Can’t start docker desktop on macOS

Docker Desktop
,
1

Can’t start docker desktop on macOS 15.4.1. I have tried all docker desktop version from 4.37.1 to the latest 4.41.2. I always get the same result:

docker-desktop

Any ideas?

2

I think I had this issue recently. I say I think, because I don’t remember the exact message, since I just killed the Docker Desktop process, because I had to make it work quickly and I also reinstalled Docker Desktop later and I’m not sure whether I had a nightly build when the issue happened or not.

But you can try to stop Docker Desktop, check the processes on the Mac host, make sure there are no Docker Desktop processes, and start Docker Desktop again. I had to run

pkill -9 Docker

on my host, but in case you have any process on your host that has the word “Docker” in it, you should list the processes first and use process IDs to kill only Docker Desktop processes.

Or restart your Mac. That is probably the safest way.

If you still can’t start Docker Desktop properly, you should run the Diagnostics and share the ID on GitHub

That is where the developers can see it and they will have access to the uploaded diagnostics.

https://docs.docker.com/desktop/troubleshoot-and-support/troubleshoot/

Since I didn’t have time to run it when I had the issue, I I think I reinstalled Docker after it, I could not share it with Docker, but this is how you can run it from the terminal if the GUI doesn’t work (quote from the documentation):

  1. Create and upload the diagnostics ID. Run:
$ /Applications/Docker.app/Contents/MacOS/com.docker.diagnose gather -upload

After the diagnostics have finished, the terminal displays your diagnostics ID and the path to the diagnostics file. The diagnostics ID is composed of your user ID and a timestamp. For example BE9AFAAF-F68B-41D0-9D12-84760E6B8740/20190905152051.

Please, read the original documentation I linked for more details.

Also if you tried restarting your Mac or stopping Docker Desktop (or killing processes and starting Docker Desktop again), please share the result.

update:

I just had the issue again on macOS, so I also shared my diagnostics ID in an internal channel. Hopefully it can be resolved soon, but I can confirm, that killing the Docker Desktop processes from terminal worked for me (I did not have anything else I could accidentally kill on my host, so I used the command I shared) and I could start Docker Desktop again without issues.