ContainerUI is a vibe coded, native macOS application designed to create, inspect, and manage lightweight Linux containers powered by Apple's new lightweight OCI-compatible container service. Built entirely in Swift and SwiftUI, it harnesses macOS's native Virtualization.framework to run Linux containers as isolated, secure virtual machines with dedicated IP addresses and sub-second startup times.

Avoid confusing terminals or config files—manage your local virtualized container stack using a sleek, glassmorphic desktop interface.

The code was generated by Gemini 3.5 Flash and then reviewed by Claude Sonnet 4.6.

• ⚡ Modern Glassmorphic Dashboard: High-level telemetry of running container densities, allocated processor cores, memory caps, network segment bridges, and quick micro-image installers.
• 🚢 Full Container VM Lifecycle: Deploy, boot, stop, delete, and prune OCI container instances in beautiful cards.
• 📟 Real-Time Log Viewer: Easily fetch and audit output console streams with standard copy controls.
• 🐚 Interactive Exec Shell: Execute shell commands directly inside active containers (like ls -la / or uname -a) with a retro green-on-black console.
• 🖼️ Image Registry Management: Pull remote images directly from Docker Hub/OCI registries (e.g., alpine, ubuntu, nginx) or delete local layers with automated download progress sheets.
• 💾 Persistent Disk Volumes: Create and attach dedicated ext4 block volumes to containers to preserve files across lifecycles.
• 🌐 Network Diagnostics: Inspect virtual LAN bridges, gateways, NAT translations, and MAC addresses assigned to your individual VMs.
• ⚙️ Service Daemon Control: Start, stop, or restart the background container daemon (container-apiserver) with granular controls.

• UI/UX: SwiftUI, AppKit integration (for frosted glass Visual Effects panels)
• Process Automation: Custom asynchronous Swift Process wrapper to execute system APIs and parse outputs thread-safely
• Serialization: Codable-based JSON decoders mapping native /usr/local/bin/container outputs directly into Swift structures

To run this app and its underlying services, your system must meet the following specs:

• Hardware: Apple Silicon Mac (M1, M2, M3, M4 series)
• Operating System: macOS 14.0 (Sonoma) or newer
• Binary Utilities: Apple's official container framework utility installed on your path (defaults to /usr/local/bin/container). For reference, check out Apple Container GitHub.

Before running the application, make sure the macOS lightweight services have been configured. Run the following in your terminal:

# 1. Start the container api service daemon
container system start

# 2. Download and set up the recommended Linux kernel boot image
container system kernel set --recommended

We provide a simple compilation script build.sh at the root workspace that packages the application files into a standard, double-clickable macOS .app bundle:

# Make the build script executable
chmod +x build.sh

# Run the compilation build script
./build.sh

Launch the native compiled package from your terminal:

open ContainerUI.app

Alternatively, double-click ContainerUI.app in your Finder window.

container_ui/
├── LICENSE                 # MIT License details
├── README.md               # User manual and overview documentation
├── build.sh                # Compilation shell script generating ContainerUI.app
└── ContainerUI/
    ├── ContainerApp.swift  # Application entrypoint, routing, window styling, and glass backdrops
    ├── Models.swift        # Strong Swift Decodable types mirroring container status tables
    ├── CommandRunner.swift # Subprocess execution controller with async stream wrappers
    ├── ContainerManager.swift # Centralized state engine managing refreshing and service APIs
    └── Views/
        ├── SidebarView.swift       # Left column navigating tabs with active counter badges
        ├── DashboardView.swift     # Telemetry dashboard, quick pull row templates, online states
        ├── ContainersView.swift    # Configured VMs listings, play/stop operations, layout toggles
        ├── ContainerCreateView.swift # Deploy wizard setting core memory sliders and ports
        ├── TerminalView.swift      # Dark console logs streamer and emerald interactive shells
        ├── ImagesView.swift        # Registry pulls list with progress dialogs
        ├── VolumesView.swift       # persistent storage drives inspector and creator sheets
        ├── NetworksView.swift      # Host network bridging vmnet diagnostics
        └── SystemView.swift        # Diagnostics, executable path tuning, and kernel setups

This project is licensed under the MIT License - see the LICENSE file for details.