

This doesn't mean that Docker on macOS is always slower than on Linux. Accessing large files, or large numbers of files, via a virtual machine in macOS will always perform worse than native access. One of the most noticeable differences is with shared filesystems. Is Docker on Mac Slow?īecause Docker runs in a virtual machine on macOS, container operations are slower than they would be on Linux. That said, in many instances, you might need more CPU and memory than expected or on a Linux machine. You can fire up a MySQL database, Nginx web server, or InfluxDB in seconds with Docker - just as easily as you can on a Linux development system.

It's not the right choice for performance testing, and you're going to hit real limits on the size and number of containers you can run depending on CPU and memory-just like you would on any local development machine.īut, running containers instead of native applications on a macOS computer is often a better option than using native installers or even Homebrew. MacOS is still a good choice for development, and you can get a lot done running containers on a Mac. This affects performance -and this is exacerbated by certain tools or languages (like PHP projects that have heavy I/O consumption).ĭoes that make macOS a bad choice for running Docker? No. But macOS doesn't have a Linux kernel, so Docker has to run in a Linux virtual machine. Docker uses the Linux kernel to manage resources between containers, so your Docker applications run on the Linux operating systems. Let's talk about why that is and what you can do to improve it.ĭocker runs differently on macOS than Linux. Docker – which is an important tool for testing and production environments.īut Docker's performance on Mac has a poor reputation. More importantly, Macs support the most popular development tools like VS Code, the JetBrains toolbox, and. And many developers appreciate the user experience that Mac and Apple have become famous for. They let developers open a shell and find an environment that looks a lot like Linux. They support Java, Python, Ruby, and many other commonly used development languages.

Macs are excellent development platforms.
