container is a tool that you can use to create and run Linux containers as lightweight virtual machines on your Mac. It's written in Swift, and optimized for Apple silicon.
The tool consumes and produces OCI-compatible container images, so you can pull and run images from any standard container registry. You can push images that you build to those registries as well, and run the images in any other OCI-compatible application.
container uses the Containerization Swift package for low level container, image, and process management.
You need a Mac with Apple silicon to run container. To build it, see the BUILDING document.
container is supported on macOS 26, since it takes advantage of new features and enhancements to virtualization and networking in this release. We do not support older versions of macOS and the container maintainers typically will not address issues that cannot be reproduced on the macOS 26.
If you're upgrading, first stop and uninstall your existing container (the -k flag keeps your user data, while -d removes it):
container system stop
uninstall-container.sh -kDownload the latest signed installer package for container from the GitHub release page.
To install the tool, double-click the package file and follow the instructions. Enter your administrator password when prompted, to give the installer permission to place the installed files under /usr/local.
Start the system service with:
container system startUse the uninstall-container.sh script to remove container from your system. To remove your user data along with the tool, run:
uninstall-container.sh -dTo retain your user data so that it is available should you reinstall later, run:
uninstall-container.sh -k- Take a guided tour of
containerby building, running, and publishing a simple web server image. - Learn how to use various
containerfeatures. - Read a brief description and technical overview of
container. - Browse the full command reference.
- Build and run
containeron your own development system. - View the project API documentation.
Important
The links above are for the CURRENT BRANCH's documentation. To find documentation for official releases, find the target release on the Release Page and click the tag corresponding to your release version.
Example: release 0.4.1 tag
Contributions to container are welcomed and encouraged. Please see our main contributing guide for more information.
The container project is currently under active development. Its stability, both for consuming the project as a Swift package and the container tool, is only guaranteed within patch versions, such as between 0.1.1 and 0.1.2. Minor version number releases may include breaking changes until we achieve a 1.0.0 release.