I’ve avoided using Docker Desktop on my Mac like you avoid those 16-seeds in your March Madness bracket. Why? Because it’s dog slow. But not anymore?

The 4.6 release of Docker Desktop for Mac contains a number of changes that drastically improve file sharing performance for macOS users. Firstly, developers now have the option of using a new experimental file sharing implementation called virtiofs (the current default is gRPC-FUSE). Secondly, improvements have been made to the way that files are synced between the macOS host and Docker VM. During testing with our amazing macOS community of users, we have observed that these changes have reduced the time taken to complete filesystem operations by up to 98%.

virtiofs is an experimental feature, so you need to enable it to realize these gains.