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Settings

Kiri has few settings, and most people never change them. Open Settings under Kiri in the window’s sidebar. It has six tabs: Appearance, Resources, Network, Import, Domains and About. Everything you change is saved in small JSON files in ~/.kiri.

Kiri

ContainersImagesVolumesNetworksSettings

AppearanceResourcesNetworkImportDomainsAbout

Resources

CPUsshared with macOS4 CPUs

Memorythe most the VM may take8 GB

Running now with 2 CPUs and up to 8 GB.Restart VM to applySave

Settings → Resources. The sliders set the most the VM may use; Save writes them to ~/.kiri/vm.json, and they apply from the VM's next start.

Appearance

How the window looks. These are saved in ~/.kiri/ui.json and apply at once.

Setting	Choices
Theme	System (follows macOS), Dark, Light
Accent	Blue, Purple, Orange, Teal, Pink, Green. Used for selection, focus rings and primary buttons.
Interface font	System, or any font installed on your Mac. Tables, the sidebar and headings.
Monospace font	System Mono, or any fixed-width font installed. IDs, commands and code.
Text size	90%, 100%, 110%, 125%. View → Zoom In and Zoom Out (⌘+ and ⌘−) step through the same sizes.

Resources

The most the Linux VM may use. The VM shares your Mac’s CPUs and memory rather than reserving them: it only uses CPU while containers are busy, takes memory as containers need it, and gives the rest back to macOS. See Memory and sleep.

Setting	Range	Default
CPUs	1 up to the number of CPUs in your Mac	2
Memory	1 GB steps, up to your Mac’s memory	Half your Mac’s memory, at least 2 GB and at most 8 GB

Save writes both to ~/.kiri/vm.json. The VM reads them each time it starts, so if it’s asleep they apply the next time it wakes. If it’s running, Restart VM to apply restarts it now. That stops running containers, so start them again afterwards.

The engine decides the numbers in this order, each time the VM boots:

Where the VM's CPUs and memory come from. An environment variable wins over Settings, and Settings win over the defaults.

Network

A proxy, for networks that need one. Saved in ~/.kiri/proxy.json.

Setting	Choices
Proxy	macOS settings (the default), Custom or None. Used for pulling, pushing and searching images, and for `docker login`.
HTTP proxy, HTTPS proxy, Bypass for	With Custom: the proxy addresses, and the hosts that skip it (for example `*.internal, registry.corp`).
Pass to containers	Off (the default) or On. When on, new containers get `HTTP_PROXY`, `HTTPS_PROXY` and `NO_PROXY`. A proxy running on your Mac is reached as `host.docker.internal`.

If macOS uses an automatic proxy configuration (PAC) file, Kiri can’t follow it: choose Custom and enter the proxy. VPNs need no setting, because container traffic leaves through macOS’s own networking.

Import, Domains and About

Import brings images, volumes and containers over from OrbStack or Docker Desktop. The other engine must be running, and it isn’t changed: images are copied, volumes are read through a temporary read-only helper, and containers arrive stopped. See Moving from Docker Desktop.
Domains has two switches. Local names picks kiri.localhost (no setup) or kiri.local, which adds /etc/resolver/kiri.local and so asks for an administrator password. HTTPS trusts Kiri’s own certificate authority, so https://myapp.kiri.local works; macOS asks for your password. See Domain names and HTTPS.
About shows the app’s version, the engine’s version and Docker API version, whether the VM is running or asleep, its kernel, CPUs and memory. Quote the version when you send Feedback.

Files and environment variables

Settings live in ~/.kiri (images and volumes live elsewhere; see Install):

File	What’s in it	Read
`~/.kiri/ui.json`	Theme, accent, fonts, text size, column widths, and the update you skipped or snoozed	By the window
`~/.kiri/vm.json`	`{"cpus": …, "memory_mib": …}` from Settings → Resources	At each VM start
`~/.kiri/proxy.json`	Proxy mode, addresses, bypass list and whether containers get them	At once

The engine also reads a few environment variables. They’re for the kiri daemon process, so they only apply when it starts with them in its environment.

Variable	What it does
`KIRI_CPUS`	The VM’s CPUs. Wins over Settings, which then says so.
`KIRI_MEMORY_MIB`	The VM’s memory ceiling, in MiB. Wins over Settings.
`KIRI_IDLE_SECS`	Seconds idle before the VM sleeps. Default 60; `0` means never.
`KIRI_BUILDER_IDLE_SECS`	Seconds before an idle BuildKit builder container is stopped. Default 300.
`KIRI_NO_BALLOON`	Set it to turn off the memory balloon that gives unused memory back to macOS.
`KIRI_HTTP_PORT`, `KIRI_HTTPS_PORT`	Ports for the container-name routers. Default 80 and 443.
`KIRI_NO_FINDER`	Set it to skip mounting container files at `~/Kiri`.
`KIRI_SOCKET`	Where the Docker API socket goes. Default `~/.kiri/run/docker.sock`.
`KIRI_DATA_DIR`	Where images, volumes and the VM’s disk go. Default `~/Library/Application Support/Kiri`.
`KIRI_UPDATE_URL`	A different release feed. See Updates.