Create an instance

See also: launch, Instance

This document demonstrates various ways to create an instance with Multipass. While every method is a one-liner involving the command multipass launch, each showcases a different option that you can use to get exactly the instance that you want.

Create an instance

See also: launch, info

To create an instance with Multipass, run the command multipass launch. This launches a new instance, which is randomly named; for example:

...
Launched: keen-yak

In particular, when we run multipass info keen-yak, we find out that it is an Ubuntu LTS release, with 1GB RAM, 1 CPU, 5GB of disk:

Name:           keen-yak
State:          Running
Zone:           zone1
Snapshots:      0
IPv4:           10.97.0.76
Release:        Ubuntu 26.04 LTS
Image hash:     dced94c031cc (Ubuntu 26.04 LTS)
CPU(s):         1
Load:           0.16 0.09 0.08
Disk usage:     2.2GiB out of 4.8GiB
Memory usage:   169.8MiB out of 950.4MiB
Mounts:         --

Create an instance with a specific image

To find out which images are available, run multipass images. Here’s a sample output:

Image             Aliases                     Version          Description
22.04             jammy                       20261004         Ubuntu 22.04 LTS
24.04             noble                       20260926         Ubuntu 24.04 LTS
26.04             resolute,lts,ubuntu         20260927         Ubuntu 26.04 LTS
debian            trixie                      20261001         Debian 13
fedora                                        20260422         Fedora 44

To launch an instance with a specific image, include the image name or alias in the command, for example multipass launch noble to get an Ubuntu 24.04 instance:

...
Launched: tenacious-mink

multipass info tenacious-mink confirms that we’ve launched an instance of the selected image.

Name:           tenacious-mink
State:          Running
Zone:           zone1
Snapshots:      0
IPv4:           10.97.0.239
Release:        Ubuntu 24.04.4 LTS
Image hash:     5fa5b05e5ec2 (Ubuntu 24.04 LTS)
CPU(s):         1
Load:           0.35 0.12 0.04
Disk usage:     1.9GiB out of 4.8GiB
Memory usage:   327.7MiB out of 955.5MiB
Mounts:         --

Create an instance with a custom name

See also: launch --name

To launch an instance with a specific name, add the --name option to the command line; for example multipass launch kinetic --name helpful-duck:

...
Launched: helpful-duck

Create an instance with custom CPU number, disk and RAM

You can specify a custom number of CPUs, disk and RAM size using the --cpus, --disk and --memory arguments, respectively. For example:

multipass launch --cpus 4 --disk 20G --memory 8G

Create an instance with primary status

An instance can obtain the primary status at creation time if its name is primary:

multipass launch kinetic --name primary

For more information, see How to use the primary instance.