Davit

A native macOS UI for Apple's container platform — think OrbStack/Docker Desktop, but for the Linux-containers-as-lightweight-VMs stack Apple ships for Apple silicon.

A davit is the shipboard crane that hoists cargo and small craft over the side — which is more or less what this app does with your containers.

Built entirely in SwiftUI (no Electron, no web views). Davit links Apple's own ContainerAPIClient library and talks to container-apiserver directly over XPC — the same wire path the container CLI uses. The CLI binary is never invoked: lists, lifecycle, live stats, log streaming, image pulls, volume/network management, the in-terminal shell (davit exec), and even launchd service bootstrap all go through the API.

Features

• Dashboard — service status with one-click start/stop, resource counts, disk usage with reclaimable-space cleanup menu, live aggregate CPU chart across running containers.
• Containers — list with live CPU/memory/IP per row, start/stop/kill/restart/delete, prune, search, and Edit & Recreate (containers are immutable on this platform, so "editing" opens the Run sheet prefilled with the container's ports/env/mounts/resources/network — with the image's entrypoint/CMD/env subtracted so only your customizations show — and replaces it on confirm). Detail view with:
  • Overview: image, command, platform, resources, network (IP/MAC/gateway/hostname), published ports with "Open in Browser", mounts, environment, labels.
  • Logs: streaming -f follow mode, boot-log toggle, tail selector, copy.
  • Stats: live CPU %, memory, and disk-I/O charts (Swift Charts); tiles for CPU, memory, disk space used, network, and process count.
  • Inspect: pretty-printed raw JSON.
  • Terminal: opens an interactive shell in Terminal/iTerm (davit exec over XPC).
  • Files: browse the container filesystem — navigate, download, upload, delete (over exec + copy in/out).
• Images — pull with streaming progress, Pull Latest to refresh any image's tag to the newest digest (context menu or image detail), run-from-image, tag, delete, prune; per-image platform variants, size, digest, "used by" containers.
• Volumes — create (with size), delete, prune, reveal backing image in Finder, in-use badges.
• Networks — create (subnet / internal), delete, prune, attached-container counts.
• Machines — Apple's container machines (lightweight general-purpose VMs with your home directory mounted and a stable .machine DNS name): create from any image with CPU/memory sizing, boot/stop, set the default, delete; detail view with configuration overview, streamed logs, live stats and inspect JSON; one-click Terminal into the machine's login shell; edit CPUs/memory/home-mount (applies on next boot). Davit machine list|create|boot|stop|delete|exec|set headless.
• Run Container sheet — image picker, name, command, ports, env vars, volume/bind mounts, CPU/memory limits, network selection.
• Build images — Images → Build Image: pick a context folder and Dockerfile, set tag/build-args, and Davit drives the platform's BuildKit builder (starting it if needed), then loads and tags the result into the image store. Davit build -t <tag> <context-dir> headless.
• Compose import — Containers → ⋯ → Import Compose File: parses a docker-compose.yml, previews exactly what will be created (services in depends_on order, named volumes, networks, the equivalent container run command per service, and warnings for anything unsupported), then creates and starts the stack. Davit compose plan|up <file> headless.
• Registries — sign in to Docker Hub / ghcr.io / any registry to pull private images (Settings → Registries); credentials are verified against the registry and stored in the login keychain, shared with the container CLI. Docker credential helpers are honored too: if ~/.docker/config.json has a credHelpers/credsStore entry for a registry (Google Artifact Registry via gcloud, ECR, etc.), Davit invokes the helper right before each pull and stages the short-lived token for the platform, so hourly-expiring credentials always work.
• Menu bar extra — service status, per-container quick actions from anywhere.
• Auto-start containers — mark any container "Start when Davit Opens" (context menu); on launch Davit brings the platform services up if needed and starts them. Combined with Open at login, your containers are running when you sit down.
• Open at login — optional launch-to-menu-bar at login (Settings → General), via SMAppService.
• In-app updates — checks GitHub Releases daily (or on demand from About); one click downloads the new version, verifies its Developer ID signature (team must match), swaps the bundle atomically with rollback, and relaunches. Davit update check|install headless.
• Settings — platform install-root override and refresh interval (General), plus a full platform configuration editor (Platform tab): default container CPUs/memory, registry, local DNS domain, builder resources/Rosetta, and advanced knobs (kernel, init image, machine). Only values differing from install defaults are written to ~/.config/container/config.toml, [plugin.*] sections are preserved, every save is validated through the platform's own config loader before commit, and the result is published to the app root immediately — container defaults/registry/DNS apply to new operations right away, daemon-side settings after a service restart (button provided).

Requirements

• Apple silicon Mac, macOS 15+ (macOS 26 recommended — matches container 1.0)
• apple/container installed (or vendored, see below)

Releases

Tagging v* triggers a GitHub Actions workflow that builds the app on a macOS runner and attaches Davit-<version>.zip (+ sha256) to a GitHub Release.

With these repository secrets set, releases are Developer ID signed (hardened runtime) and notarized, so they open like any other app:

Secret	Value
MACOS_CERT_P12	base64 of the exported "Developer ID Application" cert (base64 -i cert.p12)
MACOS_CERT_PASSWORD	the .p12 export password
APPLE_ID	your Apple ID email
APPLE_TEAM_ID	10-char team id (developer.apple.com → Membership)
APPLE_APP_SPECIFIC_PASSWORD	app-specific password from appleid.apple.com

Without the secrets, builds fall back to ad-hoc signing and the release notes include the xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine workaround.

