install

Additional install commands

macOS

Homebrewverified · 100%

brew install crane

provider-native install command

overview

Package summary

Tool for interacting with remote images and registries

Project links

Homepage

Commands and aliases

crane

history

Project history and usage

crane is the command-line front end in Google's go-containerregistry project for working with remote container images and registries. It sits beside the Go library APIs and exposes common registry operations as shell commands.

Project history

The go-containerregistry repository was created in 2018 as a Go library and set of CLIs for container registry work. Its README describes the library as largely based on Google's earlier Python containerregistry library and explains that crane, gcrane, and krane are tools built on top of the shared registry primitives.

The crane README documents direct binary releases, Go installation, Homebrew, Arch Linux, GitHub Actions setup, and a container image form of the tool. The project published a v0.1.0 GitHub release in 2020 and was still publishing releases in 2026.

Adoption history

crane became common packaging material because it is useful without a Docker daemon: scripts can copy, tag, inspect, authenticate to, and move images directly against registries. Official installation instructions explicitly cover Homebrew, Arch Linux, release tarballs, Go install, and containerized usage.

How it is used

Package users reach for crane for registry automation: pulling and pushing images, copying between registries, tagging images in CI, listing tags, and authenticating to registries. The go-containerregistry README maps examples such as crane pull, crane push, and crane cp to library-level remote and tarball operations.

Why package nerds care

For package maintainers, crane is a small, single-purpose registry CLI with signed release artifacts and documented SLSA provenance verification. That makes it attractive in build pipelines where installing a full container engine would be unnecessary overhead.

Timeline

2018: google/go-containerregistry repository created.
2020: v0.1.0 release published.
2026: v0.21.7 release published.

Related projects

go-containerregistry also includes gcrane, a GCR-oriented variant, and krane, a Kubernetes-workload-identity-aware drop-in replacement. The README notes that ko originally lived in the repository before moving to its own project.

Sources

security posture

No protected-tool coverage found yet

No matching local secret-handling manifest was found for crane. Nucleus package metadata is still published here so future coverage has a stable package URL.

Install behavior

No Homebrew bottle metadata was recorded.

Recommended review

Before unattended agent use, check whether the tool reads plaintext credentials, writes remote state, publishes artifacts, or shells out to plugins.

local files

Configuration and credential file locations

These source-backed paths show where this package keeps local settings or durable credentials. Automic Vault can use them as review targets for secret scanning, migration, and command approval.

Credential files

Credential-bearing paths to review before unattended agent runs.

Unix: ~/.docker/config.json${DOCKER_CONFIG}/config.json${XDG_RUNTIME_DIR}/containers/auth.json
Windows: %USERPROFILE%\.docker\config.json

executables

Installed executables

Command	Kind	Exposure	Note
`crane`	executable	indexed executable	Discovered from the local executable index.

freshness

Version and freshness

These signals separate page generation age, package-manager activity, and upstream release comparison. Version lag is warned only when an evidence URL and comparable versions are present.

page generated2026-08-03

manager version0.21.8

manager updated2026-07-31

local dataunknown

upstreamnot available

latest detectednot detected

okNo freshness warnings were generated.

install metadata

Package metadata

Package key	brew:crane
Version	0.21.8
Package manager	Homebrew
Homepage	https://github.com/google/go-containerregistry
Repository	https://github.com/google/go-containerregistry
Last updated	2026-07-31T20:45:46Z
Pulse	updated
Bottle	not recorded
Service	none declared

package graph

Links come from deterministic package relationships, av.db category and tag curation, ecosystem matches, and package hub membership.

source trail

Generated from repository data

This page is generated by av-web from the private package SQLite artifact built by scripts/generate-pkg-sqlite.py.

Combined YAML source

View the package source record on GitHub.

combined/crane.yml

Used sources

Geiger risk classifier
Nucleus package database
curated configuration and credential file locations
curated package history
pkgdb category and tag curation

Install crane with Homebrew