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timsneath

macOS Container Machines github.com

llimllib2 minutes ago

Is this new? I thought we had this already

In my testing (iirc) filesystem performance was not good enough to be usable with node/rust dev where lots of small files get stat-ed

timsneathop27 minutes ago

To clarify a few comments here: this is not only OCI containers: container machines add support for persistence and filesystem mounting, making container machines a great lightweight Linux environment for developers using macOS. More details here: https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2026/389

Onavo6 minutes ago

Ah, the Darwin/BSD Subsystem for Linux.

WatchDog8 minutes ago

Do these containers share a common kernel? Or are they each ran in a separate VM?

Edit: It's a VM per container. https://github.com/apple/container/blob/main/docs/technical-...

blahgeek27 minutes ago

OrbStack works really well for me. I wonder how it’s compared to this performance wise

kdrag0n8 minutes ago

(OrbStack dev here.) Instead of Virtualization.framework, we have a custom Rust virtualization stack with custom devices and protocols for things like filesystem sharing. It's a highly optimized vertically integrated stack specifically for running our Linux machines and containers.

Our biggest perf/resource gain is dynamic memory, which reduces memory usage a lot by releasing unused memory back to macOS. Nothing else supports this, including Containerization.

I gave Container Machines a try and it seems to be much closer to OCI containers with a default bind mount than OrbStack machines. It has fewer integrations and doesn't run systemd or any other normal init system, so it's hard to run services.

a1o20 minutes ago

With colima I can run AMD64 (x86) Linux containers in my Arm64 too. I think this is strictly for Arm64 Linux VMs, or is there some way to run x86 with this too?

frizlab10 minutes ago

Rosetta should be supported

ChrisArchitect6 minutes ago

WWDC presentation video:

Discover container machines

https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2026/389/

jaimehrubiks35 minutes ago

Will this be able to replace docker desktop an equivalents, removing the expensive Linux VM that runs alongside them?

thejazzman31 minutes ago

It mostly removes the big shared background VM and replaces it with smaller, more isolated Apple-native VMs.

usernametaken2915 minutes ago

My first thought as well, docker desktop overhead is pretty bad, would be awesome to see this land natively in DD. By my estimate this could happen, seeing as Docker has historically tried to improve performance but quickly had to accept platform limitations… would only be natural to settle DD over to containers

lostlogin9 minutes ago

Others here mention it and I’m a new convert to Colima.

The pain of working around Docker Desktop is bad.

trollbridge32 minutes ago

That sure would be nice. I seem to rm -rf ~/.colima every few days.

namegulf33 minutes ago

Would be nice if they also support Intel based macs, what prevents?

MBCook3 minutes ago

Apple won’t support them with MacOS 27, and it seems they announced this tool as part of this year’s WWDC.

Basically: they’ve moved on.

danhon21 minutes ago

Allocation of a finite amount of engineering resources.

joshuat18 minutes ago

And a legitimate business interest to further incentivize the adoption of Apple Silicon devices. Same with Rosetta deprecation after macOS 27.

teaearlgraycold20 minutes ago

Intel Macs are cringe.

Brian_K_White11 minutes ago

cringe is cringe

m46336 minutes ago

looks like apple wrote a native docker in swift

you can now run linux containers on your mac

... but it could be better.

what about (totally contrived):

  FROM apple/macos:10.11.6

  RUN xcodebuild -project myapp.xcodeproj -scheme MyScheme -configuration Release

windowliker7 minutes ago

It would be wonderful if it ran on older versions of macOS, but according to the Github README they only support 26.

trollbridge32 minutes ago

Close - but it would be more like this:

  services:
    macos:
      image: dockurr/macos
      container_name: macos
      environment:
        VERSION: "15"

(And indecently slow.)

webXL33 minutes ago

Nice, but expect to page through a few pages of ToS during the build

m4639 minutes ago

lol

  ENV XCODE_FRONTEND=unattended
  ENV XCODE_LICENSES=accept,firstborn,applepay,[email protected]

[deleted]31 minutes agocollapsed

jadar10 minutes ago

i wish!

sourcegrift17 minutes ago

Or ... Just use linux. No lock in. Better hardware support. Better UI (believe it or not!)

hollerith15 minutes ago

Sadly, Linux is much much less secure.

pixelatedindex11 minutes ago

This claim is so absurd that I need some sources.

source