Is it possible to use locally built images (not pushed to a repo) with the k3s that comes with Rancher desktop?

Yes, but you may need to specify the

imagePullPolicy: Never

in your pod spec, especially if you are using the

latest

image tag, which has a default pull policy of

Always

.

Also, a simple example on Rancher Desktop docs here

Yes, I got it to work. I was running into a permission issue last week, which seems to have been resolved by a reboot.