c9s

A k9s-style terminal UI for managing Apple's container runtime on macOS.

Features

• 🚀 Fast, keyboard-driven interface inspired by k9s
• 📦 Manage containers, images, volumes, networks + builder, registry, system + sub-screens
• 🎨 Customizable themes (TOML skins, including k9s skin importer)
• 📜 Multi-source log streaming with ring buffer, follow-tail, save, and level coloring
• 🔨 Background jobs for builds, pulls, pushes — Ctrl+Z detach, :jobs re-attach
• 🖱️ Mouse support (click row, click header to sort, scroll wheel)
• 🐳 Docker compatibility shim — :install-docker-shim installs a docker wrapper that maps Docker CLI calls onto Apple's container, so existing scripts and tools keep working
• ☁️ Azure Container Registry login — :acr-login runs az acr login --expose-token and stores the credential in Apple's container for ~3 hours so subsequent pulls and pushes just work
• 🛡️ Read-only mode — --readonly hides destructive bindings

Requirements

• Apple Silicon Mac
• Apple container 0.12 or later

Install

Homebrew

brew tap torosent/c9s
brew install c9s

Direct download

Download the Apple Silicon archive from the latest release, extract, and put c9s on your PATH:

curl -L -o c9s.tar.gz https://github.com/torosent/c9s/releases/latest/download/c9s_0.1.0_darwin_arm64.tar.gz
tar -xzf c9s.tar.gz
sudo mv c9s /usr/local/bin/
c9s --version

Build from source

git clone https://github.com/torosent/c9s.git
cd c9s
make build
./bin/c9s --version

For development setup (linters, formatters, tests), see docs/contributing.md.

Quick start

After building, launch:

./bin/c9s

You'll land on the containers screen. Press ? to see the keybinds. Type :q and Enter (or press Ctrl+C) to quit.

Commands

c9s is keyboard-driven. Press : to open the command palette, then type any of the commands below (Tab autocompletes). All commands live in internal/ui/palette/catalog.go if you want the canonical list.

Switch screens

Command	Alias	What it does
:containers	:c	Container list (default screen)
:images	:i	Image list
:volumes	:v	Volume list
:networks	:n	Network list
:builder	:b	Builder status
:registry	:reg	Configured registry logins
:system	:sys	System services overview

System sub-screens

Command	What it does
:df	Disk usage breakdown
:dns	DNS domains (CRUD)
:property	System properties (edit / reset)
:kernel	Kernel-only properties (read-only viewport)
:logs	Live container system logs --follow

k9s parity

Command	What it does
:pulses	Live health dashboard
:xray	Resource relationships tree
:jobs	Background streaming jobs (build / pull / push)
:pinned	Bookmarked resources
:errors	Error log viewer

Actions

Command	Args	What it does
:run	<image>	Launch a new container (run modal)
:build	<path>	Build an image from a directory
:pull	<ref>	Pull image from registry
:push	<ref>	Push image to registry
:create	<name>	Create resource on the active screen
:tag	<src> <dst>	Tag an image
:save	<ref> <tar>	Save image to a tar file
:load	<tar>	Load image from a tar file
:login	<host>	Open the registry login modal
:acr-login	<registry>	Azure Container Registry login via Azure AD (details)
:prune	—	Remove all stopped containers (with confirmation; also Shift+P on the containers screen)

Config & customization

Command	Args	What it does
:skin	<name>	Switch to a TOML skin (try :skins to list)
:skins	—	Open an interactive skin picker
:import-skin	<path>	Import a k9s YAML skin
:install-docker-shim	[path]	Install a docker → container compatibility shim (details)
:uninstall-docker-shim	[path]	Remove the c9s docker shim

Meta

Command	Alias	What it does
:help	:?	Show help overlay for the active screen
:quit	:q, :exit	Quit c9s

c9s also exposes two sibling subcommands of its own (i.e. you run them in your shell, not inside the TUI):

c9s --version
c9s import-skin <path/to/k9s-skin.yaml>      # import a k9s skin
c9s install-docker-shim [--path P] [--force] # install docker→container shim
c9s uninstall-docker-shim [--path P]         # remove the shim

Development

make install-tools   # gofumpt, staticcheck, golangci-lint
make ci              # format check + lint + race tests + coverage gate

Documentation

• Documentation site
• Architecture overview
• Quick start
• Configuration
• Skins
• Hotkeys reference
• k9s migration
• Contributing guide

Versioning

c9s follows Semantic Versioning. Pre-1.0 releases (0.x.y) may include breaking changes between minor versions; we'll always note these in the changelog.

• 0.x.y — pre-1.0 development; minor versions may break.
• 1.0.0+ — stable; breaking changes only on major bumps.

Contributing

See docs/contributing.md for development setup, testing, and how to release.

License

Apache 2.0