A practical guide to using AppImages on WSL2.

AppImages are really useful, download a single file, run it, and boom, you got yourself a new application installed! But can you install AppImages on windows? YES YOU CAN! 🤯

Installing WSL

To make everything work, we need WSL, here's a great video by Fireship!

Download

• Download AppImage file

• Create a temporary directory for the AppImage
  $ mkdir -p ~/tmp && cd ~/tmp
  and move the AppImage file in there.

Extraction

• Update file permissions
  $ chmod u+x or $ chmod a+x

• Extract files
  $ ./app_name.AppImage --appimage-extract

• Create a directory for the extracted files to live
  $ mkdir -p ~/bin

• Move extracted files to this new folder
  $ mv ./squashfs-root/ ~/bin/app_name

Run the App!

• Run the app using the full path
  $ ~/bin/app_name/AppRun

or

• Add the app to the path or add an alias for ease of use
  example using .zshrc: alias app_name="~/bin/app_name/AppRun"
$ app_name

And there we go!

Credits

AppImages on WSL2