Container PS is a free, native macOS menu-bar application that surfaces your local Docker images and running containers at a glance, putting the state of your entire Docker environment one click away from anywhere on your Mac.
What is Container PS?
Container PS is a lightweight macOS utility that lives in the menu bar and gives you an always-visible, always-ready window into your Docker environment — images, containers, their statuses — without opening a terminal or switching to Docker Desktop's UI. The name is a nod to docker ps, the classic command most of us muscle-memorise on day one.
I discovered it on a particularly hectic afternoon where I had eight terminal tabs open and kept losing track of which containers were actually running. Having that persistent menu-bar indicator changed how I manage local Docker state day-to-day.
What does Container PS do best?
Container PS excels at keeping Docker awareness ambient — the mental overhead of checking container state drops to zero when the answer is always one click away from the menu bar.
The app lists your local Docker images alongside live container status, so you can see at a glance what is running, what is stopped, and what images are sitting idle taking up disk space. For developers who juggle multiple services — a Postgres database here, a Redis instance there, a custom API image you built this morning — that summary view is genuinely useful without being noisy.
What I appreciate most is that it stays out of the way. There is no dock icon, no persistent window competing with your editor, no notification blizzard. It surfaces information on demand and then disappears.
Who should use Container PS?
Container PS is ideal for Mac developers who run Docker locally on a daily basis and find themselves repeatedly dropping into a terminal just to verify a container's state.
If you live in Docker Desktop's full GUI, Container PS probably adds little — you already have a dashboard. But if your workflow is terminal-first and you want lightweight situational awareness without ceremony, this fills that gap neatly. Backend engineers, DevOps practitioners spinning up local stacks, and full-stack developers running Docker Compose environments for local services will get the most value.
It is less useful if you manage remote Docker hosts or need orchestration features — tools like Portainer or Lazydocker serve those needs. Container PS is unapologetically scoped to local Docker on your Mac, and that focus is a virtue.
Is Container PS free?
Yes — Container PS is completely free to download and use, with no paid tier, no trial limitation, and no account required.
It is open-source on GitHub under the Toinane account, which means you can audit the code before running it, or contribute improvements. For a tool that sits in your menu bar and talks to the Docker daemon, being able to read the source is a legitimate trust signal worth mentioning.
How does Container PS compare to Lazydocker?
Container PS and Lazydocker solve adjacent problems from very different angles. Lazydocker is a full-featured terminal UI — think htop for Docker — with log streaming, container management, volume inspection, and keyboard-driven controls. It is powerful and requires you to open a terminal and give it your full attention.
Container PS is ambient and passive. You do not manage containers from it; you observe them. If you need to act on what you see — stop a container, remove an image — you will open a terminal. That division of labour works well in practice: Container PS tells you something is wrong, and your terminal is where you fix it.
For developers who want a middle ground with mouse-driven container management in a native app, alternatives like Dockstation or Docker Desktop itself are worth evaluating. But neither fits in a menu bar quite so quietly.
What are the best Container PS alternatives?
The closest native macOS alternatives depend on how much power you need. Docker Desktop is the official choice and the most feature-complete, but it is resource-heavy and its licensing terms have changed for teams. OrbStack has emerged as a popular lightweight Docker runtime with a clean native UI of its own. Lazydocker covers the terminal-power-user niche. For menu-bar simplicity specifically, Container PS has few true rivals — it occupies a deliberately narrow niche and does so well.
Does Container PS require Docker Desktop?
Container PS communicates with the Docker daemon directly, so it works with any Docker installation that exposes the standard socket — Docker Desktop, OrbStack, Colima, or a manual Docker Engine install via Homebrew. The Docker daemon simply needs to be running for the app to display data.
