Installing Docker Desktop on Mac

Docker Desktop for Mac is like Docker Desktop for Windows — a packaged product with a slick UI that gets you the full Docker experience on your laptop. You can also enable the built-in single-node Kubernetes cluster.

Before proceeding with the installation, you need to know that Docker Desktop on Mac installs the daemon and server-side components inside a lightweight Linux VM that seamlessly exposes the API to your local Mac environment. This means you can open a terminal on your Mac and run docker commands without ever knowing it’s all running in a hidden VM. This is also why Mac versions of Docker Desktop only work with Linux containers — everything’s running inside a Linux VM.