Installing the Octez client

You can install the Octez client directly on your computer or use a Docker image that has the most recent version of the Octez tools installed.

Installing the Octez client locally

You can install the Octez client on your computer by using your package manager. Then, initialize it to use the RPC node of your choice:

Install the client:
- For MacOS, you can install Octez with the Homebrew formula
- On Linux and Windows WSL, you can download and install the built binaries from the Octez release page
- For Ubuntu and Linux distributions that use apt, you may also follow the instructions in the Octez documentation to install deb packages.
For more local installation options, see Installing Octez in the Octez documentation.
Verify that the Octez client is installed by running this command:
```
octez-client --version
```
If you see a message with the version of Octez that you have installed, the Octez client is installed correctly. For help on Octez, run octez-client --help or see the Octez documentation.
Initialize the client's configuration file by running this command:
```
octez-client config init
```
This command creates a default configuration file in the location $HOME/.tezos-client/config. If the command above complains that the configuration file already exists, first remove the file or do octez-client config reset.
Set the RPC node to use:
1. Get the URL of a public RPC node or a private node that you have access to. For example, you can get the URL of a testnet node from https://teztnets.com/, such as https://rpc.shadownet.teztnets.com for Shadownet.
2. Set your Octez client to use this node by running this command on the command line, replacing the Shadownet URL with the URL that you copied:
```
octez-client --endpoint https://rpc.shadownet.teztnets.com config update
```
  If you are using a testnet, Octez shows a warning that you are not using Mainnet. You can hide this message by setting the TEZOS_CLIENT_UNSAFE_DISABLE_DISCLAIMER environment variable to "YES".
3. Verify that you are using the correct RPC URL by running this command:
```
octez-client config show
```
  The response from Octez includes the URL of the RPC node that you are using.

For a full list of Octez client commands, run octez-client man.

Troubleshooting

The error Unrecognized command can mean that you typed a command incorrectly, but it can also mean that the client is not connected to an RPC node. Try using a different RPC node by passing its URL to the config update command as shown above.

Using the Octez client in the Tezos Docker image

The Tezos Docker image contains the latest version of the Octez client and the other Octez tools. To start a container from this image, run this command:

docker run -it --rm --entrypoint /bin/sh --name octez-container tezos/tezos:latest

You can verify that the Octez client is available in the container by running this command:

octez-client --version

Then set the RPC node for the client as described above.

For more information about using the Docker image, see Using Docker images in the Octez documentation.