Installing on Windows

Incus itself is a Linux daemon - it does not run on Windows. On Windows you run the incus client and incus-compose as clients that drive a remote Incus server over HTTPS. No Docker and no WSL required.

flowchart LR
    subgraph W["Windows 10 / 11"]
        BIN["on your PATH:<br/>incus.exe<br/>incus-compose.exe"]
    end

    subgraph S["a Linux Incus server"]
        INCUSD["incusd<br/>core.https_address set"]
        INCUSD --> INST["your instances"]
    end

    BIN -->|"HTTPS, client certificate"| INCUSD
    BIN -.->|"not available from here: builds,<br/>and bind mounts unless seeded"| INST

Since 1.0.0: Windows has been tested with version 1.0.0, MacOS by the lack of one not yet

Prerequisites

Windows 10/11, x86_64 or arm64.
A reachable Incus server (Linux) with core.https_address set. This is required even beyond remote access - see Getting Started - Incus must listen on the network.
Admin access to that server to trust your client certificate.

1. Create a bin directory and add it to your PATH

Create %LOCALAPPDATA%\bin and add it to your user PATH (Settings -> "Edit environment variables for your account" -> Path -> New). Open a new terminal afterwards so the change takes effect.

2. Install the incus client

Download bin.windows.incus.{x86_64|arm64}.exe from the Incus Releases page into %LOCALAPPDATA%\bin and rename it to incus.exe.

3. Install incus-compose

Download incus-compose_1.0.0_windows_{amd64|arm64}.tar.gz from the incus-compose Releases page, extract it, and copy incus-compose.exe into %LOCALAPPDATA%\bin.

Verify both are on your PATH in a new PowerShell terminal:

incus version
incus-compose version

4. Generate a client certificate

Make sure your clock is correct (TLS verification fails on a skewed clock), then generate a client certificate:

incus remote generate-certificate

5. Generate a token on the server and use it

On the server:

incus config trust add <clientname>

On the client:

incus remote add <servername> <serverip>

6. Make it the default and test it

Make it your default remote:

incus remote switch <servername>

Test the connection:

incus list --all-projects

incus-compose in action

Notes and limitations

Remote-only. The Incus server is never this machine, so a plain pass-through bind mount is refused - incusd would look for the source path on the Linux server, where it isn't. Add x-incus-compose.seed: true to the volume entry and the files are copied across instead, which works from here and is what the option exists for. A named volume is the other answer, for data that lives on the server anyway. Health checks work automatically over HTTPS. See Local vs Remote Incus.
Builds need a local podman or docker which are not available on Windows.

Have fun with incus and incus-compose on Windows!