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Neurodesk

Get started with Neurodesk

Pick your setup and the matching instructions appear below.

Compute platform
Your OS
Interface
Processor
Neurodesk App Cross-platform desktop installer that manages the container for you. The recommended starting point.
Neurodesktop on Linux Run the container yourself with Docker or Podman.
Neurodesktop on Mac Run the container yourself with Docker Desktop.
Neurodesktop on Windows Run the container yourself with Docker Desktop and WSL2.
Neurodesk Play Free hosted Neurodesk in your browser. Nothing to install.
Host it yourself Run Neurodesktop on your own cloud provider.
Nectar Research Cloud Hosted Neurodesk for Australian researchers.
Neurocommand on Linux and HPC Install on a cluster, then reach the graphical interface over X11 forwarding.
Worked cluster examples Step-by-step setups for Bunya, Sherlock, Great Lakes and more.
Neurocommand Command-line tool manager. Load applications as Lmod modules.
Neurocommand on Windows Command-line install for Windows.
Neurocommand on Linux and HPC Install on a cluster and load applications as Lmod modules.
Worked cluster examples Step-by-step setups for Bunya, Sherlock, Great Lakes and more.
Docker Pull a single application container.
Singularity / Apptainer Download a container image for rootless and HPC use.
CVMFS Mount every container on demand instead of downloading them.
Neurodesk in Google Colab Set up Neurodesk containers inside a Colab notebook.
Neurodesk in VS Code Attach VS Code to a running Neurodesk container.
GPU support in containers Pass a GPU through to a Singularity or Apptainer container.
GPU support in Neurodesktop Extra flags needed to expose an NVIDIA GPU to the container.
ARM64 on Linux Neurodesk runs on ARM64 through binfmt. Enable it once before starting the container.
Apple Silicon Neurodesktop on an M-series Mac, including the emulation caveats.

Installation examples

Section titled “Installation examples”

We show a couple of specific worked examples on Installations for systems including Bunya, Sherlock, Nectar, Great Lakes, and Ubuntu 24.04.

Releases

Section titled “Releases”

Note the release date of the Neurodesktop container image during installation. It appears at the end of the image tag in the docker run command, highlighted below:

sudo docker run \
--shm-size=1gb -it --privileged --user=root --name neurodesktop \
-v ~/neurodesktop-storage:/neurodesktop-storage \
--add-host=host.docker.internal:host-gateway \
-e OLLAMA_HOST="http://host.docker.internal:11434" \
-e NB_UID="$(id -u)" -e NB_GID="$(id -g)" \
-p 8888:8888 \
-e NEURODESKTOP_VERSION=2026-07-11 \
ghcr.io/neurodesk/neurodesktop/neurodesktop:2026-07-11

The current stable release is 2026-07-11. We regularly update Neurodesktop for performance and software updates. Check the release history for past releases. To upgrade your container, replace the release number with your desired version. For replicable analyses, share the stable release number you used so others can recreate your environment.

For the actual command to run on your system, see the per-OS guides under Neurodesktop.

Video tutorial

Section titled “Video tutorial”

A 14-minute walkthrough on getting started:

You can also view the Neurodesk overview slideshow (or the PDF version) with interactive navigation.