Colima on macOS 26 for VS Code Dev Containers

Start with installing Colima, Docker, and the buildx plugin with brew install colima docker docker-buildx.

Make sure that /opt/homebrew/bin is in your PATH, usually by using export PATH="/opt/homebrew/bin:$PATH" in your ~/.zshrc file. Or use the export PATH="$(brew --prefix)/bin:$PATH" command in your ~/.zshrc file. This needs to insert the homebrew folder at the start of the path to take precendence over built-in Apple commands.

Checklist

  1. Colima must be installed.

docker: unknown command: docker buildx

The first attempt is likely to fail with an error like docker: unknown command: docker buildx. This is because the docker-buildx package is not installed. You can install it with brew install docker-buildx. Note the caveat during the install about creating or updating your ~/.docker/config.json file to include the cliPluginsExtraDirs entry. This is necessary for Docker to find the plugin. After installing docker-buildx, you should be able to use the docker buildx command without any issues.

% brew install docker-buildx
==> Fetching downloads for: docker-buildx
✔︎ Bottle Manifest docker-buildx (0.33.0)
✔︎ Bottle docker-buildx (0.33.0)
==> Pouring docker-buildx--0.33.0.arm64_tahoe.bottle.tar.gz
==> Caveats
docker-buildx is a Docker plugin. For Docker to find the plugin, add "cliPluginsExtraDirs" to ~/.docker/config.json:
  "cliPluginsExtraDirs": [
      "/opt/homebrew/lib/docker/cli-plugins"
  ]
==> Summary
🍺  /opt/homebrew/Cellar/docker-buildx/0.33.0: 46 files, 61.2MB
==> Running `brew cleanup docker-buildx`...
Disable this behaviour by setting `HOMEBREW_NO_INSTALL_CLEANUP=1`.
Hide these hints with `HOMEBREW_NO_ENV_HINTS=1` (see `man brew`).
==> Caveats
zsh completions have been installed to:
  /opt/homebrew/share/zsh/site-functions

Test whether docker can find the plugin with docker buildx version.

docker: error getting credentials

If you had Docker Desktop installed previously, your ~/.docker/config.json will have an entry of "credsStore": "desktop" that is causing this error.

After removing it, save and quit and retry a docker pull command.

other stuff

brew install colima docker docker-compose docker-buildx have to be installed

Colima needs to be started with colima start --with-docker and then you can use docker commands as normal.