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Quickstart

Get a multi-container application running on Apple Container in 2 minutes.

Prerequisites

  • Apple Silicon Mac: Required for the native container runtime.
  • macOS 26 (Tahoe): Recommended for the best experience.
  • Apple Container: Installed and running. 
    container system start
  • Container-Compose: Installed via Homebrew. 
    brew install container-compose

Step 1: Create your project

Create a new directory and a minimal compose.yaml file.

mkdir my-app && cd my-app
touch compose.yaml

Add the following content to compose.yaml:

services:
  web:
    image: nginx:alpine
    ports:
      - "8080:80"

Step 2: Start the application

Launch your services in detached mode.

container-compose up -d

Step 3: Verify status

Check that your container is running.

container-compose ps

Step 4: Test the service

Verify the Nginx server is responding on the mapped port.

curl localhost:8080

Step 5: Clean up

Stop and remove the containers when you are finished.

container-compose down

Using a .env file

Create a .env file in the same directory as your compose file:

IMAGE_TAG=alpine
HOST_PORT=8080

Reference the variables in compose.yaml:

services:
  web:
    image: nginx:${IMAGE_TAG}
    ports:
      - "${HOST_PORT}:80"

Container-Compose loads ./.env by default. Pass a different file with --env-file:

container-compose --env-file ./config/prod.env up -d

Verify substitution before starting:

container-compose config

Multi-service with depends_on

This example starts a web service only after Redis passes its healthcheck.

services:
  web:
    image: nginx:alpine
    ports:
      - "8080:80"
    depends_on:
      redis:
        condition: service_healthy

  redis:
    image: redis:7-alpine
    healthcheck:
      test: ["CMD", "redis-cli", "ping"]
      interval: 5s
      timeout: 3s
      retries: 5

Container-Compose enforces the ordering: redis must reach a healthy state before web starts. If redis has no healthcheck block, the condition falls back to service_started (running state). See Troubleshooting — depends_on with service_healthy if the wait does not behave as expected.

What's Next

Essential Commands

Command Description
up Create and start containers.
down Stop and remove containers, networks, and images.
ps List containers.
logs View output from containers.
build Build or rebuild services.
exec Execute a command in a running container.
run Run a one-off command on a service.
watch Watch for file changes and update containers.