GNOME Boxes has been rewritten to address historical architectural issues, adapt to a Flatpak-first world, and use GTK4/Libadwaita with a new display widget (libmks).

This work is in beta state and may result in virtual machine data loss. Use at your own risk.

The Boxes rewrite is planned to be released alongside GNOME 51, in September 2026.

You can install it already from the GNOME Nightly Apps Flatpak repository.

You can learn more about the rewrite by watching the following presentations

• How I Am Rewriting GNOME Boxes to Bring it to the GTK4/Libadwaita Era | Felipe Borges @ LAS 2025
• GNOME Boxes: The Art of Delayed Gratification

Installation command

Once the nightly Flatpak repository has been set up, you can install Boxes with:

flatpak install gnome-nightly org.gnome.Boxes.Devel

Available features

• Create virtual machines from installation sources (.iso, .img)
• Create virtual machines from existing virtual machine disks (.qcow2)
• Create Windows 11 virtual machines
• Use UEFI or BIOS firmware
• Share the clipboard between your system and your box (using spice-vdagent in the guest)
• Send files into your virtual machine (using spice-vdagent in the guest)
• Send Ctrl+Alt+Fn keys to your box
• Take screenshots of your virtual machine
• Tweak memory and main disk space for a virtual machine
• Set up port forwarding to access services inside the box (SSH and HTTP for now)
• Use a VSock SSH proxy to establish a secure shell connection with the virtual machine
• Select the bootable virtual device (CDROM file or virtual disk)
• Use Snapshots to save the state of the box
• Introspect the QEMU logs of your box
• Manually change the Libvirt domain XML of your box
• Access the virsh (virtualization console) to perform advanced libvirt procedures

Reporting issues

Report issues in our GitLab repository, including your box's logs (found under Properties → Logs).

Boxes is developed in volunteer time, so expect delays in issue responses.