Whether you caught our demos and sessions in person or are just catching up now, we wanted to give a few updates and highlight how Headlamp has evolved in 2025.
This year marked a big milestone for the project: Headlamp is now officially part of Kubernetes SIG UI. This move brings roadmap and design discussions even closer to the core Kubernetes community and reinforces Headlamp’s role as a modern, extensible UI for the project.
As part of that, we’ve also been sharing more about making Kubernetes approachable for a wider audience, including an appearance on Enlightning with Whitney Lee and a talk at KCD New York 2025.
Now in private preview is AKS Desktop, an application-centric experience addressing the complexity developers face when working with Kubernetes. Rather than troubleshooting setup, teams can quickly create and manage applications on Azure Kubernetes Service. Built on Headlamp’s intuitive interface, AKS Desktop combines supported and preconfigured AKS features so engineers can focus on building great solutions.
]]>Applications in Kubernetes are made up of multiple resources like pods, services, and deployments, often spread across namespaces. Without a way to group these resources, managing, troubleshooting, and collaborating can feel like piecing together a puzzle.
Headlamp Projects (since version 0.35.0) gives you a single, application-centric view. Instead of navigating cluster-wide lists or searching for labels, you can organize related resources into logical groups. This makes it easier to understand and manage your app as a whole.
Headlamp started as a UI for Kubernetes operators, focusing on resources such as pods, services, ConfigMaps, and more. It even includes a Map view to visualize relationships. For developers, though, a resource-centric approach can feel indirect. Projects bridges that gap by providing a clear, application-first experience.
]]>Starting with Kubernetes often means juggling cloud accounts, billing concerns, drivers, kubeconfig conflicts, and long waits just to see a pod run. You bounce between terminal commands, YAML files, and cluster views while trying to learn the basics or test a simple change. This is also the case when you are running Kubernetes locally. You have tons of choices, but you have to fiddle with the command line to get started.
Whether you're a seasoned engineer or just getting started, the AI Assistant offers:
As part of a Linux Foundation (LFX) Mentorship project, we have built a Headlamp plugin that integrates a UI for viewing and managing KEDA resources directly in the Headlamp dashboard. The plugin was developed by Adwait Godbole, with guidance from the Headlamp team.
As the Cloud Native Computing Foundation's flagship conference, KubeCon is a fantastic opportunity for the Kubernetes community to come together, share knowledge, and explore the latest advancements in cloud-native technologies.
]]>Security is at the core of these features with both catalogs incorporating ArtifactHub’s badging system, including verified, official, and CNCF project designations. These visual indicators, combined with verified publisher filtering, give users confidence in selecting high-quality and secure Helm charts and Headlamp plugins.
]]>In this post, we will explore the recent security improvements we have implemented, including the addition of a value schema, signing of Helm charts, and verified and official publisher status in ArtifactHub. These enhancements not only increase the security of Headlamp deployments but also align with best practices in the Kubernetes ecosystem.
Before diving into our specific enhancements, it is important to understand the broader security concerns in Kubernetes and how they relate to Helm charts.
Kubernetes environments face various security challenges, including:
When it comes to Helm charts, additional security considerations come into play:
These challenges highlight the necessity for strong security measures in Kubernetes setups, particularly when using Helm for application management.