Apple Container

During the latest WWDC (2025), Containerization was announced and released, a software that “executes each Linux container inside of its own lightweight virtual machine” on Apple Silicon processors, starting from macOS 15 Sequoia and macOS 26 Tahoe.

Through Containerization, we have another way to manage OCI-compatible images; as a result, we can also use Parrot’s Docker images.

Why? Because our Docker images are OCI-compliant, so we can use them without any issues.

Install container

Container is a CLI tool that allows us to use the Containerization APIs to create and manage these images. It’s recommended to update macOS to the latest stable version to ensure you can use container.

Although it can be installed directly from the GitHub Releases page, it’s also possible to use Homebrew for the installation:

┌─[user@parrot]─[~]
└──╼ $ brew install --cask container

┌─[user@parrot]─[~]
└──╼ $ OVERVIEW: A container platform for macOS

USAGE: container [--debug] <subcommand>

OPTIONS:
  --debug                 Enable debug output [environment: CONTAINER_DEBUG]
  --version               Show the version.
  -h, --help              Show help information.

CONTAINER SUBCOMMANDS:
  create                  Create a new container
  delete, rm              Delete one or more containers
  exec                    Run a new command in a running container
  inspect                 Display information about one or more containers
  kill                    Kill one or more running containers
  list, ls                List containers
  logs                    Fetch container stdio or boot logs
  run                     Run a container
  start                   Start a container
  stop                    Stop one or more running containers

IMAGE SUBCOMMANDS:
  build                   Build an image from a Dockerfile
  images, image, i        Manage images
  registry, r             Manage registry configurations

SYSTEM SUBCOMMANDS:
  builder                 Manage an image builder instance
  system, s               Manage system components

Then you can start the system service with the command below:

┌─[user@parrot]─[~]
└──╼ $ container system start

Running this command starts the container server.

If a default kernel isn’t already installed, it will be installed automatically (the default kernel shown is provided by Kata Containers, a lightweight virtual machine solution for running containers).

Use Parrot OS containers on Apple Silicon

The commands are very similar to Docker/Podman. For example, container list --all will display all containers, and build allows you to create custom images.

As we mentioned earlier, we can also use Parrot OS Docker images on container, and since the commands are the same, we can start a Parrot OS container simply by typing:

┌─[user@parrot]─[~]
└──╼ $ container run --rm -it parrotsec/core

or

┌─[user@parrot]─[~]
└──╼ $ container run --rm -it parrotsec/security

Technical Overview

For more information, see the container technical overview.