Installing and updating Postman

Installing Postman on Windows

Postman is available for Windows 7 and later.

1. Download the latest Postman version.
2. Select and run the .exe file to install Postman.

Postman v9.4 is the last version of Postman that supports both 32-bit and 64-bit Windows. All versions of Postman following v9.4 will only work on 64-bit Windows. You can continue to use Postman v9.4 and earlier on 32-bit Windows.

Installing Postman on Mac

Postman is available for macOS 10.11 (El Capitan) and later.

1. Download the latest Postman version.
   

   Make sure to download the Mac Apple Chip version if you have a Mac with the M1 or M2 processor.

2. If your browser downloads the file as a ZIP file, find the file in the Downloads folder and unzip it.
3. In the Downloads folder, double-click the Postman file to install it.
4. When prompted, move the file to your Applications folder. This will ensure that future updates can be installed correctly.

You may encounter a “Library not loaded” error if you unzip and install Postman using a third-party archiving app. Use the default Archive Utility for Mac to unzip the file.

You can also install Postman using the Homebrew package manager:

brew install --cask postman

Installing Postman on Linux

You can install Postman on Linux by manually downloading it, using the Snap store link, or with the command snap install postman.

To install manually, download and unzip the app, for example into the Downloads directory.

To start the app from a launcher icon, create a desktop file. Name the file Postman.desktop and save it in the following location:

~/.local/share/applications/Postman.desktop

Enter the following content in the file, replacing /path/to/Downloads with the location of the file, and save it:

[Desktop Entry]
Encoding=UTF-8
Name=Postman
Exec=/path/to/Downloads/Postman/app/Postman %U
Icon=/path/to/Downloads/Postman/app/resources/app/assets/icon.png
Terminal=false
Type=Application
Categories=Development;

Postman supports the following distributions:

• Ubuntu 14.04 and newer
• Fedora 24
• Debian 8 and newer

The support of certain Linux distributions depends on if they’re supported by Electron. Refer to Electron’s documentation.

It’s recommended you install Snap as it includes all the libraries that the app needs and they’re bundled with the app itself.

Avoid starting Postman using the sudo command, as it will create permission issues on the files created by Postman.

Make sure you have read/write permission for the ~/.config folder where Postman stores information.

If you are an Ubuntu 18 user, you will also need to install the libgconf-2-4 package with the command apt-get install libgconf-2-4

Using the Postman web app

You can use Postman in your web browser to carry out your API development and testing tasks in conjunction with the Postman Agent. To access the Postman web app, visit go.postman.co/home.

Browser requirements

The Postman web app is optimized for the following browsers:

• Chrome (78 and higher)
• Firefox (76 and higher)
• Edge (79 and higher)
• Safari (13.1.1 and higher)

Installing the Postman Desktop Agent

If you are using the Postman web app, you also need to download the Postman Desktop Agent, a micro-application that runs locally on your desktop. The Desktop Agent overcomes the Cross Object Resource Sharing (CORS) limitations of browsers and acts as your agent for making API calls from the Postman web app.

You will be prompted to download and install the Desktop Agent so that you can make requests from the Postman web app. You can also download the agent directly from the Postman Agent page. Once you have the Desktop Agent installed you will be able to use it with web requests.

To learn more about the Postman Desktop Agent, read the Introducing the Postman Agent blog post.

Selecting the agent for requests

From the Postman web app, you can select the agent you would like to use for your requests:

• Auto-select – Postman automatically selects the best agent to use for your request.
• Cloud – Manually select this option to send HTTP requests using Postman’s cloud servers.
• Desktop – Manually select this option to send requests using the Postman Desktop Agent.
• Browser – Manually select this option to send requests using your browser, with some limitations.

If you send a request and it isn’t successful because the agent isn’t selected, you can use the provided link in the response area to switch to the agent and send your request again.

Web limitations

The Postman web app is under active development. There are features you can only access in the Postman desktop app, not in your browser:

• Find and replace – The Postman desktop app supports finding and replacing values in a workspace, but this function isn’t available on the Postman web app yet.
• Certificates and proxy – The Postman desktop app enables you to customize certificates and proxy configurations. On the Postman web app, these take the browser defined value and can’t be overridden by Postman.
• Postman Interceptor – Interceptor syncs cookies from your browser to the Postman desktop app and captures network requests directly from the browser. It’s not possible to use Interceptor with the Postman web app.
• Scratch Pad – The Postman desktop app supports working in Postman offline using the Scratch Pad.

Updating Postman

The Postman desktop app notifies you when a major update is available. For other updates, there is a dot on the settings icon . If the indicator is red instead of orange, it indicates a failed update.

Select the update option to download or install the latest update. If you are using Postman v9.13 or later, Postman automatically downloads updates. Postman notifies you when the download is complete and prompts you to restart Postman to apply the updates.

Postman Chrome app (deprecated)

The Postman Chrome app is deprecated. If you use the Chrome app, you can keep your data when you switch to using Postman either by syncing with your Postman account or by exporting from Chrome and importing into Postman.

The Postman desktop app is built on Electron, and overcomes a number of restrictions of the Chrome platform.

• The native apps let you work with cookies directly.
• Unlike the Chrome app, the Interceptor doesn’t need a separate extension.
• The native apps come with a built-in proxy that you can use to capture network traffic.
• The native apps aren’t restricted by the Chrome standards for the menu bar. You can check for updates, create Postman Windows and tabs, and edit preferences.
• The native apps let you send headers like Origin and User-Agent. These are restricted in the Chrome app.
• The “don’t follow redirects” option exists in the native apps to prevent requests that return a 300-series response from being automatically redirected—doing this in the Chrome app requires the Interceptor extension.
• The native app has a built-in console, which enables you to view the network request details for API calls.

Migrating to the native app

To switch from the Chrome app to native, download Postman and sign in to your account. Start the native app, and your history and collections will be automatically synced.

Alternatively, if you don’t want to sign in to your Postman account, you can bulk export your Postman data from the Chrome app, and then bulk import into the new native app at Settings > Data.

Note that importing will overwrite your existing data. For more on bulk import, see Importing Postman data.

Using Postman behind a firewall

Postman’s infrastructure runs on Amazon’s AWS platform. If you are operating behind a network firewall, you will need to allow the following domains to make WebSocket connections for Postman:

• \*.getpostman.com
• \*.postman.co
• \*.pstmn.io
• \*postman.com

By default, WebSocket connections use the same ports as HTTP (80) and HTTPS (443).

Postman doesn’t have a fixed IP range that can be provided. If necessary, refer to the current AWS IP ranges and allow the broad range provided.