Show HN: Davit, a Apple Containers UI

Mostly vibe-coded Apple Containers front-end that I'd like to use myself. But if others want to use it, here's the source code.

▲

Groxx 10 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

Kinda interestingly: it zips to 17MB, but the binary looks to be 56MB (davit.app/contents/macos/davit). That seems like a surprising amount of compression for a binary - embedded assets maybe? Possibly this is normal for mac apps though?

▲

simonw 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

This looks like a really solid app. I like that it's 17 MB and uses the ContainerAPIClient library directly.

28 commits in 3 days, 5,015 lines of Swift, every commit "Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5".

Also neat that it's signed/notarized. I installed it and it downloaded the necessary container platform stuff on first launch.

Suggestion: add a getting started tutorial to the site which suggests an image to try out and has screenshots (or a silent video) showing you how to get that image up and running and what you can do with it.

The create image dialog suggests "nginx:latest" but that's not a great starting demo.

	▲	thefourthchime an hour ago \| parent \| next [-]
		The AI-Maxing copy on the website kind of gave it away. Doesn't mean is not a great app though!
	▲	xinit an hour ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Great suggestion. Coming up.

▲

dllrr an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I've been a fan of Orbstack for make 2 years or so. Worth the cost for me because it's so well integrated and fast and docker command compatible.

I'll give this a try though.

	▲	ttul an hour ago \| parent [-]
		I’m guessing the OrbStack team will probably support MacOS native containers soon enough, with all their management goodness on top.

▲

lelandfe an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Unrelated. I noticed that the settings window (Cmd-,) text inputs all type from the right instead of the left like older macOS inputs (or web inputs[0])

Is that a thing macOS is moving to? I'm sure I've seen Apple use these too.

[0] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Reference/...

▲

internet2000 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Really nice. Worked perfectly downloading the runtime and running nginx:latest.

It's getting to the point that scrolling down on Github and seeing Claude as a contributor is a signal the app will be good (Native feeling, no Electron, etc)

▲

3836293648 19 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> Tiny. A single ~17 MB app

Oh goodness what have we come to? I know we're comparing to electron monstrosities, but still

	▲	gfiorav 15 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		complaining about 17mb in 2026 has to be virtue signaling of some sort... yes I know we went to the moon with a few kb but are we going to hang on to that for ever?

▲

ozarkerD 36 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Man I wish Apple would add docker api compatibility to Apple containers

▲

david_p 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I will give this a try!

Docker desktop on mac does not work well (uses lots of resources) and my current alternative is OrbStack (very slick, uses far less resources, but freemium).

▲

ballislife30 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Docker desktop is a memory hog. What's the memory usage of Davit?

	▲	xinit an hour ago \| parent [-]
		With nothing running, the platform's background services idle at roughly 25 MB. Docker desktop starts a single VM to host all containers and will reserve memory to do so. Davit itself is about 25mb and then each container will use the memory up to what you allocate for it.

▲

bbg2401 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Other recent vibe-coded projects providing similar interfaces:

- https://github.com/tdeverx/contained-app

- https://github.com/tofa84/berth

	▲	roger_ 33 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Hmm… how does one even pick between multiple vibe coded options? I like to vet my options before committing to new software but who knows if the authors are gonna support these in a month? I don’t want to waste Fable tokens to fix bugs myself when they crop up.

▲

nvahalik 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I really want to use this but am stuck (right now) having to use Caddy's docker tags integration for name resolution.

▲

dofm 3 hours ago | parent [-]

Can you not use Avahi in the guest and get zeroconf?

Oh! Do you mean the issue is adding extra name resolution to a VM?

Have you tried this avahi alias trick?

https://gist.github.com/tomslominski/9d507acd4036952d65b2364...

Works like a charm, bit odd that you have a persistent avahi client process broadcasting per alias, but it's lightweight.

	▲	nvahalik 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Interesting! I will look into this.

▲

neodymiumphish 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

contained-app includes a Files feature to allow in-container filesystem browsing. Is there any plan to implement this in Davit as well?

Looks like great work, will try it soon!

	▲	xinit an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Great suggestion! I'll add this!

▲

MoonWalk 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I don't know a lot about containers. Would containers created for/with this also work in Docker?

Good name for this app, BTW.

	▲	natebc an hour ago \| parent [-]
		It claims to be backed by (and require) apple/containers(1) which "consumes and produces OCI-compatible container images" so if all that is true .... yes! 1) https://github.com/apple/container

▲

mrbnprck 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Looks great, does it also come with a menubar integration?

	▲	xinit 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		It does, doesn't it?

▲

nf-x 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Looks neat, need to give it a spin

▲

dom96 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

ooh nice

▲

oulipo2 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

How does it compare to something like OrbStack?

▲

LoganDark 3 hours ago | parent [-]

OrbStack has its own virtualization layer designed to simulate Docker. Containerization has different primitives even though it supports the same OCI images

▲

oulipo2 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Okay, so it allows to run the same image, but is not CLI-compatible with docker that's what you mean? But is it more / less / equivalently efficient ?

	▲	xinit an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Docker Desktop/Obstack start a single VM that runs all your containers. This means that you'll have to scale it accordingly. Davit uses Apple Containers that runs a very thin VM for each container you spin up. Depending on your use case it's more, less or equivalently effcient.