Managing ApplicationSets in the Web UI

Warning

Alpha Feature (Since v3.5.0)

This is an alpha feature. The look, behavior, and APIs it consumes may change in future releases or be removed in backwards-incompatible ways.

The Argo CD Web UI includes views for ApplicationSets, with a list page, a resource tree, a slide-out details panel, and a preview tab that lets you see what Applications an ApplicationSet will generate.

ApplicationSets can also be managed outside the UI through:

• The CLI - kubectl or the argocd appset command
• The generated child Applications, viewed individually in the UI
• A parent App-of-Apps, if the ApplicationSet was one of its managed resources

ApplicationSets list page

The /applicationsets page is the entry point. It lives next to the existing Applications list and shares the same filtering, search, and view-preferences, so it should feel familiar.

You can reach it from the top-level navigation, or directly at https://<your-argocd>/applicationsets.

What's on the page:

• Search bar — substring matches against name and namespace. Use the keyboard shortcut / to focus it.
• Filters sidebar — filter by project, namespace, labels, and ApplicationSet health status (Healthy, Progressing, Degraded, Unknown). Filters are reflected in the URL so they can be shared or bookmarked.
• Health summary — a pie chart at the top summarizes the health of ApplicationSets matching the current filter.
• Tile / table views — toggle between a tile grid and a table view. The table view shows name, namespace, project, health, conditions, and the number of generated Applications.

Tip

The page shows ApplicationSets across every namespace your user has access to. RBAC is enforced exactly as on the CLI — if you can get an ApplicationSet from argocd appset get, you can see it here.

ApplicationSet resource tree

Selecting an ApplicationSet from the list opens its details page. The center of the page is a resource tree that visualizes the ApplicationSet and the child Applications it generates.

Things to know:

• The root node is the ApplicationSet itself. Each downstream node is a child Application generated by the ApplicationSet.
• Health and sync status icons render on each node the same way they do on the Application resource tree.
• Clicking a child Application navigates to that Application's own details page.

Status bar: health, conditions, age

The top of the ApplicationSet details page shows a status bar summarizing the ApplicationSet at a glance: its health, the count of conditions by severity, and last updated.

Health is derived by the ApplicationSet controller from the ApplicationSet's status.conditions and surfaced through the status.health field on the resource. For the controller-side derivation rules and how the field is populated, see ApplicationSet Web UI.

Conditions

The conditions modal shows each condition's type, status, the message reported by the controller and when it was last reported. This is usually the first place to look when an ApplicationSet shows up as Degraded or Unknown.

Slide-out panel: Summary, Manifest, Events, Preview

Clicking the ApplicationSet node (or any node on the tree) opens a slide-out panel from the right edge of the screen — the same pattern used elsewhere in Argo CD for resource details.

Summary

Shows metadata at a glance: name, namespace, creation timestamp, health, conditions, labels, annotations, and sync policy.

If the ApplicationSet has conditions, the CONDITIONS row links to a detailed conditions view so you can see warnings or errors raised by the controller (for example, a generator that failed to evaluate).

Manifest

A read-only YAML view of the ApplicationSet's spec.

Events

Kubernetes events for the ApplicationSet — useful when investigating why a particular generator parameter set produced (or failed to produce) an Application.

Preview

The Preview tab renders the Applications an ApplicationSet would generate, with a diff against the live state. It is covered in detail in the next section.

Preview: see what your ApplicationSet will generate

The PREVIEW tab shows the Applications an ApplicationSet would generate from its current spec. When you edit the spec, a diff between the proposed output and the live state is rendered.

The result is rendered in three sub-tabs:

Tab	Shows
DIFF	The default tab. A unified diff of each Application that would change.
LIVE APPS	The Applications generated by the ApplicationSet on the cluster.
DESIRED APPS	The Applications that would be generated if the proposed spec were applied.

Each entry in DIFF represents one child Application and is categorized as added (only in DESIRED APPS), removed (only in LIVE APPS), or modified (present in both with field-level differences).

Editing the spec

Click Edit on the ApplicationSet manifest card to make the YAML editable. Hit Preview again and the diff regenerates against your edits. Click Cancel to discard local edits.

Important

Edits in the Preview tab are never saved. The tab is a sandbox; to persist a change you must update the ApplicationSet through your normal GitOps flow (or via kubectl apply / argocd appset create).

Permission-denied behavior

Generating a preview requires permission to create ApplicationSets in the target project. If you don't have it, the Preview tab returns a clear permission-denied message instead of a diff. For the exact RBAC requirement, see ApplicationSet Web UI: RBAC for Preview.

Changes to Applications generated by an ApplicationSet

For Applications that are generated by an ApplicationSet (i.e. that have an ApplicationSet ownerReference), the Application UI surfaces the parent ApplicationSet on the resource tree in two ways.

Owner badge

A small badge labeled with the parent ApplicationSet's name appears on the Application node. Clicking it jumps directly to the ApplicationSet details page.

Show / hide parent ApplicationSet

In the Application's view preferences, a toggle — Show parent ApplicationSet — adds the parent ApplicationSet as a synthetic root node on the resource tree, with an edge to the Application. This is useful when you want a single view that includes both the ApplicationSet and the Application it produced.

When the toggle is on, the badge is hidden (since the parent is already rendered explicitly).

Per-Application preview from the app-of-appset pattern

When you use the app-of-ApplicationSets pattern — an Application whose resources include an ApplicationSet — the ApplicationSet node on the parent Application's tree includes a preview feature in its slide-out panel. Selecting it opens a panel with a Preview experience similar to the one described above, scoped to the changes that would land when you sync the parent Application.

There are two important differences from the standalone Preview tab:

• Desired state comes from Git, not an editor. The proposed ApplicationSet is the target manifest tracked by the parent Application (i.e. what's in Git). There is no YAML editor in this panel.
• Only available when the ApplicationSet is OutOfSync. If the parent Application's ApplicationSet resource is already in sync, there is no diff to show — the panel renders a short status message instead.

This is the bridge between "I have a pending sync on my parent Application" and "show me which child Applications would change as a result."

Known limitations

• The Preview tab compares whole Application manifests. It does not recurse into the Kubernetes resources inside each child Application — for that, sync the child Application and use the existing Application diff view.
• Generators that depend on external systems (Git, SCM Provider, Pull Request, Cluster) are re-evaluated each time you click Preview. If the upstream system is slow or flaky, the preview will reflect that.
• The UI honors ApplicationSet RBAC. Users who cannot create ApplicationSets in the target project will not be able to render a preview, even if they can get the ApplicationSet.