If you’re an Apple user, you may have heard of Apple’s upcoming feature Containerization during . This is , where a very small lightweight virtual machine (VM) is launched in the background, so a Linux kernel can be used on a non Linux host (WSL2 uses Hyper-V). Not to be confused with WSL1, which was more like WINE!
Its set to be publicly released for the next major OS release, macOS “Tahoe” 26, and also for macOS “Sequoia” 15 .
Containerization supports containers which are is installed:
~ % brew install --cask container
==> Downloading https://github.com/apple/container/releases/download/0.2.0/container-0.2.0-installer-signed.pkg
==> Downloading from https://release-assets.githubusercontent.com/github-production-release-asset/993475914/c5fb6a42-f282-4dd7-95c2-af9b142f0ed1?sp=r&sv=2018-11-09&sr=b&spr=https&se=2025-07-17T14%3A06%3A32Z&r
######################################################################################################################################################################################################### 100.0%
==> Installing Cask container
==> Running installer for container with sudo; the password may be necessary.
Password:
installer: Package name is container-0.2.0-installer-signed
installer: Upgrading at base path /
installer: The upgrade was successful.
🍺 container was successfully installed!
~ %
Otherwise, we can manually grab the (signed) setup file from , and .
We are able to-do the same features as Docker/Podman as you would expect, such as sharing a directory :
~ % container run --remove --interactive --tty --volume $(pwd):/mnt --workdir /mnt docker.io/kalilinux/kali-rolling:latest
┌──(root㉿4be77ff5-bd57-4076-8bf0-8e51caff047e)-[/mnt]
└─# uname -a
Linux 4be77ff5-bd57-4076-8bf0-8e51caff047e 6.12.28 #1 SMP Tue May 20 15:19:05 UTC 2025 aarch64 GNU/Linux
Alias
Once everything is working as expected, we can create a quick alias to avoid retyping the full command each time:
~ % alias container-shell='container run --remove --interactive --tty --entrypoint=/bin/bash --volume $(pwd):/mnt --name "$(hostname -s)-$(mktemp -u XXXXXX)" --workdir /mnt'
~ %
~ % echo "alias container-shell='container run --remove --interactive --tty --entrypoint=/bin/bash --volume $(pwd):/mnt --name "$(hostname -s)-$(mktemp -u XXXXXX)" --workdir /mnt'" >> ~/.zshrc
~ %
~ % container-shell kalilinux/kali-rolling:latest
┌──(root㉿mba22-vB9af6)-[/mnt]
└─#
Troubleshooting
Currently there are a . We recommend reading and following Apple’s advice if you run into these issues.
And just like that, we have a quick way to run Kali containers on macOS. This is part of our ongoing commitment of “ you need in as many places as possible and easy for you to make use of. There are many different ways to run Kali, be sure to check out our get Kali page to find the one that best fits your needs.
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