Apple Container

Apple's container is an open-source command-line tool that lets developers create and run Linux containers as lightweight virtual machines directly on a Mac. Written in Swift and optimized for Apple silicon, it reached its 1.0.0 release on June 9, 2026, and is actively maintained on GitHub under the Apache License 2.0.

What It Is

container is a macOS-native container runtime that runs Linux containers inside lightweight VMs rather than a shared kernel, giving each container stronger isolation than traditional container runtimes. It consumes and produces OCI-compatible container images, so images can be pulled from and pushed to any standard container registry and run in any other OCI-compatible application. The tool relies on the companion Containerization Swift package for low-level container, image, and process management.

Platform Requirements and Architecture

container requires a Mac with Apple silicon — it is not supported on Intel Macs. It targets macOS 26, taking advantage of new virtualization and networking features in that release. The project maintainers state they will not address issues that cannot be reproduced on macOS 26. The tool is installed via a signed installer package placed under /usr/local, and a system service is started with container system start.

How It Works

Each Linux container runs inside its own lightweight virtual machine, providing hardware-level isolation between containers. The tool integrates with the macOS Virtualization framework and uses BuildKit (via the container-builder-shim companion package) for image builds. Key workflow steps include:

• Pull images from any OCI-compatible registry
• Build images locally and push them to registries
• Run containers as isolated lightweight VMs
• Manage the system service lifecycle (start, stop)
• Upgrade or downgrade via the bundled update-container.sh script

Update: Version 1.0.0

The repository reached its 1.0.0 release on June 9, 2026, after a period of active pre-1.0 development starting from the initial public commit on May 30, 2025. Prior to 1.0.0, the project's own README noted that stability was only guaranteed within patch versions and that minor releases could include breaking changes. The 1.0.0 milestone signals the project's first stable API and tooling contract. The repository had accumulated over 26,000 GitHub stars and 780 forks as of the release date, according to the GitHub repository page.

Open-Source Deployment Model

The project is published under the Apache License 2.0, meaning it can be freely used, modified, and redistributed. Contributions are welcomed via the contributing guide maintained in the companion containerization repository. The source is hosted at github.com/apple/container and API documentation is published at apple.github.io/container/documentation/. A companion shim repository (container-builder-shim, written in Go) connects Swift host code to BuildKit running inside a container for image build support.