Install

brew install wouterdebie/tap/davit

(Homebrew 6 asks you to trust third-party taps on first use: brew trust wouterdebie/tap.) Or download the signed zip from Releases / davit.app.

Getting started

From a fresh install to something running in your browser:

1. Open Davit. On first launch, if Apple's container platform isn't installed, Davit downloads and installs it for you — no admin password needed.
2. Pull a demo image — Images → Pull Image → nginxdemos/hello (small, and it serves a visible page).
3. Run it with a port — Run the image, map host 8088 → container 80.
4. Open it — the container's Ports row has Open in Browser, or visit localhost:8088. You'll see a page served from inside the container, showing its own hostname and IP.
5. Explore — live CPU/memory/disk, streaming logs, a one-click terminal, and Edit & Recreate to change ports/env/resources.

Build & run

scripts/bundle.sh        # builds release binary + assembles dist/Davit.app
open dist/Davit.app

Plain swift build / swift run also works for development (no bundle, so no icon/menu-bar niceties).

What must still be installed

The API removes the CLI dependency, not the platform dependency: container-apiserver and its runtime/network plugin binaries are host launchd services that the library only talks to. Davit resolves the platform install root in this order:

1. custom install root from Settings
2. a Davit-managed install at ~/Library/Application Support/dev.wouter.davit/platform/<version>
3. /usr/local (the official installer)
4. vendored inside the app at Davit.app/Contents/Resources/vendor

In-app install: when no platform is found, the onboarding screen offers one-click install — Davit downloads Apple's signed installer pkg (with a live progress bar), verifies the code signature, extracts the payload into the managed root (no administrator rights needed, unlike the official installer), and bootstraps the services from there. Settings → General can then also install a container shell command: a wrapper in /usr/local/bin that pins CONTAINER_INSTALL_ROOT to the managed root before exec'ing the real CLI (one admin prompt; a bare symlink would be wrong, since the CLI derives its install root from the unresolved executable path). The managed copy sits above /usr/local in the resolution order on purpose: it always matches the client version the app links, so a newer system daemon can't break XPC compatibility. Also available headless: Davit platform install|remove.

To ship a fully self-contained app that works without the system installer:

scripts/vendor.sh 1.0.0        # downloads the official signed .pkg, extracts payload into Vendor/container
scripts/bundle.sh --vendor     # bundles it into the app

Service start/stop is implemented in-process (LaunchPlist + ServiceManager from ContainerPlugin — the same code container system start runs), pointed at whichever install root was resolved. Kernel and init-image installation are handled non-interactively on first start. App data lives in the standard ~/Library/Application Support/com.apple.container/, so Davit and the CLI (if installed) always see the same containers.

Version pinning: the SPM dependency on apple/container is pinned exact: "1.0.0" to match the daemon; client and apiserver ship in lockstep and the XPC protocol is not a stable public API. When the installed platform updates, bump the pin and rebuild.

Trade-offs of vendoring, for the record: the bundle grows by ~150 MB, you own the update cadence of the toolchain, and the launchd services are registered from inside the app bundle (so moving/deleting the app orphans them until container system stop). The default remains "use the system install" because the official pkg keeps services under /usr/local and updates independently.

Binary modes

The app binary doubles as a small tool:

Davit exec <container-id>        # interactive TTY shell into a container (used by "Open Terminal")
Davit selftest                   # end-to-end test of the XPC service layer against the live daemon
Davit system start|stop          # bootstrap / tear down the container launchd services
Davit platform install|remove    # download + verify Apple's signed pkg into an app-managed install root
Davit registry login|list|logout # registry credentials (login reads the password from stdin)
Davit compose plan|up <file>     # parse a compose file (plan: print only) / create & start the stack
Davit build -t <tag> <dir>       # build an image from <dir>/Dockerfile via the BuildKit shim
Davit machine list|create|boot|stop|delete   # container machines (micro VMs)
Davit --snapshot /tmp/shots      # render every screen to PNGs via ImageRenderer (no screen-recording permission)

Architecture

Sources/ContainerStack/
  Main.swift            entry point + exec/selftest/system binary modes
  Backend.swift         XPC service layer on ContainerAPIClient: ContainerService facade,
                        SystemController (launchd bootstrap), LogStreamer (FileHandle tail/follow),
                        PullProgressModel, TerminalLauncher, platform install resolution
  Models.swift          view models mapped from ContainerResource types (views stay decoupled
                        from the unstable library API)
  AppState.swift        @MainActor store: polling (4s data / 2s stats), CPU% derivation, actions
  SnapshotDriver.swift  --snapshot harness
  App.swift             SwiftUI scenes, menu bar extra
  Views/                Shell (sidebar), Dashboard, Containers, ContainerDetail, Images,
                        VolumesNetworks, Sheets (run/pull/create), Settings, Components

Stats note: the daemon reports cumulative cpuUsageUsec; Davit derives CPU% from deltas between polls, normalized to wall-clock time (100% = one full core).