Binary Installation on Ubuntu

Rotary binaries are published for Ubuntu Noble (24.04) and Ubuntu Resolute (26.04) via the nightly packages repository at packages.osrfoundation.org. To install all of them, the metapackage gz-rotary can be installed.

Warning

Rotary is a rolling, unstable stream. Packages are updated nightly and breakage is expected. For production use, install a named release such as Jetty instead.

First install some necessary tools:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install curl lsb-release gnupg

Then install Gazebo Rotary:

sudo curl https://packages.osrfoundation.org/gazebo.gpg --output /usr/share/keyrings/pkgs-osrf-archive-keyring.gpg
echo "deb [arch=$(dpkg --print-architecture) signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/pkgs-osrf-archive-keyring.gpg] http://packages.osrfoundation.org/gazebo/ubuntu-stable $(lsb_release -cs) main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/gazebo-stable.list > /dev/null
echo "deb [arch=$(dpkg --print-architecture) signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/pkgs-osrf-archive-keyring.gpg] http://packages.osrfoundation.org/gazebo/ubuntu-nightly $(lsb_release -cs) main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/gazebo-nightly.list > /dev/null
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install gz-rotary

All libraries should be ready to use and the gz sim app ready to be executed.

Head back to the Getting started page to start using Gazebo!

Server-only installation

For headless and CI environments where the GUI is not needed, the gz-sim-server package provides a lightweight alternative. It installs only the Gazebo simulation server (gz-sim-server) without any GUI or Qt dependencies, resulting in a significantly smaller installation footprint.

After configuring the repository (same as above), install the server-only package:

sudo apt-get install gz-sim-server

The server-only package includes the DART physics engine and the core simulation server plugins. To start a headless simulation:

/usr/libexec/gz/sim/gz-sim-server <world_file.sdf>

Note

The server-only binary is installed at /usr/libexec/gz/sim/gz-sim-server, which is not in the PATH by default. The regular gz sim -s command is not available in the server-only installation since it requires the full gz-sim-cli package.

Uninstalling binary install

If you need to uninstall Gazebo Rotary or switch to a source-based install, run the following command:

sudo apt remove gz-rotary && sudo apt autoremove

Troubleshooting

See Troubleshooting