | Native runtime daemon — Seatbelt confinement, APFS image layers, process supervision |
| darwin-net | Pod networking — loopback IP-per-pod, Service proxy, wireguard mesh |
| apis | Shared gRPC, CRD and Go contracts |
| linux-guest | Pinned guest kernel and initramfs releases for the vm RuntimeClass |
Pre-1.0. Pre-releases only, on the k3sm releases page; no stable release line yet, and no compatibility promise between pre-releases. One maintainer.
- Quickstart — install and run a first Pod.
- Limitations — what diverges from a Linux cluster, and why.
- Contributing, governance, and security reporting.
Sponsor the project: https://github.com/sponsors/kitsumiko
Ask questions or discuss ideas: https://github.com/k3sm-io/k3sm/discussions
Apache-2.0. Copyright The k3sm Authors. See LICENSE.