Installing Helm

The helm command can be downloaded from the GitHub releases page, where binaries for Windows, Linux, and macOS are provided in addition to the source code. The distribution archive contains the binary file (helm) as is, so installation is complete once you download it on the machine where you want to use Helm, extract it, and copy it to an appropriate directory.

You can also install it through package managers such as Homebrew on macOS or Chocolatey on Windows. For details, refer to the official documentation.

The helm command uses the kubectl command to access a Kubernetes cluster, so the system running helm must have kubectl installed and configured so that kubectl can access the Kubernetes cluster.

The supported Kubernetes cluster version is not explicitly stated, but using it together with the latest stable version of Kubernetes is recommended. Even so, older Kubernetes versions do not immediately become unusable. However, Kubernetes versions before 1.6 have limitations related to role-based access control (RBAC) settings.

In Helm v2, an additional application called tiller running on Kubernetes was required in addition to the helm command. In v3, Tiller was removed, and only the helm command is required.

Installing on macOS (Homebrew)

% brew install helm
Running `brew update --auto-update`...
==> Auto-updated Homebrew!
Updated 2 taps (homebrew/core and homebrew/services).

You have 3 outdated formulae installed.
You can upgrade them with brew upgrade
or list them with brew outdated.

==> Downloading https://ghcr.io/v2/homebrew/core/helm/manifests/3.9.4
######################################################################## 100.0%
==> Downloading https://ghcr.io/v2/homebrew/core/helm/blobs/sha256:01a042f197753
==> Downloading from https://pkg-containers.githubusercontent.com/ghcr1/blobs/sh
######################################################################## 100.0%
==> Pouring helm--3.9.4.arm64_monterey.bottle.tar.gz
==> Caveats
zsh completions have been installed to:
  /opt/homebrew/share/zsh/site-functions
==> Summary
🍺  /opt/homebrew/Cellar/helm/3.9.4: 64 files, 47.6MB
==> Running `brew cleanup helm`...
Disable this behaviour by setting HOMEBREW_NO_INSTALL_CLEANUP.
Hide these hints with HOMEBREW_NO_ENV_HINTS (see `man brew`).