AppImage Manager¶

ID: am
Link: Repository
Upstream stars: ⭐ 1,385
Last commit: 2026-09-28
Version requirement: >= 10.4
Platforms: 🐧 Linux
Operations: installed · upgrade · upgrade_all · remove · cleanup
purl types: pkg:am/
CLI name: am
Forced environment: NO_COLOR=1
Issues and PRs: 📦 manager: am
Source: am.py

AppImage manager, covering the applications of its own catalog.

What `mpm` adds to `am`¶

mpm reaches across every manager at once, not am alone: mpm installed and mpm outdated cover am alongside every other manager you run in one table, mpm upgrade --all updates them together, and mpm sbom exports the whole machine as one bill of materials.

Every mpm command also gains --dry-run and --plan previews, cross-scheme version comparison and purl identifiers. See manager augmentations for how each one is built.

Your `am` commands, in `mpm`¶

You already know am: each operation maps one-to-one onto mpm, in an interface shared by every manager.

To…	With `am`	With `mpm`
List what’s installed	`am -fi --byname`	`mpm --am installed`
Upgrade one package	`am -y -u firefox`	`mpm --am upgrade firefox`
Upgrade everything	`am -y -u --apps`	`mpm --am upgrade --all`
Remove a package	`am -R firefox`	`mpm remove pkg:am/firefox`
Clear caches	`am -c`	`mpm --am cleanup --cache`

Prefix any command above with --dry-run to simulate the underlying manager calls without touching the system: the safe way to watch what mpm would do before trusting it.

Operations¶

Operation	Supported	Notes
`installed`	✅
`outdated`	❌	The catalog carries no versions and its maintainer declined a machine-readable feed; `upgrade --all` is unaffected.
`orphans`
`search`	❌	Results are folded to the terminal width, so a record wraps across lines with no marker to rejoin it.
`install`	❌	The tool escalates on its own and blocks on a password prompt that no flag of its own can answer.
`upgrade`	✅
`upgrade_all`	✅
`remove`	✅
`sync`
`cleanup`	✅
`doctor`

Configuration¶

Ignore am on the mpm CLI by passing the --no-am option.
Ignore it for every run in your configuration:
```
[mpm]
am = false
```
Raise the timeout of all am calls:
```
[mpm.overrides.am]
timeout = 900
```

Run mpm config-template am to print all overridable settings for your configuration file:

[mpm.overrides.am]
cli_names = [
    "am",
]
cli_search_path = []
dry_run = false
ignore_auto_updates = true
plan = false
post_args = []
pre_args = []
pre_cmds = []
requirement = ">=10.4"
stop_on_error = false
sudo = false
unmaintained = false
version_cli_options = [
    "--version",
]
version_regexes = [
    "(?m)^(?P<version>\\d+(?:\\.\\d+)+)$",
]

[mpm.overrides.am.extra_env]
NO_COLOR = "1"

The arguments and environment variables listed in the box atop this page are forced on every am call, so runs stay quiet, non-interactive and reproducible: the defaults you would set in CI anyway.

Recipes¶

A few jobs you would otherwise script around am, one mpm command each:

Snapshot and clone a machine: mpm --am dump am.toml, then mpm restore am.toml on the next one.
Export a compliance SBOM: mpm --am sbom (CycloneDX by default, --spdx for SPDX).

Privilege escalation¶

AppImage Manager runs sudo from inside its own commands: mpm never wraps it, keeps an already-warm credential cache alive for those internal escalations, and warns when a mutating call goes silent on a terminal with a cold cache, since a password prompt may be hiding in the stream.

See privilege escalation for the full policy.

Cooldown¶

State of AppImage Manager’s release-age gating, from the cooldown support table:

Status: ❌ None

A cooldown only pays off where a compromised release can be withdrawn while the clock runs, and can only be emulated where the registry dates its releases. From the retraction table:

Registry: Git-manifest indexes
Retraction: Index revert: reverting the manifest, Portfile or derivation commit withdraws the version
Publish date: ❌ only the commit date, which is client-set and trivially backdated. A date declared in the manifest, like winget’s optional ReleaseDate, is author-supplied too and no sounder

With --cooldown set, mpm skips this manager’s install and upgrade operations rather than run them unguarded (fail-closed); --cooldown best-effort opts back in.

Reference traces¶

A collection of raw native outputs captured from the manager’s own CLI and recorded in the manager source. If you know AppImage Manager well and a transcript below looks wrong, or a newer release changed its output format, report it.

$ am -fi --byname

 YOU HAVE INSTALLED 3 PROGRAMS MANAGED BY "AM"

 - APPNAME              | VERSION             | TYPE           | SIZE
 - -------              | -------             | ----           | ----
 ◆ code                 | 1.107.1             | dynamic-binary | 450 MiB
 ◆ krita                | 5.2.14              | appimage       | 322 MiB
 ◆ zoom                 | 6.4.3.827.glibc2.27 | appimage*      | 288 MiB

Version check¶

The version is probed by running:

$ am --version
10.4

and extracted with:

r"(?m)^(?P<version>\d+(?:\.\d+)+)$"

Upstream project¶

Metrics	`ivan-hc/AM`
Activity
Popularity
Metadata

Changelog¶

8.0.0 (2026-09-20)
- Declare support for the Linux compatibility layers, WSL included, in place of the Linux distributions alone, so the readme’s operation matrix reports their platforms.
- Add the AM AppImage manager with installed, upgrade, remove and cleanup support. It declares no install, which blocks on an escalation prompt, no outdated and no search.