General FAQs for Desktop

Table of contents

Can I use Docker Desktop offline?

Yes, you can use Docker Desktop offline. However, you cannot access features that require an active internet connection. Additionally, any functionality that requires you to sign in won't work while using Docker Desktop offline or in air-gapped environments. This includes:

The resources in the Learning Center
Pulling or pushing an image to Docker Hub
Image Access Management
Static vulnerability scanning
Viewing remote images in the Docker Dashboard
Setting up Dev Environments
Docker Build when using BuildKit. You can work around this by disabling BuildKit. Run DOCKER_BUILDKIT=0 docker build . to disable BuildKit.
Kubernetes (Images are download when you enable Kubernetes for the first time)
Checking for updates
In-app diagnostics (including the Self-diagnose tool)
Sending usage statistics

How do I connect to the remote Docker Engine API?

To connect to the remote Engine API, you might need to provide the location of the Engine API for Docker clients and development tools.

Mac and Windows WSL 2 users can connect to the Docker Engine through a Unix socket: unix:///var/run/docker.sock.

If you are working with applications like Apache Maven that expect settings for DOCKER_HOST and DOCKER_CERT_PATH environment variables, specify these to connect to Docker instances through Unix sockets.

For example:

$ export DOCKER_HOST=unix:///var/run/docker.sock

Docker Desktop Windows users can connect to the Docker Engine through a named pipe: npipe:////./pipe/docker_engine, or TCP socket at this URL: tcp://localhost:2375.

For details, see Docker Engine API.

How do I connect from a container to a service on the host?

The host has a changing IP address, or none if you have no network access. We recommend that you connect to the special DNS name host.docker.internal, which resolves to the internal IP address used by the host.

For more information and examples, see how to connect from a container to a service on the host.

Can I pass through a USB device to a container?

Docker Desktop does not support direct USB device passthrough. However, you can use USB over IP to connect common USB devices to the Docker Desktop VM and in turn be forwarded to a container. For more details, see Using USB/IP with Docker Desktop.

How do I run Docker Desktop without administrator privileges?

Docker Desktop requires administrator privileges only for installation. Once installed, administrator privileges are not needed to run it. However, for non-admin users to run Docker Desktop, it must be installed using a specific installer flag and meet certain prerequisites, which vary by platform.

To run Docker Desktop on Mac without requiring administrator privileges, install via the command line and pass the —user=<userid> installer flag:

$ /Applications/Docker.app/Contents/MacOS/install --user=<userid>

You can then sign in to your machine with the user ID specified, and launch Docker Desktop.

Note
Before launching Docker Desktop, if a settings.json file already exists in the ~/Library/Group Containers/group.com.docker/ directory, you will see a Finish setting up Docker Desktop window that prompts for administrator privileges when you select Finish. To avoid this, ensure you delete the settings.json file left behind from any previous installations before launching the application.

Note
If you are using the WSL 2 backend, first make sure that you meet the minimum required version for WSL 2. Otherwise, update WSL 2 first.

To run Docker Desktop on Windows without requiring administrator privileges, install via the command line and pass the —always-run-service installer flag.

$ "Docker Desktop Installer.exe" install —always-run-service