Install Docker Desktop on Windows

Estimated reading time: 6 minutes

Welcome to Docker Desktop for Windows. This page contains information about Docker Desktop for Windows system requirements, download URL, installation instructions, and automatic updates.

By downloading Docker Desktop, you agree to the terms of the Docker Software End User License Agreement and the Docker Data Processing Agreement.

System requirements

Your Windows machine must meet the following requirements to successfully install Docker Desktop.

WSL 2 backend

• Windows 10 64-bit: Home, Pro, Enterprise, or Education, version 1903 (Build 18362 or higher).
• Enable the WSL 2 feature on Windows. For detailed instructions, refer to the Microsoft documentation.

The following hardware prerequisites are required to successfully run WSL 2 on Windows 10:

• 64-bit processor with Second Level Address Translation (SLAT)
• 4GB system RAM
• BIOS-level hardware virtualization support must be enabled in the BIOS settings. For more information, see Virtualization.

Download and install the Linux kernel update package.

Hyper-V backend and Windows containers

Windows 10 64-bit: Pro, Enterprise, or Education (Build 17134 or higher).

The following hardware prerequisites are required to successfully run Client Hyper-V on Windows 10:

• 64 bit processor with Second Level Address Translation (SLAT)
• 4GB system RAM
• BIOS-level hardware virtualization support must be enabled in the BIOS settings. For more information, see Virtualization.

Docker supports Docker Desktop on Windows for those versions of Windows 10 that are still within Microsoft’s servicing timeline.

What’s included in the installer

The Docker Desktop installation includes Docker Engine, Docker CLI client, Docker Compose, Notary, Kubernetes, and Credential Helper.

Containers and images created with Docker Desktop are shared between all user accounts on machines where it is installed. This is because all Windows accounts use the same VM to build and run containers. Note that it is not possible to share containers and images between user accounts when using the Docker Desktop WSL 2 backend.

Nested virtualization scenarios, such as running Docker Desktop on a VMWare or Parallels instance might work, but there are no guarantees. For more information, see Running Docker Desktop in nested virtualization scenarios.

About Windows containers

Looking for information on using Windows containers?

• Switch between Windows and Linux containers describes how you can toggle between Linux and Windows containers in Docker Desktop and points you to the tutorial mentioned above.
• Getting Started with Windows Containers (Lab) provides a tutorial on how to set up and run Windows containers on Windows 10, Windows Server 2016 and Windows Server 2019. It shows you how to use a MusicStore application with Windows containers.
• Docker Container Platform for Windows articles and blog posts on the Docker website.

Install Docker Desktop on Windows

Double-click Docker Desktop Installer.exe to run the installer.

If you haven’t already downloaded the installer ( Docker Desktop Installer.exe ), you can get it from Docker Hub. It typically downloads to your Downloads folder, or you can run it from the recent downloads bar at the bottom of your web browser.

When prompted, ensure the Enable Hyper-V Windows Features or the Install required Windows components for WSL 2 option is selected on the Configuration page.

Follow the instructions on the installation wizard to authorize the installer and proceed with the install.

When the installation is successful, click Close to complete the installation process.

If your admin account is different to your user account, you must add the user to the docker-users group. Run Computer Management as an administrator and navigate to Local Users and Groups > Groups > docker-users. Right-click to add the user to the group. Log out and log back in for the changes to take effect.

Start Docker Desktop

Docker Desktop does not start automatically after installation. To start Docker Desktop, search for Docker, and select Docker Desktop in the search results.

When the whale icon in the status bar stays steady, Docker Desktop is up-and-running, and is accessible from any terminal window.

If the whale icon is hidden in the Notifications area, click the up arrow on the taskbar to show it. To learn more, see Docker Settings.

When the initialization is complete, Docker Desktop launches the onboarding tutorial. The tutorial includes a simple exercise to build an example Docker image, run it as a container, push and save the image to Docker Hub.

Congratulations! You are now successfully running Docker Desktop on Windows.

If you would like to rerun the tutorial, go to the Docker Desktop menu and select Learn.

Automatic updates

Starting with Docker Desktop 3.0.0, updates to Docker Desktop will be available automatically as delta updates from the previous version.

When an update is available, Docker Desktop displays an icon to indicate the availability of a newer version. Whenever convenient, you can start the download of the update in the background.

When the download finishes, all you need to do is to click Update and restart from the Docker menu. This installs the latest update and restarts Docker Desktop for the changes to take effect.

Uninstall Docker Desktop

To uninstall Docker Desktop from your Windows machine:

1. From the Windows Start menu, select Settings >Apps >Apps & features.
2. Select Docker Desktop from the Apps & features list and then select Uninstall.
3. Click Uninstall to confirm your selection.

Uninstalling Docker Desktop destroys Docker containers, images, volumes, and other Docker related data local to the machine, and removes the files generated by the application. Refer to the back up and restore data section to learn how to preserve important data before uninstalling.

Docker Desktop

The fastest way to containerize applications on your desktop

Also available for Windows and Linux

Also available for Mac and Linux

Secure from the start

Start secure and push with confidence. Docker Desktop now includes vulnerability scanning powered by Snyk, which scans your containers and provides actionable insights and recommendations for remediation in your images. Learn more about end-to-end vulnerability scanning and how to shift security left in your app delivery pipeline.

