---
title: Podman
description: Run Nextflow pipeline tasks in Podman containers, with or without root privileges.
---

# Podman

[Podman](https://podman.io) is a drop-in replacement for Docker that can run containers with or without root privileges.

## Prerequisites

Podman must be installed in your execution environment.

Rootless mode requires additional operating system configuration. Because of a Podman limitation, cpuset for CPUs and memory only works with root permissions.

## How it works

Enable Podman in the Nextflow configuration file:

```groovy
podman.enabled = true
process.container = 'nextflow/examples:latest'
```

Whenever your pipeline launches a task, Nextflow runs it inside a Podman container created from the specified image using the `podman run` command.

You can also enable Podman on the command line:

```bash
nextflow run main.nf -with-podman
```

## Advanced settings

See the [`podman`][config-podman] configuration scope for advanced Podman settings.

[config-podman]: ../reference/config/podman
