Change your Docker Desktop settings

Customize Docker Desktop behavior and optimize performance and resource usage with Docker Desktop's settings.

To open Settings either:

• Select the Docker menu and then Settings
• Select the Settings icon from the Docker Desktop Dashboard.

You can also locate the settings-store.json file at:

• Mac: ~/Library/Group\ Containers/group.com.docker/settings-store.json
• Windows: C:\Users\[USERNAME]\AppData\Roaming\Docker\settings-store.json
• Linux: ~/.docker/desktop/settings-store.json

For information on enforcing settings at an organization level, see Settings Management.

General

Configure startup behavior, UI appearance, terminal preferences, and feature defaults for Docker Desktop.

Resources

Control the CPU, memory, disk, file sharing, proxy, and network resources available to Docker Desktop.

Advanced

In WSL 2 mode, configure memory, CPU, and swap limits on the WSL 2 utility VM.

Tip

If you feel Docker Desktop starting to get slow or you're running multi-container workloads, increase the memory and disk image space allocation.

File sharing

Use File sharing to allow local directories on your machine to be shared with Linux containers. This is especially useful for editing source code in an IDE on the host while running and testing the code in a container.

• Share only the directories that you need with the container. File sharing introduces overhead as any changes to the files on the host need to be notified to the Linux VM. Sharing too many files can lead to high CPU load and slow filesystem performance.
• Shared folders are designed to allow application code to be edited on the host while being executed in containers. For non-code items such as cache directories or databases, the performance will be much better if they are stored in the Linux VM, using a data volume (named volume) or data container.
• If you share the whole of your home directory into a container, Mac may prompt you to give Docker access to personal areas of your home directory such as your Reminders or Downloads.
• By default, Mac file systems are case-insensitive while Linux is case-sensitive. On Linux, it is possible to create two separate files: test and Test, while on Mac these filenames would actually refer to the same underlying file. This can lead to problems where an app works correctly on a developer's machine (where the file contents are shared) but fails when run in Linux in production (where the file contents are distinct). To avoid this, Docker Desktop insists that all shared files are accessed as their original case. Therefore, if a file is created called test, it must be opened as test. Attempts to open Test will fail with the error "No such file or directory". Similarly, once a file called test is created, attempts to create a second file called Test will fail.

For more information, see Volume mounting requires file sharing for any project directories outside of /Users.

Proxies

Docker Desktop supports HTTP/HTTPS and SOCKS5 proxies. SOCKS5 requires a Business subscription.

To prevent developers from accidentally changing the proxy settings, see Settings Management.

Docker Desktop proxy

Used for signing in to Docker, pulling and pushing images, fetching artifacts during image builds, and reporting error diagnostics.

Note

If you use a PAC file hosted on a web server, add the MIME type application/x-ns-proxy-autoconfig for the .pac extension. Without this, the PAC file may not parse correctly. See Hardened Docker Desktop.

Containers proxy

Used for outbound traffic from running containers.

Note

The HTTPS proxy used for image scanning is configured using the HTTPS_PROXY environment variable.

Proxy authentication

Network

Note

On Windows, the Network tab is not available in Windows container mode because Windows manages networking.

On Windows and Mac, you can also set the default networking mode and DNS resolution behavior. For more information, see Networking.

WSL integration (Windows only)

For more details on configuring Docker Desktop to use WSL 2, see Docker Desktop WSL 2 backend.

Docker Engine

Configure the Docker daemon using a JSON configuration file.

The file is located at $HOME/.docker/daemon.json. Edit it directly in the Docker Desktop Dashboard or in a text editor.

To see the full list of possible configuration options, see the dockerd command reference.

Builders

Use the Builders tab to inspect and manage builders in the Docker Desktop settings.

Inspect

To inspect builders, find the builder that you want to inspect and select the expand icon. You can only inspect active builders.

Inspecting an active builder shows:

• BuildKit version
• Status
• Driver type
• Supported capabilities and platforms
• Disk usage
• Endpoint address

Select a different builder

The Selected builder section displays the selected builder. To select a different builder:

1. Find the builder that you want to use under Available builders
2. Open the drop-down menu next to the builder's name.
3. Select Use to switch to this builder.

Your build commands now use the selected builder by default.

Create a builder

To create a builder, use the Docker CLI. See Create a new builder

Remove a builder

You can remove a builder if:

• The builder isn't your selected builder

• The builder isn't associated with a Docker context.

  To remove builders associated with a Docker context, remove the context using the docker context rm command.

To remove a builder:

1. Find the builder that you want to remove under Available builders
2. Open the drop-down menu.
3. Select Remove to remove this builder.

If the builder uses the docker-container or kubernetes driver, the build cache is also removed, along with the builder.

Stop and start a builder

Builders that use the docker-container driver run the BuildKit daemon in a container. You can start and stop the BuildKit container using the drop-down menu.

Running a build automatically starts the container if it's stopped.

You can only start and stop builders using the docker-container driver.

Kubernetes

Note

On Windows the Kubernetes tab is not available in Windows container mode.

Enable and configure the built-in standalone Kubernetes cluster for testing container deployments.

For more information about using the Kubernetes integration with Docker Desktop, see Explore the Kubernetes view.

Software updates

Manage how and when Docker Desktop checks for and downloads updates.

Extensions

Enable Docker Extensions and control which extensions are available to install and run.

For more information about Docker extensions, see Docker Extensions.

Beta features

Beta features provide access to future product functionality. These features are intended for testing and feedback only as they may change between releases without warning or remove them entirely from a future release. Beta features must not be used in production environments. Docker doesn't offer support for beta features.

You can also sign up to the Developer Preview program from the Beta features tab.

For a list of current experimental features in the Docker CLI, see Docker CLI Experimental features.

Notifications

Choose which types of Docker Desktop notifications you want to receive.

Notifications appear briefly in the lower-right of the Docker Desktop Dashboard, then move to the Notifications drawer, accessible from the top-right of the Dashboard.

Advanced (Mac only)

Reconfigure CLI tool installation paths and privileged system permissions set during initial install.

Docker Offload

Enable Docker Offload and configure idle timeout and GPU support for cloud-based workloads.