ArcBox

Native macOS GUI for ArcBox — containers, VMs, and sandboxes at your fingertips.

---

Overview

ArcBox is the official graphical interface for the ArcBox runtime. It communicates with arcbox-daemon over gRPC and the Docker Engine API, providing a three-column interface for managing your entire ArcBox environment.

┌─────────────────────┐
│  ArcBox             │  SwiftUI
└──────────┬──────────┘
           │ gRPC + Docker API (Unix socket)
           ▼
┌─────────────────────┐
│  arcbox-daemon      │  Rust
└──────────┬──────────┘
           │
           ▼
┌─────────────────────┐
│  Linux Guest VM     │
│  arcbox-agent       │
└─────────────────────┘

Features

• Docker — containers, images, volumes, networks; logs, terminal, file browser
• Kubernetes — pods and services
• Machines — full Linux VM lifecycle, SSH, terminal
• Sandboxes — create from templates, manage lifecycle
• Real-time sync — Docker event stream with debounced UI updates
• Privileged helper — XPC daemon for Docker socket symlink, CLI install, DNS config
• Auto-updates — Sparkle framework for OTA distribution

Requirements

• macOS 15 (Sequoia) or later
• Apple Silicon (M1+)
• Xcode 16+ (for building)

Development Setup

# Clone
git clone https://github.com/arcboxlabs/arcbox-desktop.git
cd arcbox-desktop

# Configure local build settings
cp Local.xcconfig.example Local.xcconfig
# Edit Local.xcconfig: set DEVELOPMENT_TEAM and SENTRY_DSN

# Open in Xcode
open ArcBox.xcodeproj

The build automatically fetches arcbox-daemon and arcbox-agent binaries from your local arcbox build or cache. To build them from source:

cd ../arcbox
cargo build --release -p arcbox-daemon
cargo build --release -p arcbox-agent --target aarch64-unknown-linux-musl

Project Structure

ArcBox/                    SwiftUI app
├── Views/                 60 view files (Containers, Images, Machines, ...)
├── ViewModels/            MVVM state management
├── Models/                Data models
├── Services/              DockerEventMonitor
├── Components/            Reusable UI components
└── Theme/                 Design tokens

ArcBoxHelper/              Privileged XPC helper (runs as root)

Packages/
├── ArcBoxClient/          gRPC client library (protobuf generated stubs)
└── DockerClient/          Docker Engine API client (OpenAPI generated)

LaunchDaemons/             launchd plist for daemon and helper
scripts/                   Build, packaging, and distribution scripts

Tech Stack

Layer	Technology
UI	SwiftUI + @Observable
Daemon communication	gRPC (grpc-swift + protobuf)
Docker API	OpenAPI-generated client
Privileged operations	NSXPCConnection
Daemon management	SMAppService
Crash reporting	Sentry
Auto-updates	Sparkle

License

Licensed under either of

• MIT license
• Apache License, Version 2.0

at your option.