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-compliant 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-compliant application.
container uses the Containerization Swift package for low level container, image, and process management.
You need an Apple silicon Mac to run container. To build it, see the BUILDING document.
container relies on the new features and enhancements present in the macOS 26 beta. You can run the tool on macOS 15, but the container maintainers typically will not address issues discovered on macOS 15 that cannot be reproduced on the macOS 26 beta.
There are significant networking limitations that impact the usability of container on macOS 15.
If you're upgrading, first uninstall your existing container while preserving your user data:
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 start
Use 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. - View the project API documentation.
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 minor 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.