When it comes to control planes and management interfaces for Docker containers, you have many options to choose from. Between the multitude of container tools, built-in CI/CD pipelines, and support for everything from Docker and Podman to K8s, Goalkeeper It is the most common option out there. But if you prefer minimalistic UIs, Dockhand and Dockage they are equally reliable, the first one being my favorite since I encountered it a few months ago. But if you want to install community plugins, you can even use Cockpit to manage your Docker runtime.
However, while every tool I’ve listed so far works well on laptops and desktops, smartphones are a completely different story, especially if you stick to the standard mobile layout in their web UIs. Fortunately, Docker Manager solves this problem by offering a robust mobile interface for managing containers spread across multiple home lab nodes – and it’s why I go through a Termux + SSH setup when troubleshooting my self-hosted apps from my smartphone.
Docker Manager provides a sleek mobile UI for container management tasks
And it includes all the tools I could ask for
My biggest problem with mobile builds on typical Docker management platforms is that they are a bit of a pain to navigate. The default mobile UI is often too large and I have to go through a lot of settings to access notes or shell icons when I need to troubleshoot. But switching it to desktop layout makes everything too small and I have to constantly pinch my fingers when navigating between different tabs.
In contrast, Docker Manager is a dedicated app that fits basic container management utilities into a neat UI that doesn’t look out of place on a smartphone screen. The containers section includes ID, image name, status, port mapping, resource consumption statistics, and other details of my self-organized stack, and I can use the menu button to check their logs, switch to the Shell UI, or stop/restart them.
Creating new containers is also simple as I can choose the ports, environment variables and bindings for my FOSS images. Likewise, I can pull OCI-compliant images directly from Docker Hub or even build images from scratch within Docker Manager. Images, persistent volumes, and network devices have their own icons at the bottom of the screen. My only complaint is that the latter two should have few options other than Check and Delete for my storage volumes and network bridges. But I probably don’t want to complicate the application too much, seeing as how I’m not going to spin up complex containers from a smartphone anyway, especially since it allows me to switch between different Docker servers with one click…
It can pair with multiple Docker instances
Including Docker servers running in rootless mode
As a die-hard homebody, I have Docker servers configured on MacBooks, Raspberry Pi nodes, old laptops, virtual machines, and anything else that can run containers. Fortunately, Docker Manager can connect to every system in my arsenal, regardless of the underlying OS. Since the application uses an SSH connection to connect to my Docker environments, I rely on passkey authentication to avoid the security loopholes of password logins. But if you’re a casual tinkerer, you can still use password authentication when adding a new environment to Docker Manager.
Speaking of security, I usually run Docker in non-root mode and have no problem connecting to these less privileged containerization environments in the mobile control panel. Heck, as long as I set the Podman directory under the Docker CLI Path variable, I can even monitor, create and configure Podman containers from within Docker Manager, which is pretty useful as I’m getting used to this FOSS runtime. In fact, I added multiple servers twice: once with the default settings for the Docker environment and again with the Podman directory, just so I could manage both runtimes from the mobile app.
Docker Manager can even control the host machine to some extent
When things go south, it’s for solving problems quickly
Since we’re on the subject of host machines, Docker Manager can also help troubleshoot host system issues. In addition to pulling system properties and resource consumption metrics for the host, it can also SSH directly into the machine, so I don’t have to switch to Termux to run terminal commands.
Heck, it can even browse directories on the host, which is pretty useful when I need to modify files on my container’s persistent volumes. Since the app doesn’t allow changing Docker Compose files manually, I use a file browser to change the variables. compose.yml before executing the files directly docker compile -d via terminal as a workaround. However, if you’re as paranoid as I am, I’d recommend creating a low-privilege user for Docker Manager to avoid security issues.
