Install Rancher Desktop on MacOS
Download Rancher Desktop Installer from https://rancherdesktop.io/.
| Double click the downloaded file and drag the Rancher Desktop icon to the application directory shown in the installer window to complete the installation. |
| Launch the Rancher Desktop application. You see the alert shown here. Click Open. |
The Rancher Desktop dialog appears. Clear the Enable Kubernetes checkbox and select dockerd (moby). Click Accept.
The Rancher Desktop app appears. Pull down the Menu item Open Preferences Dialog.
Choose Virtual Machine from the left navigation bar and change Memory (GB) to 6 GB and # CPUs to 4. Click Apply.
Still on Virtual Machine preferences, click the Volumes tab and choose virtiofs. Click Apply.
Still on Virtual Machine preferences, click the Emulation tab and choose VZ. Click Apply.
Open the Terminal app on your Mac. Run:
which dockerIf the docker command is not in $HOME/.rd/bin directory, do the following:
Edit .bashrc / .zshrc or any other init scripts currently in use for your account to include $HOME/.rd/bin in your path.
Source your change or re-login for this PATH change to be effective.
Confirm that the change is effective by running: docker image ls command. This command should show something similar to:
$ docker image ls
REPOSITORY TAG IMAGE ID CREATED SIZE
rancher/rancher latest 23fb5e281dd6 4 weeks ago 1.62GB
rancher/mirrored-library-busybox 1.34.1 ca9d74fb2502 9 months ago 1.41MB
rancher/mirrored-library-traefik 2.6.1 89657e32bf0a 11 months ago 99.6MB
rancher/mirrored-coredns-coredns 1.9.1 f40c41555cd4 11 months ago 49.6MB
rancher/local-path-provisioner v0.0.21 fe8bc53de6e4 14 months ago 32.4MB
rancher/mirrored-metrics-server v0.5.2 1d64d3e888a2 15 months ago 60.8MB
rancher/klipper-lb v0.3.4 625882d9991e 16 months ago 7.29MB
rancher/klipper-helm v0.6.6-build20211022 3b7ad2a8ddb9 16 months ago 228MB
registry.k8s.io/pause 3.6 7d46a07936af 18 months ago 484kB
rancher/mirrored-pause 3.5 f7ff3c404263 23 months ago 484kBAlso confirm that the docker pull command works by running:
$ docker image pull redhat/ubi9-minimal:9.5
9.5: Pulling from redhat/ubi9-minimal
3d6e338d0c59: Pull complete
Digest: sha256:085c5049f5bd0b3cb33c322306a528373f79dc6f1098ff8f5a5b28f2685c53f8
Status: Downloaded newer image for redhat/ubi9-minimal:9.5
docker.io/redhat/ubi9-minimal:9.5
$ docker run --rm redhat/ubi9-minimal:9.5 echo hello world
hello worldInstall Docker Community Edition (CE)
Follow these instructions to install Docker CE on Rocky Linux. For more information and downloads, see https://docs.docker.com/engine/install.
sudo dnf check-update
sudo dnf config-manager --add-repo https://download.docker.com/linux/centos/docker-ce.repo
sudo dnf update -y
sudo dnf install docker-ce docker-ce-cli containerd.io docker-compose-plugin
docker --version
sudo systemctl start docker
sudo systemctl status docker
sudo groupadd docker
sudo usermod -aG docker $USER
newgrp dockerVerify the Docker CE installation
The following commands verify the Docker CE installation on Rocky Linux.
vi docker-compose.yamlUse the following sample compose content:
services:
hello:
image: alpine:latest
command: [/bin/echo, 'Hello there!']Run these commands to verify the installation:
docker compose up
# 'Hello there!' should show up in the console
docker compose down.png?sv=2026-02-06&spr=https&st=2026-10-01T07%3A14%3A40Z&se=2026-10-01T07%3A26%3A40Z&sr=c&sp=r&sig=%2BF35WSUL0YJBA8neu0Kqm7iGVnijtpuZlyuAtpn7geY%3D)
.png?sv=2026-02-06&spr=https&st=2026-10-01T07%3A14%3A40Z&se=2026-10-01T07%3A26%3A40Z&sr=c&sp=r&sig=%2BF35WSUL0YJBA8neu0Kqm7iGVnijtpuZlyuAtpn7geY%3D)