Install step
It's trivial to install the step
binary on your local machine.
Building from source?
Check out our guide to getting started with development.
Install step
via Homebrew:
brew install step
To uninstall, run brew uninstall step
and remove the $HOME/.step
configuration directory.
To add Smallstep as a source and install the step-cli
package on Debian or Ubuntu distributions, run the following as root
:
apt-get update && apt-get install -y --no-install-recommends curl vim gpg ca-certificates
curl -fsSL https://packages.smallstep.com/keys/apt/repo-signing-key.gpg -o /etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/smallstep.asc && \
echo 'deb [signed-by=/etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/smallstep.asc] https://packages.smallstep.com/stable/debian debs main' \
| tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/smallstep.list
apt-get update && apt-get -y install step-cli
Alternatively, to manually install a .deb
for step-cli
, find the package you need for your platform on our GitHub release pages for smallstep/cli
(step-cli
).
To uninstall, run sudo dpkg -r step-cli
and remove the $HOME/.step
configuration directory.
To add Smallstep as a source and install the step-cli
packages on RHEL or Fedora distributions, run the following as root
:
cat <<EOT > /etc/yum.repos.d/smallstep.repo
[smallstep]
name=Smallstep
baseurl=https://packages.smallstep.com/stable/fedora/
enabled=1
repo_gpgcheck=0
gpgcheck=1
gpgkey=https://packages.smallstep.com/keys/smallstep-0x889B19391F774443.gpg
EOT
dnf makecache && dnf install -y step-cli step-ca
Alternatively, to manually install an .rpm
for step-cli
, find the packages you need for your platform on our GitHub release pages for smallstep/cli
(step-cli
).
To uninstall, run sudo dnf remove step-cli
and remove the $HOME/.step
configuration directory.
There is a community-maintained step-cli
package.
Use pacman to install step
:
sudo pacman -S step-cli
The Arch package installs step
as step-cli
.
Add a symlink to address this:
sudo ln -s /usr/bin/step-cli /usr/local/bin/step
To uninstall, run sudo pacman -R step-cli
and remove the $HOME/.step
configuration directory.
Big shout out to the maintainers of these packages! We appreciate you.
There is a community-maintained step-cli
package for Alpine Linux.
Use apk to install step
:
apk add step-cli
To uninstall, run apk del step-cli
and remove the $HOME/.step
configuration directory.
Big shout out to the maintainers of these packages! We appreciate you.
Install the step-cli
package on NixOS.
Install the step-cli
package on FreeBSD.
Wolfi has a maintained step
package.
Use apk to install step
:
apk add step
To uninstall, run apk del step
and remove the $HOME/.step
configuration directory.
We have 386, amd64, arm64, armv7, mips, and mips64 releases available to download from our latest release.
Place the binary in /usr/bin
for compatibility with the rest of our documentation.
We use cosign for signing and verifying release artifacts.
To verify the signature of the step-ca
binary:
-
Download the binary signature (
.sig
) and certificate (.pem
) files from the Assets section of our GitHub Releases page -
Run:
cosign verify-blob \ --certificate step_linux_amd64.tar.gz.pem \ --signature step_linux_amd64.tar.gz.sig \ --certificate-identity-regexp "https://github\.com/smallstep/workflows/.*" \ --certificate-oidc-issuer https://token.actions.githubusercontent.com \ step_linux_amd64.tar.gz
Install step
via Winget:
winget install Smallstep.step
After installing,
you may need to restart your terminal for step
to be in your path.
To uninstall, run winget uninstall Smallstep.step
and remove the $HOME/.step
configuration directory.
Install step
via scoop:
scoop bucket add smallstep https://github.com/smallstep/scoop-bucket.git
scoop install smallstep/step
To uninstall, run scoop remove step
and remove the $HOME/.step
configuration directory.
Download the Windows binary from our latest releases page and install it using PowerShell.
Open PowerShell and run the following:
curl.exe -LO https://dl.smallstep.com/cli/docs-cli-install/latest/step_windows_amd64.zip
Expand-Archive -LiteralPath .\step_windows_amd64.zip -DestinationPath .
step_windows_amd64\bin\step.exe version
Finally, move the step.exe
binary wherever you'd like it to into a location in your user's PATH
.
$ step certificate inspect https://smallstep.com
Certificate:
Data:
Version: 3 (0x2)
Serial Number: 326381749415081530968054238478851085504954 (0x3bf265673332db2d0c70e48a163fb7d11ba)
Signature Algorithm: SHA256-RSA
Issuer: C=US,O=Let's Encrypt,CN=Let's Encrypt Authority X3
Validity
Not Before: Feb 8 13:07:44 2019 UTC
Not After : May 9 13:07:44 2019 UTC
Subject: CN=smallstep.com
[...]
Last updated on April 8, 2025