Snaps are a must-try in Linuxland because they work across multiple Linux distributions, from Arch to Fedora — and it’s dead simple to sample ’em!
But what about on elementary OS?
In this article we show how to install Snap apps on elementary OS in a user-friendly manner (though snapd has a robust CLI).
Although elementary OS is based on Ubuntu and ships with the Ubuntu repos enabled it does not include Snap app support out of the box.
To remedy this, elementary OS can choose to install ‘snapd‘ from the repos and perform snap installs using the command line.
But thanks to some canny community developers there’s a useful GUI tool available too called…
Snaptastic
Meet Snaptastic, an app that provides a simple GUI front-end for installing downloaded .snap files, handling snap://url links (which we use on this site) and performing basic Snap app management duties like launching and uninstalling apps.
Snaptastic lets you:
- View and launch installed Snaps
- Manage Snap updates
- Uninstall Snap apps
- Open snap://url links
- Install .snap packages
Users of regular Ubuntu can, of course, use Ubuntu Software to browse and install snap apps, but elementary OS comes with its own bespoke app centre instead.
To avoid installing Ubuntu Software (and all that it pulls in) in elementary OS, Snaptastic is a great alternative to installing a different software store app.
Obviously the app needs the snapd engine to run. If you don’t already have snapd installed it will be pulled in as a dependency when you install Snaptastic from the elementary App Center.
Interested in trying it out? Snaptastic has a recommended price of $3, as part of the store’s “pay what you want” model.