What Apple’s Native Containers Mean for Docker Users

Did you know you can now run containers natively on macOS? At WWDC 2025, Apple announced Containerization and Container CLI — in other words, native Linux container support. Historically, running containers on macOS required launching a full Linux VM, typically via HyperKit or QEMU, to host the Docker Engine. That’s no longer necessary. This is a major shift because Apple’s containerization framework means developers may no longer need third-party tools like Docker for local container execution.

Using Apple's new Virtualization and Containerization frameworks, each container runs natively on macOS inside its own lightweight Linux VM. These VMs boot in under a second, isolate workloads cleanly, and are tightly optimized for Apple silicon. Effectively, Apple gives each container a minimal kernel environment without the overhead of managing a full VM runtime.