🦭🍏 Podman Desktop Apple Container Extension

A Podman Desktop extension to manage Apple containers on macOS (ARM64 only).

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🚀 Features

• View and manage Apple containers directly in Podman Desktop
• Designed specifically for macOS on ARM64
• Easy installation and updates via Podman Desktop
• Uses Socktainer under the hood to provide a Docker REST API on top of Apple containers

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🔍 How It Works

This extension relies on Socktainer, a lightweight CLI/daemon that exposes a REST API to manage Apple containers. The API is designed to be compatible with the Docker REST API, enabling tools and extensions that expect Docker behavior to work with Apple containers without modification. Podman Desktop interacts with this API to provide a full-featured, user-friendly interface for container management on macOS ARM64.

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📚 Topics

• Installation
• Feedback

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🛠 Installation

Install the Apple container extension directly from Podman Desktop:

1. Open Podman Desktop → Extensions → Install custom...
2. Enter the extension image:

ghcr.io/podman-desktop/extension-apple-container:next

3. Click Install ✅

To install a specific release, check available versions and replace :next with :<version>

4. Make sure the Apple container system is installed and running:

container system start
container system status

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💬 Feedback

We ❤️ feedback! Please open an issue if you encounter bugs or have suggestions.