A lightweight, native Docker management UI for Windows — built to replace Docker Desktop.
Docker Desktop on Windows is convenient, but it comes at a cost: a heavy Electron UI, a background VM consuming hundreds of megabytes of RAM, and a resource footprint that competes with your actual applications.
Davit takes a different approach. It talks directly to the Docker Engine API over the WSL2 socket — no middleware, no virtual machine overhead, no Chromium-embedded browser. Just a native Go binary with a lightweight WebView2 interface.
The name Davit refers to the mechanical arm used to lower lifeboats from a ship — a precise, lightweight tool built to handle containers.
Real-time overview of your Docker environment: active containers, CPU and memory usage, disk consumption, and a live graph of system metrics.
Full container lifecycle control — start, stop, restart, remove, and open an in-app terminal. Containers are grouped by their docker-compose project, and dependency chains defined by depends_on are resolved automatically: starting a container starts its dependencies in the correct order.
List, pull, and remove images. Unused images are identified and can be cleaned up in one click.
Inspect, create, and delete volumes and networks with full metadata visibility.
Unified configuration panel covering:
- WSL2 — memory limit, CPU allocation, swap (written to
~/.wslconfig) - Docker client — socket URL, proxy configuration, private registries (written to
~/.docker/config.json) - Davit — theme, language, application preferences
All configuration files are accessible directly from the UI with their full path displayed, and can be opened in an external editor. Changes made outside Davit are detected and reloaded automatically.
A guided installer handles WSL2 setup, Linux distribution installation, and Docker Engine configuration — so you can go from zero to a running Docker environment without touching a terminal.
Windows host
├── Davit.exe (Go + Wails / WebView2)
│ ├── Frontend (HTML/CSS/JS — rendered by WebView2)
│ └── Backend (Go — communicates with Docker Engine API)
│
└── WSL2
└── Docker Engine (dockerd — exposed via Unix socket)
Davit communicates with the Docker daemon via the named pipe //./pipe/docker_engine on Windows, or directly through the WSL2 Unix socket. No TCP port exposure required.
| Component | Technology |
|---|---|
| GUI framework | Wails v2 (Go + WebView2) |
| Backend | Go 1.22+ |
| Docker API | docker/docker/client |
| Real-time events | Docker /events stream |
| Installer | Wails-based wizard |
- Windows 10 (build 19041+) or Windows 11
- WSL2 enabled with a Linux distribution
- Docker Engine installed inside WSL2
- WebView2 runtime (included in Windows 11, auto-installed on Windows 10)
Don't have WSL2 or Docker Engine yet? The Davit installer handles the full setup for you.
Download the latest release from the Releases page and run Davit-Setup.exe.
The installer will:
- Detect your current WSL2 and Docker setup
- Install any missing components (WSL2, Linux distribution, Docker Engine)
- Configure WSL2 memory and CPU limits
- Launch Davit
First release coming soon.
# Prerequisites: Go 1.22+, Node.js 18+, Wails CLI
go install github.com/wailsapp/wails/v2/cmd/wails@latest
git clone https://github.com/AntoineGouzy/Davit.git
cd Davit
wails buildFor development with hot reload:
wails dev- Project architecture & design
- Docker Engine API integration (containers, images, volumes, networks)
- Real-time dashboard with live metrics
- docker-compose grouping with
depends_onresolution - Settings panel (WSL2, Docker client, Davit config)
- Windows installer wizard
- First public release
Davit-Build — a separate CLI extension for intelligent Dockerfile cache optimization — is planned as a follow-up project. See davit-build (coming soon).
Contributions are welcome. Please open an issue before submitting a pull request so we can discuss the change.
Distributed under the MIT License.
Built to give resources back to developers.