Docker and Docker Compose on AMD OSX Hackintosh via Docker Machine

docker-compose-hackintosh.md

Introduction

Docker.app will complain about incompatible processor, so we will use Docker Machine.

Instalation

Download Docker for Mac (Docker.app). It contains some binaries that are necessary.

brew install virtualbox docker-machine

# Normally, those links are created automatically by running Docker.app,
# but it quits on us too early, so we need to do this manually
ln -s "/Applications/Docker.app/Contents//Resources/bin/docker-compose" /usr/local/bin/docker-compose
ln -s "/Applications/Docker.app/Contents//Resources/bin/docker-credential-desktop" /usr/local/bin/docker-credential-desktop
ln -s "/Applications/Docker.app/Contents//Resources/bin/docker-credential-osxkeychain" /usr/local/bin/docker-credential-osxkeychain

You can also use brew to install docker and doccker-compose and it should work without linking above.

Running

docker-machine create
eval $(docker-machine env)
docker run hello-world
docker-compose up

If you are on modern macOS on an AMD Hackintosh, VirtualBox and old Docker Machine setups are essentially obsolete and very painful to maintain.
There is a much cleaner, modern solution that uses Colima + QEMU (TCG multi-threaded software emulation), which completely bypasses Apple's Hypervisor.framework and Virtualization.framework (vz):
👉 Original project: https://github.com/osx86-ijb/docker-amd-hackintosh

Note if you run into installation / reboot issues with the original script:
The upstream script currently has a minor bug where colima delete wipes the config file right before booting, causing it to fall back to vz (VZErrorDomain Code=2: Virtualization is not available on this hardware), as well as autostart issues with brew services.
If you hit this, you can check out my fork where these issues are already resolved:
👉 Fork with fixes: https://github.com/romaztek/docker-amd-hackintosh
Tested and confirmed working on:

• OS: macOS 26.7.1
• CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 5700X (8-Core)
  Key fixes included in the fork:

1. Fixed config ordering & fallback: colima.yaml is no longer wiped before start, and explicit --vm-type qemu --cpu-type qemu64 flags are passed to prevent any vz fallback.
2. Working reboot autostart (com.colima.autostart.plist): brew services start colima fails on AMD because Homebrew's plist uses a hardcoded system PATH without ~/bin (running unpatched QEMU). The fork includes a dedicated LaunchAgent that loads the wrapper and auto-starts Docker on login.
3. Native Kubernetes (K3s): Works out of the box (colima start --kubernetes), which is vastly faster and lighter than Minikube in DinD.
   Both Docker and Kubernetes run smoothly on AMD Hackintosh this way!