Podman Quadlets is what you're after, I think.
this post was submitted on 05 Jan 2026
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I implemented these, but my containers are not starting on system boot. I even set
restart: always
Might be obvious but did you enable the Quadlets? So systemctl enable quadlet.service or whatever the equivalent is. I think the quadlet is just a regular systemd unit.
Edit: I noticed you already got an answer!
No need to enable, it won't work nor do anything. Do need to systemctl --user daemon-reload
Not something baked-in, no, since the entire point of podman is that it's server- (service-)less.
However they do have a command to manually launch the respective user's podman manager, which IIRC is podman system service -t0 (note: runs in the foreground) so if you add that to a service entry (eg.: via runit user units or systemd user scopes) or just launch it via your user crontab's @reboot, it should work without issues.
This is literally my runit user unit for podman:
#!/bin/sh
export XDG_RUNTIME_DIR=/run/user/1000
exec podman system service -t0
You're looking for podlets
Any idea how I can get Quadlet to start on system boot?
This worked! I searched through so many threads trying to find an answer, and this was the answer. Thank you so much. I only needed the below text added to my ~/.config/containers/systemd/my-custom-quadlet.container. Nice and simple:
[Install]
WantedBy=default.target
Happy to help! Arch wiki is often a great resource even when using other distros
This looks great! But I'm seeing here that it hasn't been updated since November 2024.