The fastest and easiest way to get started with Docker on Mac. With Windows 10 introducing WSL2 you can now run Docker image from Ubuntu running via WSL2 that’s connected to your Host’s Docker Desktop app. That’s just insane! It’s inception in OS level. Today we will take a look at how to turn on this integration, so you can run Docker inside Ubuntu that’s running inside Windows 10 via WSL2. Getting Docker Desktop for Windows. Docker Desktop for Windows is free to download. If you don't understand something about Docker Desktop for Windows, the extensive documentation is a great place to look for answers. Support for Docker Desktop is available to Docker customers on a Pro or Team plan by completing the. That's the prerequisite starter for Docker Desktop covered, so now lets get to the main course! Installing Docker Desktop for Windows 1. Download and Install. Head to the Docker Desktop website and download the Installer for Windows. This is a hefty 500MB, but once it's finished, run the installer.

Estimated reading time: 14 minutes

Welcome to Docker Desktop! The Docker Desktop for Mac user manual provides information on how to configure and manage your Docker Desktop settings.

For information about Docker Desktop download, system requirements, and installation instructions, see Install Docker Desktop.

Preferences

The Docker Preferences menu allows you to configure your Docker settings such as installation, updates, version channels, Docker Hub login,and more.

Choose the Docker menu > Preferences from themenu bar and configure the runtime options described below.

General

On the General tab, you can configure when to start and update Docker:

• Start Docker Desktop when you log in: Automatically starts Docker Desktop when you open your session.

• Include VM in Time Machine backups: Select this option to back up the Docker Desktop virtual machine. This option is disabled by default.

• Securely store Docker logins in macOS keychain: Docker Desktop stores your Docker login credentials in macOS keychain by default.

• Send usage statistics: Docker Desktop sends diagnostics, crash reports, and usage data. This information helps Docker improve and troubleshoot the application. Clear the check box to opt out.

Resources

The Resources tab allows you to configure CPU, memory, disk, proxies, network, and other resources.

Advanced

On the Advanced tab, you can limit resources available to Docker.

Advanced settings are:

CPUs: By default, Docker Desktop is set to use half the number of processorsavailable on the host machine. To increase processing power, set this to ahigher number; to decrease, lower the number.

Memory: By default, Docker Desktop is set to use 2 GB runtime memory,allocated from the total available memory on your Mac. To increase the RAM, set this to a higher number. To decrease it, lower the number.

Swap: Configure swap file size as needed. The default is 1 GB.

Disk image size: Specify the size of the disk image.

Disk image location: Specify the location of the Linux volume where containers and images are stored.

You can also move the disk image to a different location. If you attempt to move a disk image to a location that already has one, you get a prompt asking if you want to use the existing image or replace it.

File sharing

Use File sharing to allow local directories on the Mac to be shared with Linux containers.This is especially useful forediting source code in an IDE on the host while running and testing the code in a container.By default the /Users, /Volume, /private, /tmp and /var/folders directory are shared. If your project is outside this directory then it must be addedto the list. Otherwise you may get Mounts denied or cannot start service errors at runtime.

File share settings are:

• Add a Directory: Click + and navigate to the directory you want to add.

• Apply & Restart makes the directory available to containers using Docker’sbind mount (-v) feature.

Tips on shared folders, permissions, and volume mounts

• Share only the directories that you need with the container. File sharing introduces overhead as any changes to the files on the host need to be notified to the Linux VM. Sharing too many files can lead to high CPU load and slow filesystem performance.

• Shared folders are designed to allow application code to be edited on the host while being executed in containers. For non-code items such as cache directories or databases, the performance will be much better if they are stored in the Linux VM, using a data volume (named volume) or data container.

• If you share the whole of your home directory into a container, MacOS may prompt you to give Docker access to personal areas of your home directory such as your Reminders or Downloads.

• By default, Mac file systems are case-insensitive while Linux is case-sensitive. On Linux, it is possible to create 2 separate files: test and Test, while on Mac these filenames would actually refer to the same underlying file. This can lead to problems where an app works correctly on a Mac (where the file contents are shared) but fails when run in Linux in production (where the file contents are distinct). To avoid this, Docker Desktop insists that all shared files are accessed as their original case. Therefore, if a file is created called test, it must be opened as test. Attempts to open Test will fail with the error No such file or directory. Similarly, once a file called test is created, attempts to create a second file called Test will fail. For more information, see Volume mounting requires file sharing for any project directories outside of /Users.)

