Docker Runtime Without Docker Desktop on MacOS

TL;DR;

Colima to the rescue.

Docker Desktop is bad.

It is been awhile I use Docker Desktop , I always use Command-line Interface. Which is CLI for short, to manage my images and containers. I did have Docker Desktop on my M1 Mac while writing this. To be honest, Even though Graphical User Interface, which is short for GUI is more suitable for modern use. However, most of the GUI application have some draw back such as lack of functionality or UI/UX defects.

Since such reasons, I generally stay away to almost all GUI for my own sanity, Majority of the time I just feel more comfortable when using CLI.

Also because of this, I didn’t get the news that Docker Abruptly Starts Charging Many Users for Docker Desktop. Which, is knowledgeable but still absurd to witness a company so desperately to make some money from an app that nobody uses. Well, most of the people including me is using it as a daemon to start dockerd.

Can We Run dockerd on macOS Docker Desktop-free?

Sure we can, thanks to the open source community, we have plenty of options to run Docker Desktop on M1 macOS for free, and there is more. It will not clog up as much resources as Docker Desktop did. You can terminate dockerd anytime you want. Plus, startup time is way faster than Docker Desktop.

Simplist Solution.

Because I already went that path. So, you don’t have to go down to that path anymore. After hours of googling and GitHub browsing. I found a project that will achieve all of the requirement that we desire. Fast and Minimalist, it is called Colima. After simple setup from Home Brew and you are good to go.