Customizing GitHub-hosted runners
You can install additional software on GitHub-hosted runners as a part of your workflow.
In this article
If you require additional software packages on GitHub-hosted runners, you can create a job that installs the packages as part of your workflow.
To see which packages are already installed by default, see GitHub-hosted runners.
This guide demonstrates how to create a job that installs additional software on a GitHub-hosted runner.
Installing software on Ubuntu runners
The following example demonstrates how to install an apt package as part of a job.
name: Build on Ubuntu
on: push
jobs:
build:
runs-on: ubuntu-latest
steps:
- name: Check out repository code
uses: actions/checkout@v6
- name: Install jq tool
run: |
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install jq
Note
Always run sudo apt-get update before installing a package. In case the apt index is stale, this command fetches and re-indexes any available packages, which helps prevent package installation failures.
Installing software on macOS runners
The following example demonstrates how to install Brew packages and casks as part of a job.
name: Build on macOS
on: push
jobs:
build:
runs-on: macos-latest
steps:
- name: Check out repository code
uses: actions/checkout@v6
- name: Install GitHub CLI
run: |
brew update
brew install gh
- name: Install Microsoft Edge
run: |
brew update
brew install --cask microsoft-edge
Installing software on Windows runners
The following example demonstrates how to use Chocolatey to install the GitHub CLI as part of a job.
name: Build on Windows
on: push
jobs:
build:
runs-on: windows-latest
steps:
- run: choco install gh
- run: gh version