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General Frequently asked questions |
desktop, mac, windows, faqs |
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Frequently asked questions |
For information about Docker Desktop system requirements, see:
By default, Docker Desktop is installed at the following location:
- On Mac:
/Applications/Docker.app - On Windows:
C:\Program Files\Docker\Docker - On Linux:
/opt/docker-desktop
Docker Desktop remains free for small businesses (fewer than 250 employees AND less than $10 million in annual revenue), personal use, education, and non-commercial open-source projects. It requires a paid subscription for professional use in larger enterprises. The effective date of these terms is August 31, 2021. When downloading and installing Docker Desktop, you are asked to agree to the Docker Subscription Service Agreement{: target="blank" rel="noopener" class=""}.
Read the Blog{: target="blank" rel="noopener" class="" id="dkr_docs_subscription_btl"} and FAQs{: target="blank" rel="noopener" class="" id="dkr_docs_subscription_btl"} to learn how companies using Docker Desktop may be affected. For information about Docker Desktop licensing, see Docker Desktop License Agreement.
Yes, you can use Docker Desktop offline. However, you cannot access features that require an active internet connection. Additionally, any functionality that requires you to sign won't work while using Docker Desktop offline or in air-gapped environments. This includes:
- The in-app Quick Start Guide
- Pulling or pushing an image to Docker Hub
- Image Access Management
- Vulnerability scanning
- Viewing remote images in the Docker Dashboard
- Settting up Dev Environments
- Docker build when using Buildkit. You can work around this by disabling
BuildKit. Run
DOCKER_BUILDKIT=0 docker build .to disable BuildKit. - Deploying an app to the cloud through Compose ACI and ECS integrations
- Kubernetes (Images are download when you enable Kubernetes for the first time)
- Check for updates (manual and automatic)
- In-app diagnostics (including the Self-diagnose tool)
- Tip of the week
- Sending usage statistics
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You can find information about diagnosing and troubleshooting common issues in the Troubleshooting topic. See:
If you do not find a solution in troubleshooting, browse the Github repositories or create a new issue:
- docker/for-mac{: target="blank" rel="noopener" class=""} - - docker/for-win{: target="blank" rel="noopener" class=""}
- docker/for-linux{: target="blank" rel="noopener" class=""}
To connect to the remote Engine API, you might need to provide the location of the Engine API for Docker clients and development tools.
Mac and Windows WSL 2 users can connect to the Docker Engine through a Unix socket: unix:///var/run/docker.sock.
If you are working with applications like Apache Maven{: target="blank" rel="noopener" class=""}
that expect settings for DOCKER_HOST and DOCKER_CERT_PATH environment
variables, specify these to connect to Docker instances through Unix sockets.
For example:
$ export DOCKER_HOST=unix:///var/run/docker.sockDocker Desktop Windows users can connect to the Docker Engine through a named pipe: npipe:////./pipe/docker_engine, or TCP socket at this URL:
tcp://localhost:2375.
For details, see Docker Engine API.
Mac, Linux, and Windows have a changing IP address (or none if you have no network access). On both Mac and Windows, we recommend that you connect to the special DNS name host.docker.internal, which resolves to the internal IP address used by the host. This is for development purposes and does not work in a production environment outside of Docker Desktop.
For more information and examples, see how to connect from a container to a service on the host on Mac and on Windows or on Linux.
Unfortunately, it is not possible to pass through a USB device (or a serial port) to a container as it requires support at the hypervisor level.
Docker Desktop can run inside a Windows 10 VM running on apps like Parallels or VMware Fusion on a Mac provided that the VM is properly configured. However, problems and intermittent failures may still occur due to the way these apps virtualize the hardware. For these reasons, Docker Desktop is not supported in nested virtualization scenarios. It might work in some cases and not in others.
Docker Desktop uses hardware-accelerated graphics by default, which may cause problems for some GPUs. In such cases, Docker Desktop will launch successfully, but some screens may appear green, distorted, or have some visual artifacts.
To work around this issue, disable hardware acceleration by creating a "disableHardwareAcceleration": true entry in Docker Desktop's settings.json file. You can find this file at:
- Mac:
~/Library/Group Containers/group.com.docker/settings.json - Windows:
C:\Users\[USERNAME]\AppData\Roaming\Docker\settings.json
After updating the settings.json file, close and restart Docker Desktop to apply the changes.
No, currently this is unsupported and against terms of use.
Each Docker Desktop release is also delivered as a full installer for new users. The same applies if you have skipped a version, although this doesn't normally happen as updates are applied automatically.
New releases are available roughly monthly, unless there are critical fixes that need to be released sooner.
Previously you had to manage this yourself. Now, it happens automatically as a side effect of all users being on the latest version.
Sometimes we may roll out a new version gradually over a few days. Therefore, if you wait, it will turn up soon. Alternatively, you can select Check for Updates from the Docker menu to jump the queue and get the latest version immediately.
Starting with Docker Desktop 3.0.0, Stable and Edge releases are combined into a single, cumulative release stream for all users.