Syft

Installing Syft
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Official builds

The Anchore OSS team publish official source archives and binary builds of Syft for Linux, macOS and Windows. There are also numerous community-maintained builds of the tools for different platforms.

Installer script

Syft binaries are provided for Linux, macOS and Windows.

curl -sSfL https://get.anchore.io/syft | sudo sh -s -- -b /usr/local/bin

Install script options:

  • -b: Specify a custom installation directory (defaults to ./bin)
  • -d: More verbose logging levels (-d for debug, -dd for trace)
  • -v: Verify the signature of the downloaded artifact before installation (requires cosign to be installed)

Updating Syft

Syft checks for new versions on launch. It will print a message at the end of the output if the version in use is not the latest.

A newer version of syft is available for download: 1.20.0 (installed version is 1.19.2)

Docker container 

docker pull anchore/syft

GitHub releases

  • Download the file for your operating system and architecture from the GitHub releases page
  • In the case of .deb or .rpm, install them using your package manager
  • For compressed archives, unpack the file, and copy the syft binary to a folder in your path such as /usr/local/bin

Community builds of syft

Alpine Linux 

apk add syft

Thanks to Michał Polański for maintaining this package.

Chocolatey 

choco install syft -y

Homebrew 

brew tap anchore/syft
brew install syft

Thanks to the Syft community for maintaining this package.

Kali Linux 

sudo apt install syft

Thanks to Sophie Brun for maintaining this package.

Nix

Syft is available in the stable channel since NixOS 22.05.

nix-env -i syft

Alternatively, just try it out in an ephemeral nix shell.

nix-shell -p syft

Scoop 

scoop install syft

WinGet 

nuget install Anchore.syft

Thanks to Alan Pope for maintaining this package.

Snapcraft 

snap install syft

Thanks to Alan Pope for maintaining this package.

Last modified October 10, 2025: fix reference links (1594d93)