Exposing ApplicationSets Beyond YAML: Argo CD's ApplicationSet UI

On June 9, 2026, the Argo Project announced a significant advancement in Argo CD's user experience with the introduction of a dedicated ApplicationSet UI. This new interface, an alpha feature slated for the upcoming Argo CD v3.5 release, directly addresses a long-standing community request for a more intuitive way to manage ApplicationSets. The Release Candidate for v3.5 is expected on June 16, 2026, making this announcement particularly timely for users anticipating the new version. Historically, managing ApplicationSets in Argo CD involved command-line tools or direct manipulation of YAML files, which could be cumbersome for complex deployments. The new UI aims to streamline this by providing a visual layer that makes GitOps principles more accessible. It includes a familiar list page, offering robust search capabilities with substring matching and various filtering options, alongside a health-summary pie chart for quick overviews. Crucially, Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) is enforced, ensuring that users' visibility and actions within the UI align precisely with their CLI permissions. A standout feature is the hierarchical resource tree, which visually represents the ApplicationSet at its root and all its generated child Applications. This clear visualization helps users understand the relationships and dependencies within their multi-cluster deployments. Additionally, the UI incorporates a "Preview" function, allowing users to inspect the generated YAML of their ApplicationSet specification. This includes the ability to make temporary edits to a generator and then preview the resulting diff, showing how changes would affect live applications, the unified diff of proposed alterations, and the desired state of applications if the changes were applied. While the ApplicationSet UI is introduced as a read-only alpha feature in v3.5, it marks a substantial step towards enhancing operational efficiency and simplifying the management of distributed applications. The article emphasizes that Argo CD remains a GitOps tool, with Git serving as the primary source of truth for creating, updating, and deleting ApplicationSets. The development team anticipates further refinements and feature additions, indicating that the UI's look and behavior may evolve in future iterations.