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).

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