Proxies

Docker Desktop detects HTTP/HTTPS Proxy Settings from macOS and automaticallypropagates these to Docker. For example, if you set yourproxy settings to http://proxy.example.com, Docker uses this proxy whenpulling containers.

Your proxy settings, however, will not be propagated into the containers you start.If you wish to set the proxy settings for your containers, you need to defineenvironment variables for them, just like you would do on Linux, for example:

For more information on setting environment variables for running containers,see Set environment variables.

Network

You can configure Docker Desktop networking to work on a virtual private network (VPN). Specify a network address translation (NAT) prefix and subnet mask to enable Internet connectivity.

Docker Engine

The Docker Engine page allows you to configure the Docker daemon to determine how your containers run.

Type a JSON configuration file in the box to configure the daemon settings. For a full list of options, see the Docker Enginedockerd commandline reference.

Click Apply & Restart to save your settings and restart Docker Desktop.

Command Line

On the Command Line page, you can specify whether or not to enable experimental features.

Experimental features provide early access to future product functionality.These features are intended for testing and feedback only as they may changebetween releases without warning or can be removed entirely from a futurerelease. Experimental features must not be used in production environments.Docker does not offer support for experimental features.

For a list of current experimental features in the Docker CLI, see Docker CLI Experimental features.

You can toggle the experimental features on and off in Docker Desktop. If you toggle the experimental features off, Docker Desktop uses the current generally available release of Docker Engine.

Dec 02, 2020 How to upgrade from an older Mac operating system to macOS Catalina or Big Sur Apple supports macOS migrations back several releases, but you can wind up with too big a gap. New mac operating system catalina.

You can see whether you are running experimental mode at the command line. IfExperimental is true, then Docker is running in experimental mode, as shownhere. (If false, Experimental mode is off.)

Kubernetes

Docker Desktop includes a standalone Kubernetes server that runs on your Mac, sothat you can test deploying your Docker workloads on Kubernetes. To enable Kubernetes support and install a standalone instance of Kubernetes running as a Docker container, select Enable Kubernetes.

For more information about using the Kubernetes integration with Docker Desktop, see Deploy on Kubernetes.

Reset

Reset and Restart options

On Docker Desktop Mac, the Restart Docker Desktop, Reset to factory defaults, and other reset options are available from the Troubleshoot menu.

For information about the reset options, see Logs and Troubleshooting.

Dashboard

The Docker Desktop Dashboard enables you to interact with containers and applications and manage the lifecycle of your applications directly from your machine. The Dashboard UI shows all running, stopped, and started containers with their state. It provides an intuitive interface to perform common actions to inspect and manage containers and existing Docker Compose applications. For more information, see Docker Desktop Dashboard.

Add TLS certificates

You can add trusted Certificate Authorities (CAs) (used to verify registryserver certificates) and client certificates (used to authenticate toregistries) to your Docker daemon.

Add custom CA certificates (server side)

All trusted CAs (root or intermediate) are supported. Docker Desktop creates acertificate bundle of all user-trusted CAs based on the Mac Keychain, andappends it to Moby trusted certificates. So if an enterprise SSL certificate istrusted by the user on the host, it is trusted by Docker Desktop.

To manually add a custom, self-signed certificate, start by adding thecertificate to the macOS keychain, which is picked up by Docker Desktop. Here isan example:

Or, if you prefer to add the certificate to your own local keychain only (ratherthan for all users), run this command instead:

See also, Directory structures forcertificates.

Note: You need to restart Docker Desktop after making any changes to thekeychain or to the ~/.docker/certs.d directory in order for the changes totake effect.

For a complete explanation of how to do this, see the blog post AddingSelf-signed Registry Certs to Docker & Docker Desktop forMac.

Add client certificates

You can put your client certificates in~/.docker/certs.d/<MyRegistry>:<Port>/client.cert and~/.docker/certs.d/<MyRegistry>:<Port>/client.key.

When the Docker Desktop application starts, it copies the ~/.docker/certs.dfolder on your Mac to the /etc/docker/certs.d directory on Moby (the DockerDesktop xhyve virtual machine).

• You need to restart Docker Desktop after making any changes to the keychainor to the ~/.docker/certs.d directory in order for the changes to takeeffect.

