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Created November 3, 2022 06:39
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X11 forwarding with Docker on macOS

It took me several hours of painful reading around to understand what works and what doesn't where the combo of macOS + Docker + X11 forwarding is concerned. So I am writing this down for my own future reference.

tl;dr: Follow the instructions in this gist.

open -a XQuartz && \
  xhost +localhost && \
  docker run --rm -it --platform=linux/amd64 -e DISPLAY=host.docker.internal:0 gns3/xeyes && \
  xhost -localhost
  • Mounting the unix socket doesn't work because of this WONTFIX Docker issue.
  • Because mounting the socket doesn't work, you have to allow network client connections in XQuartz preferences > Security. Tedious. Setting up Little Snitch to deny incoming connections to port 6000 is probably a good idea.
  • This comment suggests a more robust security solution using xauth that I haven't really looked into.
  • host.docker.internal is magic.
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