Download the Istio release

Each Istio release includes a release archive which contains:

A release archive is built for each supported processor architecture and operating system.

Download Istio

Go to the Istio release page to download the installation file for your OS, or download and extract the latest release automatically (Linux or macOS):
```
$ curl -L https://istio.io/downloadIstio | sh -
```
The command above downloads the latest release (numerically) of Istio. You can pass variables on the command line to download a specific version or to override the processor architecture. For example, to download Istio 1.28.1 for the x86_64 architecture, run:
```
$ curl -L https://istio.io/downloadIstio | ISTIO_VERSION=1.28.1 TARGET_ARCH=x86_64 sh -
```
Move to the Istio package directory. For example, if the package is istio-1.28.1:
```
$ cd istio-1.28.1
```
The installation directory contains:
- Sample applications in samples/
- The istioctl client binary in the bin/ directory.
Add the istioctl client to your path (Linux or macOS):
```
$ export PATH=$PWD/bin:$PATH
```