• The registry cannot be listed as an insecure registry (see DockerEngine. Docker Desktop ignores certificates listedunder insecure registries, and does not send client certificates. Commandslike docker run that attempt to pull from the registry produce errormessages on the command line, as well as on the registry.

Directory structures for certificates

If you have this directory structure, you do not need to manually add the CAcertificate to your Mac OS system login:

The following further illustrates and explains a configuration with customcertificates:

You can also have this directory structure, as long as the CA certificate isalso in your keychain.

To learn more about how to install a CA root certificate for the registry andhow to set the client TLS certificate for verification, seeVerify repository client with certificatesin the Docker Engine topics.

Install shell completion

Docker Desktop comes with scripts to enable completion for the docker and docker-compose commands. The completion scripts may befound inside Docker.app, in the Contents/Resources/etc/ directory and can beinstalled both in Bash and Zsh.

Bash

Bash has built-in support forcompletion To activate completion for Docker commands, these files need to becopied or symlinked to your bash_completion.d/ directory. For example, if youinstalled bash via Homebrew:

Add the following to your ~/.bash_profile:

OR

Zsh

In Zsh, the completionsystemtakes care of things. To activate completion for Docker commands,these files need to be copied or symlinked to your Zsh site-functions/directory. For example, if you installed Zsh via Homebrew:

Fish-Shell

Fish-shell also supports tab completion completionsystem. To activate completion for Docker commands,these files need to be copied or symlinked to your Fish-shell completions/directory.

Create the completions directory:

Now add fish completions from docker.

Give feedback and get help

To get help from the community, review current user topics, join or start adiscussion, log on to our Docker Desktop for Macforum.

To report bugs or problems, log on to Docker Desktop for Mac issues onGitHub,where you can review community reported issues, and file new ones. SeeLogs and Troubleshooting for more details.

For information about providing feedback on the documentation or update it yourself, see Contribute to documentation.

Docker Hub

Select Sign in /Create Docker ID from the Docker Desktop menu to access your Docker Hub account. Once logged in, you can access your Docker Hub repositories and organizations directly from the Docker Desktop menu.

For more information, refer to the following Docker Hub topics:

Two-factor authentication

Docker Desktop enables you to sign into Docker Hub using two-factor authentication. Two-factor authentication provides an extra layer of security when accessing your Docker Hub account.

You must enable two-factor authentication in Docker Hub before signing into your Docker Hub account through Docker Desktop. For instructions, see Enable two-factor authentication for Docker Hub.

After you have enabled two-factor authentication:

1. Go to the Docker Desktop menu and then select Sign in / Create Docker ID.

2. Enter your Docker ID and password and click Sign in.

3. After you have successfully signed in, Docker Desktop prompts you to enter the authentication code. Enter the six-digit code from your phone and then click Verify.

After you have successfully authenticated, you can access your organizations and repositories directly from the Docker Desktop menu.

Where to go next

• Try out the walkthrough at Get Started.

• Dig in deeper with Docker Labs examplewalkthroughs and source code.

• For a summary of Docker command line interface (CLI) commands, seeDocker CLI Reference Guide.

• Check out the blog post, What’s New in Docker 17.06 Community Edition(CE).

If you're running macOS or Windows you have a few options for installing Docker. There's even a third way too, and we'll compare them here.

Quick Jump: OS and Hardware Requirements|Pros and Cons|Which One Should I Use? Download catalina on catalina.

If you’re on macOS or Windows you can install Docker with:

1. Docker for Mac / Windows (now known as Docker Desktop)
2. Docker Toolbox
3. Running your own Virtual Machine and installing Docker yourself

All 3 of those options have their own pros and cons and in this article we’re going to cover them. If you’re looking for a high level overview of what Docker for Mac / Windows and Docker Toolbox is, then check out this article on getting to know Docker’s ecosystem.

OS and Hardware Requirements

It’s helpful to know what you can install before we compare everything, so let’s do that:

Docker for Mac (Docker Desktop)

Docker for Mac requires that you’re running Mojave 10.14+ or newer with an Intel CPU. M1 support is on its way.

You can run VirtualBox 6+ alongside Docker Desktop. This is pretty useful because you might have some legacy apps running in Vagrant / VirtualBox to deal with (I know I do!).

