Run Edit Form

Run / Edit Form

The Run / Edit form is intentionally UI-first. It bridges Apple's container run flags into controls that feel native on macOS, while the live CLI preview remains the source of truth for exactly what will execute.

Design rule

Use a structured control whenever the option has a bounded or recognizable value space:

• toggles for booleans, such as --detach, --rm, --tty, --read-only, --init, --ssh, --rosetta, --virtualization, and --no-dns
• pickers for known option sets, such as platform presets, registry scheme, and progress mode
• sliders for host-bounded resource values, such as memory and shared memory
• steppers for small numeric limits, such as concurrent image downloads
• repeatable rows for lists, such as environment variables, labels, ports, volumes, sockets, capabilities, DNS servers, tmpfs mounts, ulimits, and env files

Keep free-form text fields only where the CLI genuinely accepts arbitrary strings, paths, names, or raw specs.

Form structure

The form uses native grouped macOS settings-style sections rather than mirroring CLI flag order:

• Essentials: image, platform, name, command, and basic run behavior
• Resources: CPU and memory limits
• Networking: published ports, network attachment, and socket forwarding
• Storage: volume mounts
• Environment: variables and env files
• App Managed: restart policy and health checks
• Appearance: local-only card personalization
• Advanced Options: one disclosure for process internals, security/runtime switches, DNS, raw mounts, and labels

The common sections stay visible. Compose import and Edit open Advanced Options when they contain advanced values, so imported settings are not lost just because they live behind the disclosure.

UI abstractions over CLI flags

These controls deliberately do not mirror the CLI one-to-one:

UI control	CLI output	Notes
Platform picker	--platform <os/arch[/variant]>	The UI offers common Apple-silicon presets plus Custom. Separate --os and --arch controls are omitted to avoid duplicate platform concepts because --platform takes precedence.
Memory limit toggle + slider	--memory <size>	The user chooses a host-bounded amount; the app formats it as M or G.
Shared memory toggle + slider	--shm-size <size>	Same UI pattern as memory, with a small default of 64M.
Registry scheme picker	--scheme auto|https|http	Empty means runtime default.
Progress picker	--progress auto|none|ansi|plain|color	Empty means runtime default.
Limit parallel downloads toggle + stepper	--max-concurrent-downloads <n>	Empty means runtime default.
Disable DNS toggle	--no-dns	When enabled, DNS-specific rows are hidden and the command omits --dns* flags so the UI cannot express contradictory settings.
Restart policy picker	--label contained.restart=<policy>	container has no native restart flag. Contained stores restart intent as a label and the app watchdog enforces it.
Health check section	local app state	container has no native healthcheck flag. Contained stores and runs probes itself.
Personalization section	local app state	Nickname, icon, tint, and card background are local-only and are not written as container labels.

Free-form by design

The following options stay textual because the CLI accepts arbitrary values and the app should not pretend to know every valid shape:

• image reference, container name, command, entrypoint
• working directory, user, UID/GID
• env file paths
• volume paths and raw --mount specs
• socket paths
• label and environment key/value rows
• capability names
• network attachment string, including options such as mac= and mtu=
• container ID file, runtime handler, init image, kernel path
• DNS search/options, tmpfs entries, and ulimits

Compose import behavior

Compose import follows the same UI-first rule: it fills editable Run forms rather than directly launching an opaque stack. The importer maps every Compose service field that has a Run form equivalent and warns for fields it cannot safely translate.

Important translations:

• relative bind mounts are resolved relative to the compose file directory
• platform fills the platform picker/custom value
• network_mode fills Network
• stdin_open and tty fill the matching toggles
• env_file fills env file rows
• restart: unless-stopped is normalized to Contained's app-managed Always policy because user-initiated stops are already suppressed by the watchdog
• healthchecks become app-managed health checks

Unsupported or ambiguous Compose shapes are skipped with warnings instead of creating partial form rows that would block Run. For example, a target-only port like 8080 has no host port to publish for this runtime, so it is reported and not added as an incomplete port row.