Container GUI 1.4.0

Container GUI 1.4.0

Install or upgrade with:

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Bramgus12/container-gui/main/scripts/install.sh | bash

Container GUI 1.4.0 closes the gap between what the Apple Container CLI can do to a container and what the app can. Creating without starting, signalling, pruning, running a command inside a container, copying files in and out, and exporting a filesystem are all reachable from the containers screen.

Changes

• Creates a container without starting it. The run sheet gains a Run / Create control; the action button and the command preview follow it. Nothing is started, so there is no progress to stream and nothing to detach from — the sheet closes as soon as the new container is created and selects it.
• Sends a signal to a running container. Send Signal on the More Actions and row menus offers an allowlist of signals rather than a free-text field. SIGKILL is confirmed first because the process gets no chance to shut down; signals a process can handle are sent without a prompt.
• Prunes stopped containers from a toolbar button, with a confirmation before anything is deleted and a summary of what was removed. Pruning deletes containers the app did not name, so it waits until no per-container operation is in flight and blocks new ones while it runs.
• Runs a one-off command inside a running container and shows what it printed, with environment variables, user, and working directory. The process gets no terminal, which suits what a GUI is good for; Open in Terminal hands the interactive form of the same command to Terminal.app for anything that expects to be typed at.
• Copies files between a container and the local filesystem in either direction, with a file panel for the host side.
• Exports a container's filesystem as a tar archive, choosing the destination in a save panel so an existing file is never overwritten silently, and reporting progress for a write that can take a while. A container that is still running is exported as a snapshot of a filesystem being written to, and the sheet says so rather than refusing.

Compatibility and validation

• macOS 26 or later on Apple-silicon Macs.
• Apple Container CLI 0.12.0 or later and earlier than 2.0.0.
• Flag names for every new command were checked against container <command> --help from CLI 1.2.2: create takes the run flags without --progress, kill takes --signal, export takes --output, and copy is the canonical spelling of cp.
• Built from commit 0fb1876 on Apple silicon with macOS 27.0 and Apple Container CLI 1.2.2 on 24 August 2026. Apple's notary service accepted both the app and the disk image; spctl --assess reports accepted with source=Notarized Developer ID for each, and the app still validates after being copied out of the disk image.
• The full unit and UI suites pass (328 tests in all). The manual gates in docs/RELEASE_CHECKLIST.md — VoiceOver, the real smoke test, and the clean-Mac download test — have not been run for this release, and the new lifecycle commands have not been exercised against a real CLI end to end.

Download verification

SHA-256: 0a07d3db683f835de9307dbfc53aaa8e97276630247650fb41d64403da782aff

The disk image is signed with a Developer ID Application certificate and notarized by Apple. Verify an installed copy yourself with:

spctl --assess --type execute --verbose=4 "/Applications/Container GUI.app"

Upgrade and rollback

Re-run the install command above to upgrade in place. To roll back, pin a previous release, for example:

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Bramgus12/container-gui/main/scripts/install.sh | bash -s -- --version v1.3.0

Known limitations

Interactive terminals still run in Terminal.app rather than inside the app. The pseudo-terminal plumbing exists and is tested, but no terminal view is wired to it. The app does not yet manage registry authentication, build secrets or SSH forwarding, import, or kernel settings, or remote hosts.