A fully native macOS app for Apple's container platform — run Linux containers on Apple silicon, no Docker Desktop required.
Free & open source · MIT licensed · Signed & notarized
Requires an Apple silicon Mac running macOS 15 or later.
Or via Homebrew: brew install wouterdebie/tap/davit
Everything you'd expect. Nothing you don't.
Davit talks directly to Apple's open-source container daemon over XPC — the same wire path the CLI uses. No Electron, no web views, no background agents of its own.
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Containers
Start, stop, restart and delete with live CPU, memory and IP on every row. Streaming logs with follow & boot mode, live stat charts, and raw config inspection.
🖥️
One-click terminal
Open an interactive shell in any running container, straight into Terminal or iTerm — over the native API, no CLI needed.
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Edit & Recreate
Containers are immutable — so Davit prefills a new one from the old config with the image's entrypoint and env subtracted, letting you change ports, env vars, mounts or resources in seconds.
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Images, volumes, networks
Pull with live progress, run from any image, tag, prune. Create sized volumes and custom subnets. See what's in use before you delete it.
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Platform settings, editable
Default CPU/memory for new containers, registry, DNS, builder resources — edited in the app, validated by the platform's own config loader, saved as clean TOML overrides.
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Installs the platform for you
No container platform installed? Davit downloads Apple's signed installer, verifies it, and sets everything up in your user Library — no administrator rights needed. It can add the container CLI to your shell, too.
Native, down to the pixels.
Built entirely in SwiftUI. Menu bar quick actions, a Dock icon only when you want one, and live charts that don't spin up a browser to render.
How is this different from Docker Desktop?
- It's Apple's engine. Each container runs in its own lightweight VM via Apple's Virtualization framework — sub-second boots, per-container IP addresses, optimized for Apple silicon.
- OCI all the way. Pulls from Docker Hub, ghcr.io, quay.io or any registry. Your existing images just work.
- Nothing between you and the daemon. Davit links Apple's own client library and speaks XPC directly — no socket shims, no license agreements, no accounts.
- Tiny. A single ~17 MB app.