Simplify Code to Cloud

Simplify code to cloud application development by closely integrating with Azure Container Instances (ACI). You get the same workflow in Docker Desktop and the Docker CLI with all the container compute you want. No infrastructure to manage. No clusters to provision.

Register for our beta and experience a friction-free developer experience from local VS Code and Docker Desktop development to remote deployment in ACI.

Build Kubernetes-ready applications on your desktop

Docker Desktop is an application for MacOS and Windows machines for the building and sharing of containerized applications and microservices.

Docker Desktop delivers the speed, choice and security you need for designing and delivering containerized applications on your desktop. Docker Desktop includes Docker App, developer tools, Kubernetes and version synchronization to production Docker Engines. Docker Desktop allows you to leverage certified images and templates and your choice of languages and tools. Development workflows leverage Docker Hub to extend your development environment to a secure repository for rapid auto-building, continuous integration and secure collaboration.

Containerize and share any application

Across any combination of clouds, languages and frameworks

One Development and Delivery Platform

Docker Desktop and Desktop Enterprise give developers a Docker and Kubernetes environment aligned with production clusters. Build and run the same applications everywhere with the only platform that can provide trusted and certified end-to-edge security.

Any App, Any Language

Developers have the freedom to innovate with their choice of tools, application stacks, and deployment environments for each project. Windows or Linux; legacy or cloud-native; IDE or text editor—Docker Desktop and Desktop Enterprise puts you in control.

Developer Speed

Developers shouldn’t need a PhD in Docker or Kubernetes to do their job. Docker makes it easy to get up and running in minutes and rapidly code, test, and collaborate while ensuring consistency between development and production.

Install Docker Engine

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes

Supported platforms

Docker Engine is available on a variety of Linux platforms, macOS and Windows 10 through Docker Desktop, and as a static binary installation. Find your preferred operating system below.

Desktop

Server

Docker provides .deb and .rpm packages from the following Linux distributions and architectures:

Platform	x86_64 / amd64	ARM	ARM64 / AARCH64
CentOS		В
Debian
Fedora		В
Raspbian	В
Ubuntu

Other Linux distributions

While the instructions below may work, Docker does not test or verify installation on derivatives.

• Users of Debian derivatives such as “BunsenLabs Linux”, “Kali Linux” or “LMDE” (Debian-based Mint) should follow the installation instructions for Debian, substituting the version of their distro for the corresponding Debian release. Refer to the documentation of your distro to find which Debian release corresponds with your derivative version.
• Likewise, users of Ubuntu derivatives such as “Kubuntu”, “Lubuntu” or “Xubuntu” should follow the installation instructions for Ubuntu, substituting the version of their distro for the corresponding Ubuntu release. Refer to the documentation of your distro to find which Ubuntu release corresponds with your derivative version.
• Some Linux distributions are providing a package of Docker Engine through their package repositories. These packages are built and maintained by the Linux distribution’s package maintainers and may have differences in configuration or built from modified source code. Docker is not involved in releasing these packages and bugs or issues involving these packages should be reported in your Linux distribution’s issue tracker.

Docker provides binaries for manual installation of Docker Engine. These binaries are statically linked and can be used on any Linux distribution.

Release channels

Docker Engine has three types of update channels, stable, test, and nightly:

• The Stable channel gives you latest releases for general availability.
• The Test channel gives pre-releases that are ready for testing before general availability (GA).
• The Nightly channel gives you latest builds of work in progress for the next major release.

Stable

Year-month releases are made from a release branch diverged from the master branch. The branch is created with format . , for example 19.03 . The year-month name indicates the earliest possible calendar month to expect the release to be generally available. All further patch releases are performed from that branch. For example, once v19.03.0 is released, all subsequent patch releases are built from the 19.03 branch.

In preparation for a new year-month release, a branch is created from the master branch with format YY.mm when the milestones desired by Docker for the release have achieved feature-complete. Pre-releases such as betas and release candidates are conducted from their respective release branches. Patch releases and the corresponding pre-releases are performed from within the corresponding release branch.

Nightly

Nightly builds give you the latest builds of work in progress for the next major release. They are created once per day from the master branch with the version format:

where the time is the commit time in UTC and the final suffix is the prefix of the commit hash, for example 0.0.0-20180720214833-f61e0f7 .

These builds allow for testing from the latest code on the master branch. No qualifications or guarantees are made for the nightly builds.

Support

Docker Engine releases of a year-month branch are supported with patches as needed for one month after the next year-month general availability release.

This means bug reports and backports to release branches are assessed until the end-of-life date.

After the year-month branch has reached end-of-life, the branch may be deleted from the repository.

Backporting

Backports to the Docker products are prioritized by the Docker company. A Docker employee or repository maintainer will endeavour to ensure sensible bugfixes make it into active releases.

If there are important fixes that ought to be considered for backport to active release branches, be sure to highlight this in the PR description or by adding a comment to the PR.

Upgrade path

Patch releases are always backward compatible with its year-month version.

Licensing

Docker is licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0. See LICENSE for the full license text.

Reporting security issues

The Docker maintainers take security seriously. If you discover a security issue, please bring it to their attention right away!

Please DO NOT file a public issue; instead send your report privately to security@docker.com.

Security reports are greatly appreciated, and Docker will publicly thank you for it.

Get started

After setting up Docker, you can learn the basics with Getting started with Docker.