Apple Container: Open-source tool for Linux containers on the Mac
Apple Container: Open-source tool for Linux containers on the Mac
https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2026/07/07/apple-container-open-source-linux-mac/
Publish Date: 2026-07-07 01:00:00
Source Domain: www.helpnetsecurity.com
Developers on Apple silicon Macs have run Linux containers through software built around a single shared virtual machine for years. Apple’s open-source Container project gives each Linux workload its own lightweight virtual machine.
Container is written in Swift and tuned for Apple silicon. It creates and runs Linux containers as lightweight virtual machines, and it works with OCI-compatible images, so a developer can pull from and push to any standard registry. Images built with it run in any other OCI-compatible application. Under the hood, it draws on the Containerization Swift package for low-level container, image, and process management.
The headline addition in 1.0.0 is container machine, a feature for long-lived Linux environments with tight integration into the host Mac. Earlier releases centered on containers spun up for a task and torn down after. The new command supports persistent environments that a developer keeps across sessions.
Configuration moved to a TOML file. Version 1.0.0 replaces the older system settings, which were backed by user properties, with a config.toml file, and it removes the container system property get and set subcommands. This is a breaking change to the command line, so scripts that called those subcommands need updating.
Several other changes landed in the same release. A new container cp command moves files between the host and a running container, answering a request that had stayed open since the early days of the project. The team fixed accounting errors in system df, the command that reports disk usage. On the networking side, a change ties each IP address lease to its XPC connection, which resolves a bug where addresses leaked over time. The release also adds a –stop-signal option to container run and tidies the help output for subcommands. Output for the ls and inspect commands across containers, images, networks, and volumes now follows a consistent structure in JSON, YAML, and TOML.
The release drops…
