Installing Kitematic

The Windows installation of Docker CE integrates with a graphical user interface tool called Kitematic. If you are a graphical interface kind of person (and since you are using Windows for Docker, I will guess that you are), you will want to install this tool.

Find the Docker icon in the taskbar notifications area and right-click on it to bring up the Docker for Windows menu. Click on the Kitematic menu option. Kitematic is not installed by default. You have to download the archive that contains the application. When you click the Kitematic menu option for the first time, you will be prompted to download it. Click the Download button, and save the archive file to your workstation:

You will need to unzip the Kitematic archive to use it. The uncompressed Kitematic folder needs to be in the C:\Program Files\Docker folder with a folder name of Kitematic for the Docker submenu integration to work correctly. Once you have Kitematic installed in the correct path on your Windows workstation, you can right-click the Docker icon in the task bar notifications area and select the Kitematic option again.

You will be prompted to enter your Docker credentials again to connect to Docker Hub. You can skip this step, but it is my recommendation that you go ahead and log in now. Once you log in (or skip the login step), you will see the Kitematic user interface. It allows you to download and run Docker containers on your workstation. Go ahead and try one, such as the hello-world-nginx container, or if you want to play a game, try the Minecraft container.

You are now ready to create Docker images and run Docker containers in your Windows 10 workstation, but we have one more workstation OS to learn how to install Docker CE on. Let's look at installing it on an OS X workstation next.