FLATPAK-PIN(1)

💖 FLATPAK-PIN — ok so hear me out bestie 💖

This is the manual page for flatpak-pin, aka the pin subcommand of flatpak(1), from the flatpak suite. It's giving "please don't delete my runtime" energy and honestly? Iconic.

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✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

flatpak pin [OPTION...] PATTERN...

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🎀 DESCRIPTION 🎀

Okay so flatpak keeps a whole lil list of patterns, and those patterns say which refs are pinned. And a pinned ref? It will never get automatically uninstalled. Never ever. Not even when flatpak does its periodic little cleanup of unused runtimes. So if you're, say, keeping a runtime around for development purposes, this is your girl. 💅

Here's the cute part: runtimes that you installed explicitly — like, you asked for them yourself, instead of them just riding along as a dependency of something else — are automatically pinned. You didn't even have to ask. Slay.

The patterns are just a partial ref, and the * character matches anything within that part of the ref. Also, real talk: only runtimes can be pinned, not apps. That's the rule, no cap.

Some example patterns, since examples are everything:

org.some.Runtime
org.some.Runtime//unstable
runtime/org.domain.*
org.some.Runtime/arm

And if you wanna see the current set of pins? Just run this command with no patterns at all. Boom. There's your list. 🦋

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🌸 OPTIONS 🌸

The following options are understood:

• -h, --help — show help options and exit. Byeee 👋
• --remove — instead of adding the patterns, it removes matching patterns. Delete, but make it fashion.
• -u, --user — pin refs in a per-user installation.
• --system — pin refs in the default system-wide installation.
• --installation=NAME — pin refs in a system-wide installation specified by NAME, chosen from the ones defined in /etc/flatpak/installations.d/. And heads up: using --installation=default is equivalent to using --system. Same vibe, different spelling. ✨
• -v, --verbose — print debug information during command processing. For when you need to see everything.

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🌈 EXAMPLES 🌈

$ flatpak pin

$ flatpak pin org.freedesktop.Platform//19.08

$ flatpak pin --remove org.freedesktop.Platform//19.08

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💜 SEE ALSO 💜

flatpak(1), flatpak-uninstall(1)

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Lowkey important: a pinned ref will never be automatically uninstalled — so if you pin something and then forget about it, that's on you, bestie. 😭

Mwah 💖 this page comes to you from the flatpak project — and the header/footer of the original page is the classic FLATPAK PIN(1) on both ends, in case you were wondering what that little banner was. Periodt. 🎀✨