Running GUI applications using Docker for Mac
This is a short guide explaining how to run GUI applications from within Docker on Mac. This uses XQuartz to enable to set the DISPLAY variable within the container.
Install XQuartz
You can install XQuartz using homebrew with brew cask install xquartz or directly from the website here. At the time of writing, I had 2.7.11 installed on my machine with OSX El Capitan. After installing XQuartz restart your machine.
Install Docker for Mac
Install docker using brew cask install docker or directly from the website here.
Run XQuartz
Start XQuartz from command line using open -a XQuartz. In the XQuartz preferences, go to the “Security” tab and make sure you’ve got “Allow connections from network clients” ticked:
Host Machine IP
IP=$(ifconfig en0 | grep inet | awk '$1=="inet" {print $2}') should set the IP variable as the ip of your local machine. If you’re on wifi you may want to use en1 instead of en0, check the value of the variable using echo $IP.
Now add the IP using Xhost with xhost + $IP. If the xhost command is not found check /usr/X11/bin/xhost as that might not be in your path.
Running a container
You can now try running firefox in your container with:
docker run -d --name firefox -e DISPLAY=$IP:0 -v /tmp/.X11-unix:/tmp/.X11-unix jess/firefox
or run octave using:
docker run -d --name octave -e DISPLAY=$IP:0 -v /tmp/.X11-unix:/tmp/.X11-unix openmicroscopy/octave