How to use Docker Compose on Mac

Docker Compose helps you manage and or­ches­trate your Docker con­tain­ers. The tool can be installed on macOS in just a few steps in the terminal and is an ideal com­ple­ment for container man­age­ment with Docker.

Step 1: Install Docker

Before you can get started in­stalling Docker Compose on a Mac, ensure that you have down­loaded and installed Docker. You can check if this is the case with a simple terminal command:

docker --version

If you’ve installed Docker, you’ll be able to view the Docker version.

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Al­ter­na­tive­ly, you can download Docker from the official Docker website. Ensure you’ve selected the correct chipset, because there’s a dis­tinc­tion between Apple computers using their own Apple chip and Apple PCs with an Intel chip. Once file download is complete, open it and follow the in­struc­tions of the in­stal­la­tion wizard to complete the Docker in­stal­la­tion. Should questions arise during this process, Docker tutorials offer useful guidance on in­stal­la­tion.

Step 2: Download Docker Compose for Mac

To begin the in­stal­la­tion of Docker Compose on your Mac, open a terminal window. Once the terminal is open, you can enter the following command, which will au­to­mat­i­cal­ly download the latest version of Docker Compose for Mac:

curl -L "https://github.com/docker/compose/releases/latest/download/docker-compose-$(uname -s)-$(uname -m)" -o /usr/local/bin/docker-compose

If you encounter an error message while running the previous command, it’s likely due to in­suf­fi­cient per­mis­sions to write to the required directory. In such cases, it’s rec­om­mend­ed to perform the in­stal­la­tion as a superuser. To do this, enter the following command in the terminal:

sudo -i

Now repeat step 2 of the in­struc­tions and continue with the following steps.

Step 3: Mark Docker Compose as an ex­e­cutable file

To use Docker Compose, you must make the program ex­e­cutable by changing the per­mis­sions. The terminal command chmod helps with this:

chmod +x /usr/local/bin/docker-compose

Mark Docker Compose as an ex­e­cutable program using +x, which stands for ex­e­cutable.

Step 4: Check whether the in­stal­la­tion was suc­cess­ful

To ensure no errors occurred during your in­stal­la­tion of Docker Compose on macOS, access the current version of Docker Compose in the terminal:

docker compose version

If you’ve done every­thing correctly, the installed version of Docker Compose should now be displayed in the terminal window.

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If you encounter an error message instead of seeing the Docker Compose version, it indicates that an error occurred during the in­stal­la­tion process. We recommend that you repeat the above steps again.