Website & Documentation: colima.run | colima.run/docs

Support for Intel and Apple Silicon macOS, and Linux

• Simple CLI interface with sensible defaults
• Automatic Port Forwarding
• Volume mounts
• Multiple instances
• Support for multiple container runtimes
  • Docker (with optional Kubernetes)
  • Containerd (with optional Kubernetes)
  • Incus (containers and virtual machines)
• GPU accelerated containers for AI workloads

Colima is available on Homebrew, MacPorts, Nix and Mise. Check here for other installation options.

# Homebrew brew install colima # MacPorts sudo port install colima # Nix nix-env -iA nixpkgs.colima # Mise mise use -g colima@latest 

Or stay on the bleeding edge (only Homebrew)

brew install --HEAD colima 

Start Colima with defaults

colima start 

For more usage options

colima --help colima start --help 

Or use a config file

colima start --edit 

On initial startup, Colima initiates with a user specified runtime that defaults to Docker.

Docker client is required for Docker runtime. Installable with brew install docker.

colima start docker run hello-world docker ps 

You can use the docker client on macOS after colima start with no additional setup.

colima start --runtime containerd starts and setup Containerd. You can use colima nerdctl to interact with Containerd using nerdctl.

colima start --runtime containerd nerdctl run hello-world nerdctl ps 

It is recommended to run colima nerdctl install to install nerdctl alias script in $PATH.

kubectl is required for Kubernetes. Installable with brew install kubectl.

To enable Kubernetes, start Colima with --kubernetes flag.

colima start --kubernetes kubectl run caddy --image=caddy kubectl get pods 

For Docker runtime, images built or pulled with Docker are accessible to Kubernetes.

For Containerd runtime, images built or pulled in the k8s.io namespace are accessible to Kubernetes.

Requires v0.7.0

Incus client is required for Incus runtime. Installable with brew brew install incus.

colima start --runtime incus starts and setup Incus.

colima start --runtime incus incus launch images:alpine/edge incus list 

You can use the incus client on macOS after colima start with no additional setup.

Note: Running virtual machines on Incus is only supported on m3 or newer Apple Silicon devices.

Requires v0.10.0, Apple Silicon and macOS 13+

Colima supports GPU accelerated containers for AI workloads using the krunkit VM type.

Note: To use krunkit with colima, ensure it is installed.

brew tap slp/krunkit brew install krunkit 

Setup and use a model.

colima start --runtime docker --vm-type krunkit colima model run gemma3 

Colima supports two model runner backends:

• Docker Model Runner (default) — supports Docker AI Registry and HuggingFace.
• Ramalama — supports HuggingFace and Ollama registries.

The default registry is the Docker AI Registry. Models can be run by name without a prefix:

colima model run gemma3 colima model run llama3.2 # HuggingFace (Docker Model Runner) colima model run hf.co/microsoft/Phi-3-mini-4k-instruct-gguf # Ollama (requires ramalama runner) colima model run ollama://gemma3 --runner ramalama

See the AI Workloads documentation for more details.

The default VM created by Colima has 2 CPUs, 2GiB memory and 100GiB storage.

The VM can be customized either by passing additional flags to colima start. e.g. --cpu, --memory, --disk, --runtime. Or by editing the config file with colima start --edit.

NOTE: Disk size can be increased after the VM is created.

• create VM with 1CPU, 2GiB memory and 10GiB storage.

  colima start --cpu 1 --memory 2 --disk 10 

• modify an existing VM to 4CPUs and 8GiB memory.

  colima stop colima start --cpu 4 --memory 8 

• create VM with Rosetta 2 emulation. Requires v0.5.3 and macOS >= 13 (Ventura) on Apple Silicon.

  colima start --vm-type=vz --vz-rosetta 

To provide container runtimes on macOS with minimal setup.

Colima means Containers on Lima.

Since Lima is aka Linux Machines. By transitivity, Colima can also mean Containers on Linux Machines.

The logo was contributed by Daniel Hodvogner. Check this issue for more.

Check here for Frequently Asked Questions, or visit the online FAQ for a searchable version.

Check here for the instructions on contributing to the project.

• GitHub Discussions
• GitHub Issues
• Announcements
• #colima channel in the CNCF Slack
  • New account: https://slack.cncf.io/
  • Login: https://cloud-native.slack.com/

MIT

If you (or your company) are benefiting from the project and would like to support the contributors, kindly sponsor.

• Github Sponsors
• Buy me a coffee
• Patreon