Krew — Plugin Manager for kubectl

What it is

Krew is the official plugin manager for kubectl, maintained under the Kubernetes SIGs umbrella. It provides a discoverable, centrally maintained index of community-contributed kubectl plugins and handles installation, upgrades, and removal through a single CLI.

Krew is best for Kubernetes operators and developers who want to extend kubectl with context switching, log tailing, resource tree visualization, and dozens of other capabilities without manually downloading binaries.

How it saves time or tokens

Without Krew, adding a kubectl plugin means finding the right GitHub release, downloading the correct binary for your OS and architecture, placing it in your PATH, and repeating this for updates. Krew reduces all of that to kubectl krew install <plugin>. Upgrades across all installed plugins run with a single kubectl krew upgrade command.

How to use

1. Install Krew following the official instructions (a self-bootstrapping kubectl plugin):

(set -x; cd "$(mktemp -d)" &&
  OS="$(uname | tr '[:upper:]' '[:lower:]')" &&
  ARCH="$(uname -m | sed 's/x86_64/amd64/;s/aarch64/arm64/')" &&
  KREW="krew-${OS}_${ARCH}" &&
  curl -fsSLO "https://github.com/kubernetes-sigs/krew/releases/latest/download/${KREW}.tar.gz" &&
  tar zxvf "${KREW}.tar.gz" && ./"${KREW}" install krew)

1. Add Krew to your PATH: export PATH="${KREW_ROOT:-$HOME/.krew}/bin:$PATH"
2. Search and install plugins:

kubectl krew search ctx
kubectl krew install ctx
kubectl ctx

Example

# Install popular plugins
kubectl krew install ctx        # Switch contexts quickly
kubectl krew install ns         # Switch namespaces
kubectl krew install neat       # Clean up kubectl output
kubectl krew install tree       # Show resource ownership tree

# List installed plugins
kubectl krew list

# Upgrade all plugins
kubectl krew upgrade

Related on TokRepo

• DevOps tools — broader Kubernetes and infrastructure tooling
• Automation tools — CLI automation resources

Common pitfalls

• Forgetting to add the Krew bin directory to your PATH after installation
• Not running kubectl krew update before searching, which uses a stale plugin index
• Installing plugins that conflict with existing kubectl aliases or shell functions