When Podman CLI is installed with Hyper-V, Podman Machines still chose WSL as default
Author: sluetzeCreated Mar 17, 2026Updated Sep 18, 2026
Labelsgood first issueos/windows 🪟engine/podman 🦭UX/UI Issuedomain/ui-components/reviewedfeaturetriaged
UX Description
I installed Podman Desktop on Windows 11 Pro 2025H2.
Reproduction:
- Install Podman Desktop
- circumvented the install requirements asking for WSL (https://github.com/podman-desktop/podman-desktop/issues/16655) by installing WSL (which I dont want to use).
- Install Podman CLI for Hyper-V
- Initialize a new podman machine
When Initializing the Podman CLI, the podman-machine-default is spawned with WSL, because this is the default value in the dropdown.
IMHO a better UX would be, to use the default from the podman CLI installation.
overlooking the dropdown results in issues like not being able to ssh to the machine.
PS C:\Users\azureuser> podman machine ssh
Error: vm podman-machine-default not found: podman-machine-default: VM does not exist
PS C:\Users\azureuser> podman system connection list
Name URI Identity Default ReadWrite
podman-machine-default ssh://[email protected]:58363/run/user/1000/podman/podman.sock C:\Users\azureuser\.local\share\containers\podman\machine\machine false true
podman-machine-default-root ssh://[email protected]:58363/run/podman/podman.sock C:\Users\azureuser\.local\share\containers\podman\machine\machine true true
PS C:\Users\azureuser> wsl -l
Windows Subsystem for Linux Distributions:
podman-machine-default (Default)Request type
None
Primary Contact
No response
Deadline for request
No response
Source: podman-desktop/podman-desktop