Whenever I try to use helm I get the following error:

Error: Kubernetes cluster unreachable: Get "<http://localhost:8080/version>": dial tcp [::1]:8080: connect: connection refused

Has anyone run into this before? Any thoughts on how to fix it? (I tried searching it online but none of the fixes worked).

When a Kubernetes tool looks for http://localhost:8080 then that almost always means it's not seeing the kubeconfig file (default *NIX location of ~/.kube/config ).

@rough-farmer-49135, I hear you. I saw a couple of suggestions on how to fix that, but for some reason--at least on macOS Ventura-- that didn't seem to do it. I wonder if there is something specific to macOS that would cause that?

I'm not a Mac user and only used early Rancher Desktop, so no more info from me. Though you might be able to do better searches with "missing kubeconfig" in your search terms?

kubectl config current-context

should show

rancher-desktop

. If not, then check rancher settings and confirm kubernetes cluster started.

Thank you, @white-xylophone-9961! Apparently I had to delete the config file and start fresh.

I also should've said, try

kubectl config use-context rancher-desktop

to switch to it. You may have other clusters to manage.

That did it! Thank you 🙂