# Rancher Desktop v1.21.0 — Rancher Desktop 1.21

- Product: Rancher Desktop (https://whatsnew.fyi/product/rancher-desktop)
- Vendor: SUSE
- Date: 2025-11-26
- Version: v1.21.0
- Original notes: https://github.com/rancher-sandbox/rancher-desktop/releases/tag/v1.21.0
- Permalink: https://whatsnew.fyi/product/rancher-desktop/releases/v1.21.0
- Labels: Platforms: Desktop

What's New is an index, not a publisher: every entry below links to the vendor's own release notes, which are the authoritative source. Entries are labelled where they are hand-curated sample data, pre-releases, or drawn from a secondary source such as a developer blog.

Reuse: the summaries, labels and curation here are © What's New. Quote freely with attribution and a link back; wholesale republication of the corpus is not permitted — terms: https://whatsnew.fyi/terms. The vendors' own release notes remain their publishers'.

---

- **added** — Add `rdctl info` command that lists the Rancher Desktop version and IP address of the VM, with support for querying individual fields
- **added** — Add ability to increase the maximum size of the VM disk using `rdctl set --experimental.virtual-machine.disk-size`
- **added** — Add configurability for online checker frequency via `rdctl set --diagnostics.connectivity.interval`
- **added** — Add container info page with logs accessible by clicking the container name or through the menu
- **changed** — Change update checker to only check for updates once per day instead of every hour
- **changed** — Change moby to use containerd snapshotter by default on new installations and after factory resets
- **changed** — Update SUSE Application Collection extension to display the collection without requiring login
- **changed** — Update amazon-ecr-credential-helper from 0.10.1 to 0.11.0
- **changed** — Update docker from 28.3.3 to 29.0.2
- **changed** — Update docker-buildx from 0.26.1 to 0.30.1
- **changed** — Update docker-compose from 2.39.2 to 2.40.3
- **changed** — Update docker-credential-helpers from 0.9.3 to 0.9.4
- **changed** — Update helm from 3.18.6 to 3.19.1
- **changed** — Update moby/buildkit from 0.21.1 to 0.25.2
- **changed** — Update nerdctl from 2.1.3 to 2.2.0
- **changed** — Update spin from 3.3.1 to 3.5.1
- **changed** — Update spin-shim from 0.20.0 to 0.22.0
- **changed** — Update trivy from 0.65.0 to 0.67.2
- **fixed** — Fix UDP port forwarding on Linux and macOS
- **fixed** — Fix window shadows performance issue on macOS 26 Tahoe by upgrading Electron version

This is the 1.21.0 release of Rancher Desktop, an open source desktop application to bring Kubernetes and container management to macOS, Windows, and Linux.

##### ⚠️ WARNING for Windows users using the Moby container engine ⚠️ 

This 1.21.0 release is going to change the docker storage driver from the "classic" setting to the `containerd-snapshotter` (see below). This is supposed to only happen on new installs or after factory resets.

On Windows however, this is happening unconditionally. Any existing images will become inaccessible by the new driver. They are not deleted (and will continue to take up disk space in the VM). They will get deleted by a factory-reset.

In the 1.22.0 release, we will provide a mechanism to switch back and forth between the classic and the snapshotter driver. This will give users the capability to either clean out the old images or to export them, and then re-import them under the other driver.

##### Installers

* [Windows](https://github.com/rancher-sandbox/rancher-desktop/releases/download/v1.21.0/Rancher.Desktop.Setup.1.21.0.msi)
* [macOS x86_64](https://github.com/rancher-sandbox/rancher-desktop/releases/download/v1.21.0/Rancher.Desktop-1.21.0.x86_64.dmg)
* [macOS aarch64](https://github.com/rancher-sandbox/rancher-desktop/releases/download/v1.21.0/Rancher.Desktop-1.21.0.aarch64.dmg)
* [Linux install notes](https://docs.rancherdesktop.io/getting-started/installation#linux)

##### Release Notes for 1.21.0

###### What's New

###### `rdctl info` command

`rdctl` has a new `info` command that lists the Rancher Desktop version and the IP address of the VM:

```console
❯ rdctl info
Version:   v1.21.0
IPAddress: 192.168.205.2
```

You can query individual fields for use in scripts:

```console
❯ rdctl info --field ip-address
192.168.205.2
```

Note: this command is failing for users who have been upgrading Rancher Desktop from version 1.19.3 or earlier, or then restored a snapshot that was based on an earlier installation. If this is happening, you can fix your setup by running:

```console
rdctl shell sudo apk add iproute2
```

This fix will remain in place until you perform a factory reset or restore from an older snapshot again.

###### Increasing disk size (Linux and macOS)

Rancher Desktop by default reserves 100GB of disk space for the VM (it is a sparse file, so only the portion in use actually takes up disk space on the host).

It is now possible to increase the maximum size of the VM disk using `rdctl`:

```console
❯ rdctl set --experimental.virtual-machine.disk-size 120G
Status: reconfiguring Rancher Desktop to apply changes (this may take a while).
```

This will restart Rancher Desktop, at which time the volume will expand to the larger size. Please note that it is not possible to reduce the maximum size. Unused space in the VM disk will be returned for host usage every time Rancher Desktop is restarted (via `fstrim`).

There is no GUI mechanism to change the maximum disk size.

###### Update checker only checks once a day

Rancher Desktop will only check for updates once per day now instead of every hour. This interval is not configurable but the update checks can be disabled completely via both `rdctl` and the GUI.

###### Online checker frequency is configurable

By default, Rancher Desktop checks every 5 seconds to update the "online" indicator. It does this by checking for the right redirect response from `http://docs.rancherdesktop.io` (to `https`). This also detects when the computer is caught inside a captive portal, like airport or hotel wifi.

You can now change the frequency of this check to a longer value (in milliseconds) or disable it completely by setting it to 0:

```console
❯ rdctl set --diagnostics.connectivity.interval 0
Status: settings updated; no restart required.
```

Electron will still perform its own online checks (which will also update the Rancher Desktop indicators) but those checks

_[Truncated at 4000 characters — full notes: https://github.com/rancher-sandbox/rancher-desktop/releases/tag/v1.21.0]_