Snap¶

ID: snap
Home page: https://snapcraft.io
Version requirement: >= 2
Platforms: 🅱️ BSD · 🐧 Linux · ⨂ Unix
Operations: installed · outdated · search · install · upgrade · upgrade_all · remove
purl types: pkg:snap
CLI name: snap
Every call: snap <command> --color=never
Issues and PRs: 📦 manager: snap
Source: meta_package_manager/managers/snap.py

Canonical’s snap installs sandboxed, self-updating packages.

snaps refresh themselves on a schedule, so upgrade merely forces a snap refresh sooner. Mutating operations escalate through sudo by default: the privileged work happens in the snapd daemon, but the daemon refuses state changes from an unprivileged client (snap install as a plain user is denied with a hint to retry with sudo), which is why the Snap store documents sudo snap install as the canonical invocation. A host authenticated against the store with snap login (or granted a polkit rule) can drop the wrap with --no-sudo or a [mpm.managers.snap] sudo = false override.

Note

snap localizes and colorizes its table headers with no terminal detection. mpm pins nothing to English: --color=never strips the ANSI, the header row is dropped, and every row is split on whitespace and read by column position, so the translated headers never reach the parser.

Note

snap refresh --list reports only the available version, so outdated looks each installed version up by ID from the cached installed set. search runs snap find, which matches summaries as well as names, so mpm refilters the results.

What `mpm` adds to `snap`¶

Through mpm, snap gains --exact and --extended search, to narrow to exact names or match descriptions.

Bigger still, mpm reaches across every manager at once: mpm installed and mpm outdated cover snap alongside every other manager you run in one table, mpm upgrade --all updates them together, and mpm sbom exports the whole machine as one bill of materials.

Every mpm command also gains --dry-run and --plan previews, cross-scheme version comparison and purl identifiers. See manager augmentations for how each one is built.

Your `snap` commands, in `mpm`¶

You already know snap: each operation maps one-to-one onto mpm, in an interface shared by every manager.

To…	With `snap`	With `mpm`
List what’s installed	`snap list`	`mpm --snap installed`
List outdated packages	`snap refresh --list`	`mpm --snap outdated`
Search for a package	`snap find doc`	`mpm --snap search doc`
Install a package	`sudo snap install standard-notes`	`mpm install pkg:snap/standard-notes`
Upgrade one package	`sudo snap refresh standard-notes`	`mpm --snap upgrade standard-notes`
Upgrade everything	`sudo snap refresh`	`mpm --snap upgrade --all`
Remove a package	`sudo snap remove standard-notes`	`mpm remove pkg:snap/standard-notes`

Prefix any command above with --dry-run to simulate the underlying manager calls without touching the system: the safe way to watch what mpm would do before trusting it.

Operations¶

Operation	Supported	Notes
`installed`	✓
`outdated`	✓
`orphans`
`search`	✓	exact and extended search backfilled by `mpm`
`install`	✓
`upgrade`	✓
`upgrade_all`	✓
`remove`	✓
`sync`
`cleanup`
`doctor`

Selecting and configuring `snap`¶

Deselect snap for a single run with --no-snap, or persist the choice in your configuration:

[mpm]
snap = false

The arguments and environment variables listed in the box atop this page are forced on every snap call, so runs stay quiet, non-interactive and reproducible: the defaults you would set in CI anyway.

Keep it enabled but tune how mpm drives it with a per-manager override:

[mpm.managers.snap]
timeout = 900

mpm config-template snap prints every overridable attribute as a ready-to-paste block.

Recipes¶

A few jobs you would otherwise script around snap, one mpm command each:

Snapshot and clone a machine: mpm --snap dump snap.toml, then mpm restore snap.toml on the next one.
Export a compliance SBOM: mpm --snap sbom (CycloneDX by default, --spdx for SPDX).

Privilege escalation¶

System-wide manager: mpm wraps its privileged operations in sudo out of the box. Instead of letting the tool prompt mid-run, mpm primes the credential cache up-front, with a single branded password prompt at most. Turn escalation off for rootless setups with --no-sudo or the per-manager sudo override.

See privilege escalation for the full policy.

Cooldown¶

State of Snap’s release-age gating, from the cooldown support table:

Status: ➖ N/A (risk channels stable/candidate/beta/edge, plus snap refresh --hold up to 90 days)
Mechanism: snap refresh --hold
Reference: Snap docs

A cooldown only pays off where a compromised release can be withdrawn while the clock runs, and can only be emulated where the registry dates its releases. From the retraction table:

Registry: Snap Store
Retraction: Index revert on the channel pointer: “Promoting and demoting revisions is also a useful progression […] for when a snap needs to revert to an older version as a response to a security concern” (release management)

With --cooldown set, mpm skips this manager’s install and upgrade operations rather than run them unguarded (fail-closed); --allow-unsupported-managers opts back in.

Version probe¶

The version is probed by running:

$ snap --version
snap       2.44.1
snapd      2.44.1
series     16
linuxmint  19.3
kernel     4.15.0-91-generic

and extracted with:

r"snap\s+(?P<version>\S+)"

Reference traces¶

Raw native outputs captured in the manager source: the reference mpm’s parsers were written against. If you know Snap well and a transcript below looks wrong, or a newer release changed its output format, report it.

$ snap list --color=never
Name    Version    Rev   Aufzeichnung   Herausgeber     Hinweise
core    16-2.44.1  8935  latest/stable  canonical✓      core
wechat  2.0        7     latest/stable  ubuntu-dawndiy  -
pdftk   2.02-4     9     latest/stable  smoser          -

$ snap refresh --list --color=never
Name            Version  Rev  Herausgeber     Hinweise
standard-notes  3.3.5    8    standardnotes✓  -

Feed any of these through mpm and the raw output becomes one uniform table, the same shape for every manager: filter it, project columns, or export it (mpm --snap installed --output json, or csv, toml, yaml), each package carrying a purl and a version comparable across managers.

Changelog¶

7.5.0 (2026-08-03)
- Fix snap remove failing with error: unknown flag 'color' on recent snapd by no longer appending --color=never, which remove does not accept.
7.4.0 (2026-07-25)
- Mutating operations now escalate through sudo by default, matching each tool’s canonical invocation (sudo port install, sudo pkg install, sudo snap install): MacPorts installs root-owned under /opt/local, the FreeBSD pkg frontend gains the markers its ports sibling already had, and snapd denies state changes from an unprivileged client. Opt out with --no-sudo or a per-manager sudo = false override. pkg passes IGNORE_OSVERSION as a command-line option now, which survives the sudo environment reset where the environment variable would be stripped.
6.4.0 (2026-04-27)
- Add remove operation. Closes #1775.
5.5.0 (2022-07-08)
- Fix parsing of empty search results.
4.13.1 (2022-04-17)
- Fix command argument order. Address #579.
3.2.0 (2020-05-31)
- Add support for snap on Linux.