Usage

WSL Plus provides two interfaces for managing WSL distributions: a command-line interface (CLI) and a graphical user interface (GUI).

It is recommended that you build it from source to test it, although downloads are provided as release artifacts on GitHub if you have difficulty with building.

Prerequisites for building

  • Windows 11

  • Go — required to build the CLI

  • Flutter — required to build the GUI

With go and flutter installed and on your PATH, you can then build the CLI and the GUI using the batch scripts in the repo.

For build instructions, refer to the dedicated build docs.

Quickstart

Tip

To use the tool, WSL needs to be installed and enabled.

Clone the repo:

git clone https://github.com/edibotopic/wslp.git

After cloning, change into the repo’s root directory, then build the CLI and the GUI with build.bat.

Then, still within root of the repo, the following steps will enable usage of the CLI and GUI.

  • For CLI: Use wslp.exe directly

    .\wslp.exe list
.\wslp.exe backup Ubuntu

  • For GUI: Run rungui.bat

This last command automatically starts the backend server and launches the GUI.

Warning

You may need to allow the app to open. Do it.

Tip

You can also download release artifacts from the GitHub repo if you don’t want to build the app.

Installing the CLI tool to your path

From within the repo’s root, run:

go install .

Now you can call wslp directly from anywhere.

CLI Usage

The CLI provides direct command-line access to WSL management functions.

For example, to list distributions:

wslp list

Example output:

Found 2 registered distributions:
  - Ubuntu
  - Debian

Some commands can allow bulk operations, for example:

wslp install <distro-name> [distro-name...]

Examples:

# Install a single distribution
wslp install Ubuntu

# Install multiple distributions
wslp install Ubuntu Debian archlinux

There is also a server that is used as the backend for the GUI.

wslp serve

This starts the HTTP API server on port 8080 (default). This is required for the GUI to function.

GUI Usage

The GUI provides a visual interface for managing WSL distributions.

The main screen displays all registered WSL distributions as cards. The default distribution is highlighted with a badge and appears first in the list.

Click the Refresh List button in the sidebar to reload the current list of distributions. Note that the list auto-refreshes every 5 seconds.

The GUI offers both bulk commands, which are accessible from the side navigation, and per-distro commands, which are accessible in the context menu for each distro.

The activity log at the bottom of the screen shows:

  • Successful operations (marked with ✓ in green)

  • Errors (marked with ✗ in red)

  • Installation progress

Click Clear Log to reset the activity log.