Cybersecurity professionals and researchers can now launch Kali Linux in a virtualized container on macOS Sequoia using Apple's new containerization framework.
During WWDC 2025, Apple announced a new containerization framework that allows Apple Silicon hardware to run isolated Linux distros in its virtualized environment, similar to Microsoft Windows Subsystem for Linux 2 (WSL2).
To get started, users on macOS Sequoia with Apple Silicon can install the container CLI via Homebrew and initialize Apple's container framework:
brew install --cask container container system start
You can then launch Kali Linux using the following command, which loads the container from the DockerHub container library and executes inside a macOS VM.
container run --rm -it kalilinux/kali-rolling
You can also use a container to mount a local directory into the Kali VM with a command like:
container run --remove --interactive --tty --volume $(pwd):/mnt --workdir /mnt docker.io/kalilinux/kali-rolling:latest
This command allows you to access files on the host device from within the container.
However, there are some limitations to the new feature, as it's only available on Apple Silicon and does not support Intel Macs.
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