Workstation Installation — Isaac Sim Documentation

Last updated: 12/12/2025

Title: Workstation Installation — Isaac Sim Documentation

URL Source: https://docs.isaacsim.omniverse.nvidia.com/latest/installation/install_workstation.html

Published Time: Tue, 21 Oct 2025 19:24:38 GMT

Markdown Content: Workstation Installation#

The workstation installation is recommended if you want to run Isaac Sim as a GUI application on Windows or Linux with a GPU.

See also

Note

  • Omniverse Launcher, Nucleus Workstation, and Nucleus Cache will be deprecated and will no longer be available starting October 1, 2025.

  • For those who want to use Nucleus and Live Sync after October 1, 2025, please use Enterprise Nucleus Server.

  • Nucleus Cache is replaced by Hub Workstation Cache.

  • If you have issues installing Hub Workstation Cache in Windows, run:

mklink /d %APPDATA%\ov %LOCALAPPDATA%\ov

Isaac Sim Compatibility Checker#

The Isaac Sim Compatibility Checker is a lightweight application that programmatically checks the above requirements and indicates which of them are valid, or not, for running NVIDIA Isaac Sim on the machine.

The application can be run either from a binary installation (Workstation, Container or Open-Source repository) or from Python packages (pip install), as follows:

  1. Install/build Isaac Sim according to the target setup workflow.
2. Run the `isaac-sim.compatibility_check.sh` script on Linux, or the `isaac-sim.compatibility_check.bat` script on Windows.
  • From Python packages (pip install):
  1. Follow the instructions to install Isaac Sim from Python packages.

Hint

You can use pip install isaacsim[compatibility-check] to install a minimal setup for the Compatibility Checker app instead of installing the full version. 2. Run the isaacsim isaacsim.exp.compatibility_check command.

  • Run headless:

$ docker run --entrypoint bash -it --gpus all --rm --network=host
nvcr.io/nvidia/isaac-sim:5.1.0 ./isaac-sim.compatibility_check.sh --/app/quitAfter=10 --no-window

* Run as GUI:

$ xhost +local: $ docker run --entrypoint bash -it --gpus all --rm --network=host
-e "PRIVACY_CONSENT=Y"
-v $HOME/.Xauthority:/isaac-sim/.Xauthority
-e DISPLAY
nvcr.io/nvidia/isaac-sim:5.1.0 ./isaac-sim.compatibility_check.sh

Verifying Compatibility#

The application highlights, in color, the following states:

  • green excellent

  • light-green good

  • orange enough, more is recommended

  • red not enough/unsupported

The application checks:

  • NVIDIA GPU: Driver version, RTX-capable GPU, GPU VRAM

  • CPU, RAM and Storage: CPU processor, Number of CPU cores, RAM, Available storage space

  • Others: Operating system, Display

Image 1: Isaac Sim Compatibility Checker app examples The Test Kit button, launches a minimal Kit application (in headless mode) and checks if its execution was successful or not, reporting the result on the panel next to it.

Workstation Setup#

  1. Review the requirements. See Isaac Sim Requirements.

  2. Optionally, for the full development install, make sure you have Visual Studio Code to view and debug source code.

Isaac Sim Install and Launch#

The Isaac Sim app can be run directly from the command line with isaac-sim.bat or ./isaac-sim.sh.

The first run of the Isaac Sim app takes some time to warm up the shader cache.

To run Isaac Sim with a fresh config, use the --reset-user flag. This flag can be entered in the Extra Args section of the Isaac Sim App Selector or when running Isaac Sim in command line.

Nucleus, Cache, and Hub are not needed to run Isaac Sim.

  1. Download the Latest Release of Isaac Sim for your platform to the Downloads folder.

  2. Create a folder named isaacsim at c:/ or at the root of your Linux environment.

  3. Unzip the package to that folder.

  4. Navigate to that folder.

  5. To create a symlink to the extension_examples for the tutorials, run the post_install script. The script can be run at this stage or after installation.

  • On Linux, run ./post_install.sh.

    • On Windows, double click post_install.bat.
  1. Use one of the following methods to run the Isaac Sim App Selector:
* On Linux, run `./isaac-sim.selector.sh`. * On Windows, double click `isaac-sim.selector.bat`.

Image 2: ../_images/isim_4.5_base_ref_gui_ui_app_selector.png

  1. In the popup window choose Isaac Sim Full.

  2. Click START to run the Isaac Sim main app.

A command window opens and runs scripts.

You may need to login to Omniverse.

The command window continues running scripts.

Then the Isaac Sim GUI window opens with nothing displayed in it. It can take 5-10 minutes to complete.

  1. Proceed to Quick Tutorials to begin the first Basic Tutorial.

Note

There may be situations in which an internal conflict causes failures within the cache and configuration systems of Isaac Sim (for example, if there is a version mismatch between a source installation and a python package installation). If this occurs, the following may prove useful:

  • The --reset-user flag can be used to reset the user configuration to its default state.

  • The clear_caches.sh and .bat scripts can be used to clear the cache in Linux and Windows respectively.

Example Installation#

For example, from the command line, execute the following commands:

Linux (x86_64)

mkdir ~/isaacsim cd ~/Downloads unzip "isaac-sim-standalone-5.1.0-linux-x86_64.zip" -d ~/isaacsim cd ~/isaacsim ./post_install.sh ./isaac-sim.selector.sh

Linux (aarch64)

mkdir ~/isaacsim cd ~/Downloads unzip "isaac-sim-standalone-5.1.0-linux-aarch64.zip" -d ~/isaacsim cd ~/isaacsim ./post_install.sh ./isaac-sim.selector.sh

Windows

mkdir C:\isaacsim cd %USERPROFILE%/Downloads tar -xvzf "isaac-sim-standalone-5.1.0-windows-x86_64.zip" -C C:\isaacsim cd C:\isaacsim post_install.bat isaac-sim.selector.bat

Final load message example:

Image 3: ../_images/final_load.png

Links/Buttons:

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