TLDR
  
    
    Link to heading
  

Two years after my first analysis of Docker performance on MacOS, things have improved significantly. VirtIOFS is now much faster (bind mounts are only 3x slower instead of 5-6x), and we have new solutions in the ecosystem. Lima (open-source) performs well and sometimes better than Docker Desktop, while Docker’s new file synchronization feature offers impressive speed improvements (59% faster) but requires a paid subscription. For the most stable performance, the hybrid approach (combining bind mounts with volumes) remains the best practice. Choose your setup based on your needs:

Fransisco Lemon

Community Picks is a section on daily.dev where our community members share the most interesting and valuable content they've discovered online. From insightful articles to handy tools, every post is a gem curated by our dedicated coomunity. To contribute to Community Picks, you need to have at least 250 reputation points, ensuring that only active and trusted members can share their finds.

Community Picks

Two years after analyzing Docker performance on MacOS, significant improvements have been noted. VirtIOFS now provides better speed, with new solutions like open-source Lima and Docker's file synchronization feature offering enhanced performance. The most stable setup remains a hybrid approach combining bind mounts with volumes. Users should choose between solutions like Lima for a fast, open-source option, Docker Desktop with file synchronization for maximum speed, or any solution with the hybrid approach for stable performance.

Docker on MacOS is still slow?

Alway depends also on hardware of mac. Of course, that Docker will be running fine on Mac with M4 Max, than just M1 chip.

No, it’s not. It works pretty much faster than in linux :D

It’s not, but you can face some issues with disk/volume sync. This is a well know problem.
Also, if your Mac is using ARM processor, you may have to adapt some dependencies while coding.