Berthly

berthly.net

A native macOS app for Apple's container — build images, run containers and machines, manage networks and volumes, and tail logs from a real GUI instead of the command line.

Berthly lives in your menu bar and opens a full SwiftUI window, giving Apple's container tooling the Docker Desktop-style experience it's missing.

Features

• Images — list, pull from a registry, build from a Dockerfile, and inspect layers and metadata.
• Containers — create and run containers, view details, and stream logs live.
• Machines — create and manage VMs, set the kernel, and inspect resources.
• Networks & volumes — create, list, and remove them without touching a terminal.
• Registries — sign in to private registries and manage saved hosts.
• Integrated terminal — a real terminal attached to your containers, built on SwiftTerm.
• Command palette — jump to any action with a keystroke.
• Menu-bar presence — quick status and controls without leaving what you're doing.
• Keyboard-first — ⌘K palette, ⌘1–6 section switching, ⌘⌥1–3 detail tabs, and full menu shortcuts for every action.

Beyond the CLI

A GUI that only mirrored commands wouldn't be worth installing. Berthly is built around the workflow, with a tier of features the CLI doesn't have:

• Drag-and-drop builds — drag a Dockerfile/Containerfile from Finder onto the window to open the Build sheet pre-filled with the resolved context and Dockerfile path.
• Rebuild in one click — every image build's context and flags are remembered, so re-running a build never means re-entering anything.
• Watch without watching — live CPU/memory/network charts per container, pinned favorites in the menu bar, and a notification when a pinned container or machine changes state while you're elsewhere.
• Builds keep going — close the build sheet and keep working; the toolbar indicator tracks progress and surfaces failures.
• Zero to running — Berthly can install Apple's signed container toolchain, then start and monitor the daemon for you.
• Disk hygiene at a glance — reclaimable-space badges on Images and Volumes, with confirmed one-click pruning.
• Image updates, Watchtower-style — Berthly periodically compares your pulled tags against their registries and badges stale images and the containers running them; "Recreate with Latest Image" pulls and rebuilds the container with its exact configuration, volumes intact.

And yes — Berthly also covers the container CLI's full feature surface — see PARITY.md for the subcommand-by-subcommand mapping and the few expert flags left to the CLI.

Requirements

• Apple Silicon Mac — container runs Linux containers in lightweight VMs and requires Apple Silicon.
• macOS 26 or later.
• Apple's container installed and running. Berthly is a GUI on top of it; it can help you install and start the daemon, but it drives the same underlying tooling.

Install

Download the latest Berthly-<version>.dmg from berthly.net or Releases, open it, and drag Berthly.app into Applications. The app is Developer ID–signed and notarized by Apple, so it opens without warnings. Updates arrive in-app (Berthly → Check for Updates…).

Or build from source:

Building

Berthly is an Xcode project. It links against Apple's container and containerization Swift packages, resolved automatically via Swift Package Manager.

git clone https://github.com/henrywang/Berthly.git
cd Berthly
open Berthly.xcodeproj

Then build and run the Berthly scheme (⌘R). Package resolution runs on first open and may take a few minutes.

Note: building the container/containerization dependencies requires the Swift toolchain that ships with the matching Xcode; make sure your Xcode is current.

Testing

• Unit tests (BerthlyTests) use Swift Testing.
• UI tests (BerthlyUITests) use XCUITest and can run against a mock service for determinism.

xcodebuild test -scheme Berthly -destination 'platform=macOS'

Privacy & security

Berthly is a local tool, and it behaves like one:

• Everything stays on your Mac. Berthly talks to the local container daemon over XPC. There is no telemetry, no analytics, and no crash reporting.
• Network traffic is limited to what you can see. Image pulls, pushes, and registry sign-ins go to the registries you configure — the same ones the container CLI would contact. Beyond that, Berthly contacts GitHub in exactly two cases: checking for Berthly updates (Sparkle fetches the release feed from this repo's GitHub Releases — disable it in Settings if you prefer), and downloading Apple's signed container installer when you use the guided install/upgrade flow.
• Registry credentials live in your macOS Keychain, in the very same Keychain items container registry login uses. Berthly never stores credentials anywhere else.
• Not sandboxed, by necessity. Berthly manages the container daemon (XPC, launchctl) and works with your local files for builds and volume mounts — capabilities the App Sandbox doesn't allow. The code is open; audit what it does.

Found a vulnerability? Please report it privately — see SECURITY.md.

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! See CONTRIBUTING.md for how to build, test, and submit changes. Bug reports and feature requests are welcome via issues.

License

Licensed under the Apache License 2.0.