Flatpak is no longer just a promising format whose potential lay in the far future – it’s already the go-to way for developers to package and distribute their software on Linux, including to those of us using Ubuntu.

While Ubuntu has no plans to support Flatpak officially, both Flatpaks and Flathub (the main source of Flatpak apps) work great on Ubuntu — well, most of the time!

There’s just one thing that puts some users off using Flatpak apps on Ubuntu: managing them.

GNOME Software is the main graphical way to handle software in most GNOME-based Linux distros. It lets you search, install, and remove software, check for updates, and add or remove software sources – including Flatpak remotes like Flathub.

Ubuntu comes with its own ways to manage software: App Center (for searching and install DEBs and snaps), and Software Updater (for checking and installing DEB updates). There’s nothing for Flatpaks, however – even after running sudo apt install flatpak.

But you don’t have to install GNOME Software to manage Flatpaks.

There is a promising standalone choice.

Warehouse: Flatpak Management Tool

Manage install Flatpak apps easily with Warehouse

If all you need to do is manage Flatpaks on Ubuntu, Warehouse gives almost everything you need without the overhead GNOME Software often incurs.

Now, it’s not as flash on the ‘software discovery’ side as GNOME Software—visit Flathub online instead for that—but Warehouse lives up to its name in the amount of features, options, and settings found within.

Get a visual overview of all install Flatpak apps

Warehouse‘s simple UI belies its power, giving you GUI access to advanced Flatpak options that would normally require learning and remembering terminal commands (e.g., snapshots, rollbacks):

  • Manage and view information on installed Flatpaks
  • Disable updates to individual Flatpak apps or runtimes
  • Downgrade Flatpaks and runtimes to earlier versions
  • Sort/filter packages/data
  • Clear out leftover data from removed apps
  • Easily add popular Flatpak remotes or custom ones
  • Take snapshots of Flatpak app user data
  • Search for and install packages from specific remotes/repos
  • Batch install/remove apps
  • Supports installing .flatpakref files

It’s a comprehensive, one-stop-shop for Flatpak management that’s useful on any Linux distribution, but especially so on Ubuntu.

Use Warehouse to add, find, and manage Flatpak remotes
Search individual remotes for packages

However, something critical is missing.

Warehouse doesn’t check for or notify any available updates to installed Flatpaks – a feature which would be especially useful on Ubuntu since GNOME Software does not come preinstalled.

The CLI flatpak tool doesn’t check for updates without prompting either (so if you’ve installed a Flatpak on Ubuntu and assumed you got automatic background updates like you do with snaps, you don’t – so go update).

The promising news is that the developer wants to support updating Flatpak apps in Warehouse. This useful ability may yet land in a future update, so keep your eyes peeled.

In the meantime, getting into the habit of running flatpak update every few days will suffice. And as the Flatpak CLI respects any pinning set in Warehouse (since it’s using the exact same underlying features itself), it’s a good match.

Install Warehouse on Ubuntu

If you want to check it out you can install Warehouse on Ubuntu from Flathub.

If you have everything set up just run the command flatpak install flathub io.github.flattool.Warehouse to fetch it. It’s a 1.2 MB download but relies on the GNOME 47 runtime, so if you don’t have that, it’ll need to be pulled in alongside it.

• Get Warehouse on Flathub