How I Overcame Docker Disk Performance Issues on macOS

I have fought the bad Docker disk performance for my Visual Studio Code developer environment, ever since I got my MacBook Pro three years ago. I have finally found a performance solution.

While I do like the keyboard and macOS experience, I even tried installing Windows with Bootcamp to run Docker with WSL2 on it and was even ready to go with it, if it had worked. I got what felt like a native solution in the end, where I use Visual Studio Code, but with good Docker disk performance! Let’s dive in.

Created by the author using Dalle-3 and Adobe Firefly.

I felt I had tried everything for developing docker-based software on my Intel MacBook Pro with at least decent performance. Until I found this solution that I have now been running successfully for a while. Let’s recap.

My attempts at getting decent Docker disk performance

I tried running docker with and without the Virtualisation framework, VirtioFS, gRPC fuse and osxfs. I tried running WSL2 with Windows under Parallels with horrible performance. No combination seemed to enable me to get a decent workflow on my Mac that included Docker, and I was about to switch back to Windows permanently and buy a new Windows laptop for it (running Windows in Bootcamp is not an option).