Tools: Building Wsl-ui: Registry Surgery And Container Imports 2026

Posted on Jan 19

• Originally published at wsl-ui.octasoft.co.uk

Two features in WSL-UI required digging deeper than I expected: renaming distributions and importing from container registries. Both taught me things about Windows and container ecosystems I didn't know before.

Here's a fun fact: there's no wsl --rename command. If you want to rename a WSL distribution, you're on your own.

The official Microsoft guidance? Export the distribution, delete it, and import it with a new name. That works, but it's slow (especially for large distributions) and loses metadata.

WSL keeps track of distributions in the Windows Registry:

Under this key, each distribution has a subkey named with its GUID:

The GUID is the true identifier. The DistributionName is just a label.

Renaming turns out to be straightforward — change the DistributionName value:

But there's a catch: the distribution must be stopped. If it's running, the registry changes won't take effect until the next WSL restart, and the UI will be confused about the current state.

A distribution name appears in several places beyond the registry:

Source: Dev.to