What you need to know about macOS X 10.14 Deprecation

Docker supports Docker Desktop on the most recent versions of macOS. That is, the current release of macOS and the previous two releases. As new major versions of macOS are made generally available, Docker stops supporting the oldest version and supports the newest version of macOS (in addition to the previous two releases). Keeping with our version support policy, Docker Desktop expanded macOS versions support with the Apple’s launch of  macOS Monterey (12) in October of 2021 and dropped support for version macOS Mojave (10.14).

Currently less than 3% of users of Docker Desktop on version 4.0 or above are on mac OS version 10.14. In order to continue to give the best experience to the majority of users, we need  to focus our efforts on support for the more recent OS versions. 

What does this mean for 10.14 users?

• Starting with the April 2022 release of Docker Desktop, users on macOS 10.14 will be warned that support of OS X 10.14 has been deprecated
• Users that want to stay on OS X 10.14 can do so, but will not be able to update to new versions of Docker Desktop that are released in April of 2022 or after. We will not be addressing bug fixes or security issues for this OS version. 
• Users that want to use the latest versions of Docker Desktop must have macOS version 10.15 or higher. That is, Catalina, Big Sur, or Monterey. We recommend upgrading to the latest version of macOS.

Learning from our 10.13 deprecation

We know that when we dropped support for macOS version 10.13, we missed the mark as users were frequently interrupted by the check for updates pop up, but were then told that the new version was not supported on their OS version. There were two issues here: users couldn’t turn this off and  it was not clear that this was coming from Docker.

With this deprecation, Docker Desktop won’t check for updates at all if you are on OS X 10.14. If you choose to manually check for updates it will be clear that Docker Desktop is the source of this message.