Docker Desktop 4.2 Release: Save Your Battery with Pause / Resume, and Say Goodbye to the Update Pop-up

With Docker Desktop 4.2 we’re excited to introduce Pause / Resume as well as a host of changes to make it easier for you to manage updates. These features are available to Docker Desktop users on any subscription tier.

Save your battery with Pause / Resume

Pause / Resume gives developers the power to pause their current Docker Desktop session and resume work whenever they want, saving resources on their machine while Docker is paused. When you pause Docker Desktop, the current state of your containers is saved in memory and all processes are frozen. This lowers CPU usage and will help with saving your laptop’s battery life. To resume Docker Desktop, click either the Resume button in the menu or type any Docker CLI command in your terminal.

To try out this feature on Docker Desktop 4.2, navigate to the whale menu and click the ‘Pause’ button. The corresponding content sections for Docker Desktop’s left sidebar items (e.g. Containers) will then be covered to clearly denote the Pause state. 

Please note, Pause / Resume is currently not available in Windows container mode.

Say goodbye to the update pop-up

We’ve heard your feedback that the update modal interrupts your workflows and makes it challenging to use Docker Desktop when you need it most. That’s why we’ve done away with the update pop up and introduced a new update settings section in the Docker Dashboard, where you can check for updates and manage your update preferences. We appreciate when our users stay up to date so they get all the latest bug fixes and new features, but we want to make sure that we enable users to do that at a time that’s convenient. 

To summarize what the experience will be like on Docker Desktop 4.2:

A similar badge will appear in the Docker Dashboard settings icon to make it a seamless experience without interrupting your workflow with a modal. Here you can also manage your software update settings.

The `Automatically check for updates` setting is now available for all Docker subscription tiers 

Thanks to all of your positive support of the Docker subscription updates, we’ve been able to focus on delivering more value to all users. In Docker Desktop 4.2 we’ve enabled all users, regardless of subscription tier, to turn off automatically checking for updates. When you disable this setting, all notifications in the whale menu and the app will be disabled and you will have to manually check for updates. Just update to Docker Desktop 4.2 to start using this feature!

We also know that people have different preferences when it comes to downloading updates. For some, the background can take a lot of bandwidth and don’t want it to start when they are busy at work or on Zoom calls, but others would rather have less intervention when it comes to updating. Which is why we’ve put the choice in your hands to decide whether updates should automatically download or not.

We’re considering introducing more settings in the future and would love to know what you think, let us know on our public roadmap item! 

Coming soon

All of the changes described above are available in 4.2 to all Docker Desktop users, including those on Docker Personal. 

We’re also working on two of your highest voted items from our public roadmap: improving Mac filesystem performance, and implementing Docker Desktop for Linux, so watch this space for more news on those in the coming months. And we would love to know what other improvements you would like to see, so please add a thumbs-up emoji to your highest priorities on the roadmap, or create a new roadmap ticket if your idea isn’t already there.