kabanos
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Getting started

Install kabanos, open it for the first time and connect to your first cluster in about a minute.

Requirements

  • A Mac with macOS 12 Monterey or later. There are separate downloads for Apple silicon (M1 and later) and Intel Macs.
  • Network access to an Elasticsearch (7.x, 8.x, 9.x) or OpenSearch (1.x, 2.x, 3.x) cluster — self-hosted, Elastic Cloud or Amazon OpenSearch Service. Clusters you can only reach through a bastion host work too, through an SSH tunnel.

kabanos is free and needs no account.

Install

  1. Download the DMG for your Mac from the home page: Apple silicon for M-series Macs, Intel for older ones. Not sure? Open the Apple menu → About This Mac: “Chip: Apple M…” means Apple silicon.
  2. Open the DMG and drag kabanos into Applications.
  3. Eject the DMG.

First launch (Gatekeeper)

Current builds are not yet notarized by Apple, so the first time you open kabanos macOS says it “can’t be opened because Apple cannot check it for malicious software”. To allow it once:

  1. Click Done (not Move to Trash).
  2. Open System Settings → Privacy & Security.
  3. Scroll to Security: you’ll see “kabanos was blocked…”. Click Open Anyway and confirm with your password or Touch ID.

You only have to do this once per installed version.

On macOS 15 and later, the old “right-click → Open” shortcut no longer bypasses this — use System Settings as above.

Keychain prompt

The first time kabanos stores a password it asks to use the kabanos Safe Storage item in your Keychain. Choose Always Allow so you aren’t asked again. This is the key that encrypts your saved passwords and API keys — see Privacy & safety.

Verify the download

Each release on GitHub has a .sha256 file next to every DMG. To check that your download is intact and untampered, compare the checksums in Terminal:

shasum -a 256 ~/Downloads/kabanos-mac-arm64.dmg

The 64-character value printed must match the contents of kabanos-mac-arm64.dmg.sha256 on the release page (use kabanos-mac-x64.dmg for the Intel build).

Your first connection

  1. kabanos opens on the Connections screen. Paste your cluster URL into Connection URL, for example:

    https://elastic:my-password@search.example.com:9200

    The username and password are split out of the URL and stored in the Keychain; only https://search.example.com:9200 is saved. A bare host:9200 is treated as https://host:9200.

  2. Optionally give it a Name (one is suggested from the host) and a Folder — Production, Staging and Local are suggested.

  3. Click Test connection. You’ll see the engine and version, cluster name, health, node count and how many indices, aliases and templates it has.

  4. Click Save & connect. The connection opens in its own tab and kabanos switches to the Explorer.

Using an API key, Elastic Cloud ID, AWS or a self-signed certificate? See Connections.

A two-minute tour

  • Explorer — browse indices, data streams, aliases and templates; open an index to see its stats, mapping, settings and shards. See Explorer.
  • Query this index — opens the Index view: pick a method, edit the path, run, and look at the hits as documents, a table or JSON.
  • Aggregations — build an aggregation one stage at a time, each with a live preview. See Aggregation pipelines.
  • Query workspace — a console of named request blocks with autocomplete and a searchable library. See Query workspace.
  • Routines — chain requests into a repeatable, checkable sequence. See Routines.
  • ⌘K — jump to any connection, index, alias, saved query or routine.

Updating

Download the new DMG and drag it into Applications, replacing the old copy. Your connections, library, routines and settings are kept — they live in your user folder, not inside the app. The changelog lists what changed in each version.

Uninstalling

Drag kabanos from Applications to the Trash. To also remove your data, delete ~/Library/Application Support/kabanos and, in Keychain Access, the kabanos Safe Storage item.