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, namely 18.04, with 1GB RAM, 1 CPU, 5GB of disk:

Name:           keen-yak
State:          RUNNING
IPv4:           10.140.94.253
Release:        Ubuntu 18.04.1 LTS
Image hash:     d53116c67a41 (Ubuntu 18.04 LTS)
CPU(s):         1
Load:           0.00 0.12 0.18
Disk usage:     1.1G out of 4.7G
Memory usage:   71.6M out of 985.4M

Create an instance with a specific image

See also: find, launch <image>, info

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

Image                       Aliases              Version          Description
22.04                       jammy                20260515         Ubuntu 22.04 LTS
24.04                       noble                20260518         Ubuntu 24.04 LTS
25.10                       questing             20260520         Ubuntu 25.10
26.04                       resolute,lts,ubuntu  20260520         Ubuntu 26.04 LTS
core:core16                                      current          Ubuntu Core 16
core:core18                                      current          Ubuntu Core 18
core:core20                                      current          Ubuntu Core 20
core:core22                                      current          Ubuntu Core 22
core:core24                                      current          Ubuntu Core 24
core:core26                                      current          Ubuntu Core 26
debian                      trixie               20260601         Debian Trixie
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 jammy:

...
Launched: tenacious-mink

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

Name:           tenacious-mink
State:          Running
Snapshots:      0
IPv4:           192.168.64.22
Release:        Ubuntu 22.04.5 LTS
Image hash:     e898c1c93b32 (Ubuntu 22.04 LTS)
CPU(s):         1
Load:           0.00 0.02 0.01
Disk usage:     1.6GiB out of 4.8GiB
Memory usage:   149.5MiB out of 962.2MiB
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.