Orbstack - Docker on macOS

I can't live without Docker. I haven't even tried. To me, it's the simplest, fastest, and cleanest way to spin something up and have it just sitting there running, pause it, and pick it back up whenever you want.

I love setting up labs for things I could probably spin up on an AWS instance, or on some old spare PC lying around the house, but all of that ends up dragging in a ton of stuff you have to manage, and I quickly lose focus on what I actually wanted to test or learn.

Let's take an example, which happens to be what I'm working on right now: a Varnish setup with a simple backend. We put together a simple docker-compose file with whatever we need, pulling Varnish or Nginx images directly, or if we want to get more involved, a Debian image, whatever you feel like tinkering with. We spin it up and get going, and 90% of the time we get to spend on what we actually set out to try or build, not fighting with the environment. Then we leave it there, switched off, taking up barely any resources, ready for whatever comes next.

While all of this was wonderful on Linux, it's not so pretty on macOS, because it needs a virtual machine underneath, and that's a real chore — slow and unstable. The experience with Docker Desktop is disappointing, and on top of that you have to log in for it to work at all, which isn't great.

That's where OrbStack comes in, a tool that's been a real eye-opener for me. It's a Docker engine with an interface — basically like Docker Desktop, but heavily optimized for macOS, which makes working with it an absolute joy.

The moment you fire it up and try running the same containers, you're left staring in disbelief, wondering: "Wait, that's it? Already?" It can't be. It's incredibly fast. Very stable too, even though it hasn't been running long at all.

It also has some interesting features I haven't gotten to yet, like running an actual Linux machine directly — which I imagine offers great isolation — and on top of that, support for working with Kubernetes. The interface is really well built: you can still access it via terminal, view logs, and, something I find really compelling, browse and edit the container's files in a very natural, visual way. I think that could be a big leap forward, especially if you don't want to map anything locally.

So that's where I'm at, using OrbStack for each and every one of my crazy experiments. A WordPress site, a Varnish setup, an Nginx instance, load balancers, whatever you can think of — spin up a small container and in a few seconds it's ready to go. I really encourage you to give it a try.