Apple container

When to Use

• Use when building, running, or managing OCI/Linux containers on Apple-silicon macOS with Apple's open-source container CLI
• Use when you want lightweight per-container VMs instead of a Docker daemon
• Use when translating Docker-style workflows (build, run, exec, logs, networking) to Apple's container tooling

Apple's container is an open-source CLI for building, running, and managing OCI/Linux containers on Apple-silicon Macs. Each container runs inside its own lightweight virtual machine (backed by the Containerization framework and the Virtualization API), so there is no shared daemon like Docker — services run per-user via launchd. Images are standard OCI artifacts, so they interoperate with Docker registries and other OCI tooling. The CLI is deliberately Docker-like (container run, container build, and image ops under container image push/pull), but it is a distinct tool: do not assume Docker command paths, flags, defaults, or daemon behavior carry over (e.g. there is no container images/push/pull top-level command — image verbs live under container image).

Safety Gate

Container installation, service startup, image pulls, builds, runs, registry login, pushes, and resource cleanup change local or remote state. Explain the exact command, image registry, mounts, ports, privileges, and data-persistence impact, then obtain explicit user approval before executing it. Do not provide registry credentials, mount sensitive paths, or expose ports without the user's explicit instruction.

Requirements

• Apple silicon only (M1 or later). Intel Macs are not supported.
• macOS 26 (Tahoe) is the officially supported target. The maintainers do not support older macOS and typically will not fix issues that can't be reproduced on 26. The binary still runs on macOS 15 (Sequoia) but with reduced networking: only the single default subnet is available, and the container network group and --network flag error out. macOS-26-gated features are called out throughout the reference files.
• Version: this skill documents the 1.0.0 release (the fullest feature set). The machine group, container cp, container export, container prune, container image prune, container registry list, and container system version were added in 1.0.0 (not in 0.7.1) — features that postdate 0.7.1 are flagged (1.0.0+) in the reference files. Run container --version and container <group> --help to see what your installed build supports.
• Install by downloading the signed .pkg installer from the project's GitHub releases (apple/container) and running it. See references/concepts.md for the full requirements/compatibility matrix and how the VM-per-container model works.

Setup

Install the signed package, then start the background services once:

1. Download the latest signed installer .pkg from the GitHub releases page.
2. Double-click the downloaded package and follow the prompts, entering your admin password so it can place files under /usr/local. (There is no documented CLI installer invocation — installation is via the GUI package.)
3. Start the services and confirm they are healthy:

# Start the container services (container-apiserver + helpers via launchd). On first run it
# offers to install the default Linux kernel — accept it, or start non-interactively with
# `--disable-kernel-install` and add a kernel later via `container system kernel set`.
container system start

# Verify services are healthy
container system status

container system start must have run before any container/image/build command works — a connection/XPC error almost always means the services are stopped, so run it again. Stop and deregister the launchd services with container system stop (which takes only -p/--prefix). The startup flags for container system start (-a/--app-root, --install-root, --log-root, --enable-kernel-install/--disable-kernel-install, --timeout) are in references/configuration.md.

Upgrade / downgrade / uninstall use helper scripts in /usr/local/bin (stop first with container system stop): update-container.sh (add -v <version> to pin a version), and uninstall-container.sh -d to remove user data or -k to keep it. Full recipes in references/workflows.md.

Command groups at a glance

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