k9s Cheatsheet

k9s is a terminal UI for navigating, observing, and managing clusters without leaving your shell. It watches your cluster in real time and offers vim-style key bindings for the resources you interact with most. This cheatsheet covers the CLI flags and in-app key bindings you’ll use daily.

Launching k9s

# Launch k9s using your current kubeconfig context
k9s

# List all available CLI options
k9s help

# Show runtime info such as logs and config paths
k9s info

# Launch scoped to a single namespace
k9s -n mycoolns

# Launch directly into a given resource view
k9s -c pod

# Launch using a specific kubeconfig context
k9s --context coolCtx

# Launch in read-only mode with modification commands disabled
k9s --readonly
# View a resource by singular, plural, short-name, or alias
:pod

# View a resource in a given namespace
:pod ns-x

# View a resource in another context (switches your current context)
:pod @ctx1

# Switch to another context or namespace picker
:ctx
:ns

# Switch directly to a named context
:ctx context-name

Filtering and Searching

# Filter the current resource view by name (regex supported)
/fred

# Filter by two possible names
/fred|blee

# Inverse filter: keep everything that does NOT match
/! filter

# Filter by label selector
/-l app=fred,env=dev

# Fuzzy find a resource
/-f filter

# View pods filtered by label directly
:pod app=fred,env=dev

# Bail out of filter, command, or view mode
<esc>

Managing Resources

# Describe, view, edit, or view logs for the selected resource
d
v
e
l

# Delete a resource (Tab then Enter to confirm)
ctrl-d

# Kill a resource immediately, equivalent to kubectl delete --now
ctrl-k

# Save the current screen to a dump file
:screendump

# Show active keyboard mnemonics and help
?

# Show all available resource aliases
ctrl-a

Other Views and Quitting

# Launch the cluster pulses view
:pulses

# Launch the XRay view for a resource type
:xray RESOURCE [NAMESPACE]

# Quit k9s
:q
ctrl-c

k9s is a great companion to the Kubectl Cheatsheet on this site: use k9s to browse and triage your cluster interactively, then drop into kubectl for scripted, repeatable operations.