Docker for Mac - Kubernetes - reference local image

I was able to run a local image by setting the imagePullPolicy to Never.

For example:

apiVersion: v1
kind: Pod
metadata:
  name: local-image-test
spec:
  containers:
  - name: local-image-container
    image: local-image:latest
    imagePullPolicy: Never

(Credit to https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/issues/1293#issuecomment-357326426 for this solution)

In addition to techtrainer comment and answer, I would like to provide some examples of how to do it.

General rule. You have to use tag version of images rather than latest. With Docker tags, the more specific you can get, the better. Get specific to avoid using the wrong image. Consider this if you don't want your colleagues or other Docker users pulling down images and having no idea how recent they are. Get specific to avoid such issues.

docker tag IMAGE ID image/TAG:version.d.m.y

For better management of your images, you should have some smart convention of naming. I prefer to use a stage, version, and date of creation of the image. For example:

docker tag 113a43faa138 ubuntu/prod:v1.8.6.2018

It means production stage, version 1, created on 8 June 2018.

And that's all. Your version is available, and naming is easier to understand for you and further users of this image.

Use tagged version of image rather than latest because If you are shipping Docker images to a production environment, you should just ignore the latest tag. Don’t use it. Don’t be tempted by it. It’s easy to look at it and think that your deployment script should just pull “latest” and your build process will ensure that’s valid.