The sidebar
Your instances, how many are running, New Instance, and the people who built MSL.
On this page 5 sections
Instance rows#
Each row shows:
- The distro badge — a rounded square in the distro's colour with its symbol. Click it to give the instance its own logo.
- The name, and the distro under it.
- A status dot on the right: green running, orange suspended, yellow starting, grey stopped. While the instance is busy — starting, suspending, restoring a snapshot — a small spinner replaces the dot.
Click a row to show that instance in the detail pane.
The capacity pill#
Beside the Instances heading, a pill like 2/4 shows how many instances are running (or suspended) out of the most MSL will run at once. It turns orange when every slot is taken, and hovering over it explains.
Suspended instances count because they still hold their memory on your Mac. See How many can run at once.
Right-click menu#
Right-click (or Control-click) any instance:
| Item | What it does |
|---|---|
| Start | Starts or resumes it. Only shown when it isn't running, greyed out when every slot is taken. |
| Suspend | Freezes it in memory. Only shown while running. |
| Shut Down | Stops it straight away. Only shown while running — read the note on Shut Down first. |
| Open in Terminal.app | Opens a shell on it in a Terminal.app window. |
| Show Apps in Finder | Opens the folder of Mac apps MSL has made for it. |
| Change Logo… | Pick its badge. Same as clicking the badge — see Instance logos. |
| Remove… | Removes the instance. See the warning below. |
New Instance#
At the bottom of the list. Same as ⌘N. See Creating an instance.
Built by#
Under that, a strip of small avatars: everyone who has landed a commit in MSL's repository, read live from GitHub. Hover to see their names; click to open the contributors page. If GitHub can't be reached, the strip quietly doesn't appear — nothing in the sidebar ever nags about it. The About window's Contributors section has everyone in full, each with their own colour. ٩(ˊᗜˋ*)و