Flatpak provides sandbox environment for application building, deployment, distribution, and installation. Applications you run using Flatpak have minimum access to the host system, which protects the system installation against third-party applications. Flatpak provides application stability regardless of your Linux kernel architecture, name, version, or release. Flatpak allows you to install and run multiple versions of the same application simultaneously.

The details of the application packaged with Flatpak are stored in the flatpakref file that uses the .flatpakref extension. Each flatpakref file contains information enabling it to add the remote and install the application. You can access flatpakref files remotely in a remote repository, or you can download and manage them locally on your computer.

Flatpak can be used in combination with third party centralized repositories for applications packaged with Flatpak. Note that Red Hat supports Flatpak as a method of installing applications. Applications from third-party repositories are not supported by Red Hat.

The following section describes how to search for, install, launch, and update Flatpak applications in the graphical interface.

The following section describes how to search for, install, launch, and update Flatpak applications from the command-line.