Docker for Windows (Docker Desktop)

Docker Windows Desktop Applications

As of May 27th 2020, Microsoft released Windows 10 build 2004 (Spring 2020) that allows you to run Docker Deskop on all editions of Windows 10, including Home thanks to WSL 2.

As of August 2020, Microsoft enabled WSL 2 support for Windows 10 builds 1903 + 1909.

For years prior to that you could only run it on Windows Pro, Enterprise or any edition that had Hyper-V available, but since August 2020 pretty much all supported versions of Windows 10 can use Docker Desktop.

You can also run VirtualBox 6+ alongside Docker Desktop too in case you have older projects using VirtualBox (perhaps with Vagrant too).

Docker Toolbox

Prior to mid-2020 this was still a reasonable way to run Docker on machines that couldn’t run Docker Desktop, but that’s no longer the case.

It’s now considered legacy and as of late 2020 it’s been officially deprecated.

Unless you’re using unsupported versions of Windows or have a really really ancient Mac you shouldn’t need to ever use this tool.

But if you’re in a pinch and you absolutely must use it, technically it’s still available at https://github.com/docker/toolbox/releases, but it’s no longer maintained by Docker.

Your own Virtual Machine

Docker will happily run inside of VirtualBox, VMWare Workstation or any other Type 1 / 2 Hypervisor that’s running a major distribution of Linux as a guest OS.

If for whatever reason you can’t use Docker Desktop then this solution would be better than using Docker Toolbox since you can install supported versions of Docker and you have full control over the environment.

Pros and Cons

Now for the good stuff!

Docker for Mac / Docker for Windows (Docker Desktop)

Pros

• Offers the most “native” experience, you can easily use any terminal you you want since Docker is effectively running on localhost from macOS / Windows’ POV.

• Docker is heavily developing and polishing this solution.

Cons

• On certain macOS hardware combos the volume performance can be a little slow.

• I can legit say there are not any “wow this sucks!” cons for Windows, it’s really solid.

Docker Toolbox

Docker Windows Desktop Wallpaper

Pros

• Offers an “out of the box” Docker experience if you have no other choice.

Cons

• It’s deprecated by Docker and will receive no future maintenance.

• You need to either use the Docker Quickstart Terminal, or configure your own terminal to connect to the Docker Daemon running a VM.

• Not a native solution, so you’ll need to access your Docker Machine’s IP address if you’re developing web apps. Example: 192.168.99.100 instead of localhost.

• Unless you jump through hoops, your code needs to live in your Windows user directory such as C:UsersNicksrcmyapp. Otherwise Docker won’t be able to find it.

• Suffers from typical VirtualBox edge case bugs and mount performance issues.

Your own Virtual Machine

I’m not going to bother listing a pros and cons here because I wouldn’t recommend doing this UNLESS you’re stuck on Windows 7 / 8 or an older version of Windows 10 like 1809.

But more on that in a bit.

Which One Should I Use?

If you’re interested in Docker, you’re a smart person and you probably came to the conclusion that using Docker for Mac or Docker for Windows is a good idea as long as you can run it.

My recommendation would be to try Docker for Mac / Windows first, and test it against your actual use cases. The performance issues may or may not be a concern, especially since everyone’s needs and computer specs are different.

I’ve been using Docker Desktop on Windows for full time development since late 2018 and it’s been nothing short of fantastic. Currently I use it with WSL 2, but it was really good with WSL 1 along with Hyper-V too.

Stuck on an Old Version of Windows and Like Linux?

I want to mention a “roll your own VM” solution for Windows users because I feel like there’s an even better way to run Docker on Windows if you also like Linux and are stuck not being able to use modern versions of Windows 10.

It involves running VMWare Player in a special mode called “Unity mode”. This basically allows you to run Windows and Linux together seamlessly as 1 operating system.

There’s no dual booting and Linux applications (even graphical apps) run in their own floating windows. Then you can install Docker natively on Linux inside of the VM.

The performance is excellent and the entire set up is free too.

I used this set up for about 5 years until Docker Desktop was available. It gives you the best of both worlds. For example, I run high end audio / video apps on Windows while recording courses and screencasts that cover Linux content. It all works great (even for full time development).

You can watch a video guide and see screenshots on how to do that in this post on creating an awesome Linux development environment in Windows.

Are you using the Docker Toolbox, Docker for Mac / Windows or your own VM?