How to start docker from command line in mac

On macOS you'd use launchctl:

It's unclear which service you are actually intending to run, although the equivalent to service or systemctl on Linux is launchctl on macOS (eg. running docker registry with launchd):

Copy the Docker registry plist into place:

plutil -lint registry/recipes/osx/com.docker.registry.plist
cp registry/recipes/osx/com.docker.registry.plist ~/Library/LaunchAgents/
chmod 644 ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.docker.registry.plist

Start the Docker registry:

launchctl load ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.docker.registry.plist

Restart the docker registry service

launchctl stop com.docker.registry
launchctl start com.docker.registry

Unload the docker registry service

launchctl unload ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.docker.registry.plist

↳ Run the Docker Registry under launchd

You can open Docker Desktop on Mac using:-

open -a Docker

The Mac equivalent to systemctl or service is launchctl. But Docker Desktop is, presumably deliberately, packaged both on Mac and Windows as an application, not a service.

For shutdown, this:

pkill -SIGHUP -f /Applications/Docker.app 'docker serve' 

seems to work about as well as Quitting Docker from the GUI. By which I mean (a) when you restart Docker again it starts up with no complaints and (b) however I quit Docker Desktop, I still have a docker networking daemon left running.