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Setup¤

There are multiple ways to install Pwndbg, depending on whether you want to use it with GDB, with LLDB, or install it from source.

Installing pwndbg-gdb¤

This will provide the pwndbg program. You can use it the same way you use gdb.

Portable release¤

The install script will automatically fetch and install the portable release from GitHub releases.

Install the binary for all users of the system. This requires root permissions, and will invoke sudo.

Install via curl/sh (Linux/macOS). 

curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -LsSf 'https://install.pwndbg.re' | sh -s -- -t pwndbg-gdb
Install via GNU wget/sh (Linux/macOS) 
wget --https-only --secure-protocol=TLSv1_2 -qO- 'https://install.pwndbg.re' | sh -s -- -t pwndbg-gdb
Install via BusyBox wget/sh (Linux/macOS) 
wget -qO- 'https://install.pwndbg.re' | sh -s -- -t pwndbg-gdb

Install the binary for the current user. Root access not required.

Install via curl/sh (Linux/macOS). 

curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -LsSf 'https://install.pwndbg.re' | sh -s -- -t pwndbg-gdb -u
Install via GNU wget/sh (Linux/macOS) 
wget --https-only --secure-protocol=TLSv1_2 -qO- 'https://install.pwndbg.re' | sh -s -- -t pwndbg-gdb -u
Install via BusyBox wget/sh (Linux/macOS) 
wget -qO- 'https://install.pwndbg.re' | sh -s -- -t pwndbg-gdb -u

Homebrew¤

Install via Homebrew (macOS) 

brew install pwndbg/tap/pwndbg-gdb

Nix¤

Install via the Nix package manager (Linux/macOS) 

nix shell github:pwndbg/pwndbg

Official Pwndbg packages¤

When installing with GDB, you may also download a package to install through your package manager of choice. Download the package from the releases page and pick the appropriate download from the second table.

RPM-based Systems (CentOS/Alma/Rocky/RHEL): 

dnf install ./pwndbg-2026.02.18.x86_64.rpm
DEB-based Systems (Debian/Ubuntu/Kali): 
apt install ./pwndbg_2026.02.18_amd64.deb
Alpine: 
apk add --allow-untrusted ./pwndbg_2026.02.18_x86_64.apk
Arch Linux: 
pacman -U ./pwndbg-2026.02.18-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.zst

Distro packages¤

You may want to install Pwndbg through your distribution's package manager. This installation method is not officially supported because we cannot control the versions of the python dependencies Pwndbg uses in this case. Please use any other installation method when reproducing bug reports (portable package is probably simplest in this case). If a bug reproduces with a distro package but not with any of the supported installation methods, please report it to the package maintainer; if the problem cannot be fixed, let us know and we will add it to a list of known issues below.

sudo pacman -S pwndbg
You will also need to source Pwndbg from your ~/.gdbinit. Add this line to the beginning of that file: 
source /usr/share/pwndbg/gdbinit.py
Pwndbg will be started every time you invoke gdb now.

Note that the Arch package is quite outdated. Once it gets updated you will not need the source line in your ~/.gdbinit and will be able to run Pwndbg with the pwndbg and pwndbg-lldb commands. See packaging Pwndbg.

sudo emerge --ask dev-debug/pwndbg
Pwndbg will now be available with the pwndbg and pwndbg-lldb commands.

Installing pwndbg-lldb¤

These installation methods provide the 

pwndbg-lldb ./your-binary
command.

Portable release¤

Install via curl/sh (Linux/macOS)

curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -LsSf 'https://install.pwndbg.re' | sh -s -- -t pwndbg-lldb

curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -LsSf 'https://install.pwndbg.re' | sh -s -- -t pwndbg-lldb -u

Homebrew¤

Install via Homebrew (macOS) 

brew install pwndbg/tap/pwndbg-lldb

Nix¤

Install via the Nix package manager (Linux/macOS): 

nix shell github:pwndbg/pwndbg#pwndbg-lldb

Manually install the Portable Version¤

You can download a portable release on the Pwndbg releases page. There are seperate releases for GDB and LLDB. Use the first table to pick the appropriate download for your system architecture. You can then unpack the archive with: 

tar -v -xf <archive-name>
And run Pwndbg with 
./pwndbg/bin/pwndbg
or 
./pwndbg/bin/pwndbg-lldb
depending on which version you installed. You may add the appropriate file to your shell's PATH.

Removing Quarantine Flags (macOS)¤

When first setting up the portable version of Pwndbg in macOS, Gatekeeper will normally try to prevent any code in the extracted files from running until the user explicitly allows each file to be run. As we ship many files which would require this, the process of manually granting permission for each one to be run can get quite tiresome.

In order to do this to all files at once, you may choose to run the following command, which removes the quarantine flag from all extracted files at once:

xattr -rd com.apple.quarantine pwndbg

Assuming that the files were extracted to a folder called pwndbg.

Installing from source¤

First things first, you need to have uv installed (and git and curl): 

curl -LsSf https://astral.sh/uv/install.sh | sh
source $HOME/.local/bin/env

If you just want the most up-to-date Pwndbg, the simplest thing to do is just: 

uv tool install git+https://github.com/pwndbg/pwndbg[gdb,lldb]
which gives you the pwndbg and pwndbg-lldb binaries. If you want to update, just re-run this command.

I want to use my system GDB / LLDB¤

If you don't want Pwndbg to use our up-to-date packaged+patched GDB and LLDB, but rather the GDB / LLDB from your system / package manager, you can install Pwndbg with: 

# Assuming that your LLDB and GDB are compiled with the same python version :)
PY_VER=$(gdb -nx --batch -iex 'py import sysconfig; print(sysconfig.get_config_var("VERSION"))')
uv tool install --python=$PY_VER  git+https://github.com/pwndbg/pwndbg
To view supported GDB and LLDB versions and compiling GDB from source, see these instructions.

System GDB, but not like that¤

If you want the "classic" setup, where you run the gdb binary and Pwndbg is sourced from ~/.gdbinit you can do that like this: 

PY_VER=$(gdb -nx --batch -iex 'py import sysconfig; print(sysconfig.get_config_var("VERSION"))')
uv tool install --python=$PY_VER  git+https://github.com/pwndbg/pwndbg
echo "source $(uv tool dir)/pwndbg/share/pwndbg/gdbinit.py" >> ~/.gdbinit

Really from source¤

Running this: 

git clone https://github.com/pwndbg/pwndbg
cd pwndbg
./setup.sh
will get you the same setup as in System GDB, but not like that. You can update with git pull.

In general, if you have the repository cloned you can run the same commands as in the above sections, but replacing git+https://github.com/pwndbg/pwndbg with . (the current folder) and adding --editable so changes in the source are reflected in the installation.

Setup for development¤

For getting setup for development, see contributing/Installing Pwndbg from source.