Announced in summer 2025, Ubiquiti is now supporting the self-installation of UniFi OS Server on your own hardware, meaning features previously unavailable such as Teleport VPN, UniFi Identity, Site Magic and more, are now available without the need for a Cloud Key or UniFi Dream Machine. It is supported on macOS, Windows and Linux.

If you're looking to host UniFi OS Server, you can do so with HostiFi.

‍Sign up today and get access to our fast support, regular off-site backups and managed updates.

How to install UniFi OS on Windows

To use UniFi OS Server on Windows, you need to enable WSL2. To do so, run open PowerShell as Administrator and run wsl --install

Now, download the installer using Ubiquiti's official page. For Windows, both x86 and arm64 machines are supported.

To check which one you need, visit the About This PC page and if it says ARM then choose arm64, otherwise choose x64.

To install UniFi OS Server, open the downloaded file

It'll then load the installer, this process takes around 2 minutes to complete.

Then, follow the installation prompts and wait for UniFi OS Server to install.

When prompted to do so, reboot your machine to finalise the installation.

It'll then boot up, this process takes around 2 minutes to complete.

Once finished, it'll automatically open a web page for further configuration.

From here you can restore from a backup, setup as new and adopt new devices. UniFi OS can even be used in offline mode without an Ubiquiti SSO account, although this removes support for Site Manager, SiteMagic, Teleport and others.

Conclusion

Being able to install UniFi OS Server on Windows provides easy deployment for small environments for testing purposes, but for use in production across multiple external sites it could get complicated. This is where HostiFi comes in, with fast support, global data centre presence, managed updates and regular backups.

HostiFi

HostiFi provides hosting for Ubiquiti software platforms, with servers for UniFi and UISP. We also offer network consulting, with HostiFi Professional Services.