Plug-in on Lima

VM driver plugins

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

CLI plugins

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Warning Support for CLI plugins is experimental

⚡ Requirement	Lima >= 2.0

Lima supports a plugin-like command aliasing system similar to git, kubectl, and docker. When you run a limactl command that doesn’t exist, Lima will automatically look for an external program named limactl-<command> in your system’s PATH and additional directories.

Plugin Discovery

Lima discovers plugins by scanning for executables named limactl-<plugin-name> in the following locations:

Directory containing the limactl binary (including symlink support)
All directories in your $PATH environment variable
<PREFIX>/libexec/lima - For plugins installed by package managers or distribution packages

Plugin discovery respects symlinks, ensuring that even if limactl is installed via Homebrew and points to a symlink, all plugins are correctly discovered.

URL handler plugins

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Warning Support for URL handler plugins is experimental

⚡ Requirement	Lima >= 2.0

Lima’s template locator supports custom URL schemes through plugins. A plugin named limactl-url-<scheme> handles URLs that begin with <scheme>:. This lets you create short, memorable template locators for your own workflows.

How it works

When Lima encounters a URL with an unrecognized scheme (e.g. dev:webapp), it:

Searches for an executable named limactl-url-dev using the standard plugin discovery mechanism
Calls the plugin with the part after the colon as its sole argument (in this case, webapp)
Reads the plugin’s stdout, which must be either a URL (with any supported scheme) or a local file path

The plugin’s output can itself use a custom scheme. Lima resolves the chain until it reaches a final https: URL or local file path. It detects and rejects redirect loops.