Just like traditional package managers, Flatpak relies on software repositories in order to download applications. Repositories are a necessary component of Flatpak as they allow users to install applications and dependencies from a central location. A repository contains a catalog of installable software and will provide future updates to the packages as needed.
Flatpak does not automatically come with repositories added in its configuration. It is up to the user to find Flatpak repositories (such as FlatHub) and add them to Flatpak on their system. To keep track of all of the added repositories, users can get a list of them in terminal.
In this tutorial, you will see how to get a list of all Flatpak repositories configured for your system. This will take place in the command line terminal and will be applicable for any Linux system, as Flatpak is distribution independent and the commands work the same across any of them.
In this tutorial you will learn:
- How to list remote repositories
- How to list details of all remotes
- How to add a remote repository
- How to delete a remote repository
| Category | Requirements, Conventions or Software Version Used |
|---|---|
| System | Any Linux distro |
| Software | Flatpak package manager |
| Other | Privileged access to your Linux system as root or via the sudo command. |
| Conventions |
# – requires given linux commands to be executed with root privileges either directly as a root user or by use of sudo command$ – requires given linux commands to be executed as a regular non-privileged user |
List all flatpak repositories – command examples
Follow along with our example commands below to list all of the Flatpak repositories (called “remotes” in Flatpak lingo) on a Linux system. We will also go over some pertinent commands that you can use to manage the repositories such as to add or delete them from Flatpak.
- To get a brief list of all configured repositories (remotes) for Flatpak execute the following command:
$ flatpak remotes
- To get a list of all repositories along with extra details like the home page of each one, we can use:
$ flatpak remotes --show-details
- If you want to see only the names of the repositories, we can isolate a column of information with the
--columnsoption:$ flatpak remotes --columns=name
- In case you need to modify one of the configured repositories, use the
remote-modifyoption. This option will then accept certain arguments, depending on what you wish to modify about the repository. See a full list of options with this command:$ flatpak remote-modify --help
- To add a new repository, use the following command syntax:
$ sudo flatpak remote-add --if-not-exists [name] [url]
- To delete an existing repository, use this syntax:
$ sudo flatpak remote-delete [name]
Closing Thoughts
In this tutorial, we saw how to list the remote repositories configured for Flatpak on a Linux system. When you download an application with Flatpak, “remotes” are queried for the latest software and installed on your system. For future updates, Flatpak will continue to rely on the configured repository to download new versions of your installed software.
