Container Machine is Apple’s open-source, lightweight virtualization solution for running a Linux development environment on a Mac, akin to WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux) on Windows. The talk Discover container machines from WWDC 2026 provides an overview of how it works. In my limited experience, it starts and runs much faster than comparable options like Vagrant or Docker Desktop, doesn’t make you deal with janky, non-native UI or nag you to upgrade to a paid plan, and has a smaller memory, CPU, and storage footprint.
First I installed container by running the following in a Terminal window. I used Homebrew but you could also install it manually following the instructions in Apple's README.
brew install container