Have you encountered the dreaded "Docker will damage your computer" or "com.docker.socket was not opened because it contains malware" error recently? Don’t worry—your Mac is safe! 🎉
After struggling with this issue myself, I finally found a workaround that worked like a charm, and I’m sharing it here to help others in the community. 💡
Here’s what you can do to resolve the problem:
1️⃣ Close Docker and kill all running Docker processes:
docker kill $(docker ps -q)
2️⃣ Check if vmnetd processes are running and kill them (if they exist):
ps aux | grep vmnetd
3️⃣ Remove the problematic vmnetd file:
sudo rm /Library/PrivilegedHelperTools/com.docker.*
4️⃣ Download the latest Docker .dmg file from the official website.
5️⃣ Restart your Mac—this step is crucial! Without restarting, you’ll likely keep seeing the popup.
6️⃣ Install Docker via command line:
cd ~/Downloads
sudo hdiutil attach Docker.dmg
sudo /Volumes/Docker/Docker.app/Contents/MacOS/install
sudo hdiutil detach /Volumes/Docker
7️⃣ Open Docker from Applications and it should work fine! 🎉
For more details, check out the ongoing discussion on GitHub or Docker Community Forum here.
I hope this helps save someone time and frustration! If you’ve experienced this or found another solution, feel free to share in the comments. 🙌
Top comments (13)
I use orb stack. Pretty stable and just works.
@thenaman047 Thanks for sharing about Orb Stack! I've heard good things about it being a lightweight and stable alternative to Docker Desktop, especially on macOS. 😊 How's your experience with it so far? Do you find it handles everything you need compared to Docker Desktop?
I'd say for 80-90% of docker needs like building, tagging & running containers. It just works flawlessly. The UI has just enough options for most needs. And if you are good with docker commands, it's more than enough.
Can docker images and docker compose things be run using it?
Anything that runs docker is supported here, docker, docker compose both work seamlessly.
They also have kubernetes support but I haven't given that a shot, but based on how amazing this is for docker. Am sure it'll be the same for kubernetes too.
Wow. Thanks. Lot for getting this to me at the right time.
You're most welcome! 😊 I'm so glad that this was helpful for you.
Downloading latest version and Reinstalling fixed it for me
Glad that worked for you! 😊 I tried downloading and reinstalling as well, but unfortunately, it didn’t fix the issue on my end. That’s why I had to go through the additional steps I shared. It seems like the solution might vary depending on the setup or underlying issue.
Hi! I hope you don’t mind me dropping this resolution here as well: docker.com/blog/incident-update-do...
Hi! Thanks for sharing this link—it’s always great to have official resources for reference. 😊 Hopefully, this will help others facing similar issues too!
Thanks, man! =)
Welcome😊