Docker image running a Mac OS X installation

If you are trying to run Mac OS as the base system in a Docker container, unfortunately there is no way to do it.

Docker container need to use the host machine's Linux Kernel, since Mac OS family is Unix-based operating system, currently Docker cannot simulate a Mac OS in Docker container. Here is a link to explain how container works.


If hardware virtualization (KVM) is available on your host, you can now use Docker-OSX to run/emulate macOS on QEMU/KVM via OSX-KVM.


This would be nice, particularly for CI servers:

  1. You can run OSX on QEMU (akin to VirtualBox, emulates the kernel).
  2. You canrun QEMU from a Docker container. I have done this for ARM dev and it works well.
  3. So yes, you can run OSX from Docker, but you have to emulate, use a virtual machine in the container.

The future is now!

Run Mac OS X in Docker with near-native performance. https://github.com/sickcodes/Docker-OSX