The app's pages

What each page of the Ringleader window is for: your workstations, the local runtime, your account and the daemon, the bundled tools, settings, diagnostics and versions.

The Ringleader app is one window, opened from the icon in your menu bar or system tray. Its sidebar has seven pages. This page says what each one is for and the controls that matter. The app is the same on macOS and Windows; the places it differs are named below.

Closing the window hides it, and the app keeps running. Quit from Quit Ringleader at the bottom of the sidebar. Quitting leaves the daemon running, so your workstations keep converging.

Workstations

Your workstations, grouped by namespace, with the local runtime first. Each row shows the workstation’s provider, address and status, and has buttons to start or stop it, open a shell on it, and open it in VS Code. Above the list, Create Local Container Workstation creates the local runtime (it reads Re-apply once one exists), and Manage Workstations (in Terminal) opens the terminal UI.

Local runtime

A lightweight Linux box running dockerd, kind and kubectl, wired into your shell so the bundled docker CLI talks to it. The page’s own heading reads Local Container Workstation. It shows the runtime’s status and has the same create button as the Workstations page, plus Delete. The two buttons run rl local-runtime create and rl local-runtime delete, so the app and a terminal give you the same runtime. Deleting the runtime removes the containers, images and volumes in it and switches docker back to the context you had before. To create it again, use the create button.

Account

Your control-plane sign-in and the local daemon on this machine.

  • The control plane you are signed in to, with your user and the server’s version, and a Sign out button. When you are not signed in, a Sign in to Ringleader Cloud card offers the device-code sign-in. The app offers one control plane, never a second.
  • Local daemon shows whether the background rl daemon is running, with its process id and version, and has Restart and Stop buttons, or Start daemon when it is not running. Open data folder opens your data directory (~/.ringleader on a Mac, %USERPROFILE%\.ringleader on Windows).
  • On Windows, Windows services shows the state of the Ringleader VM Service, which runs local hcs workstations, and of Windows’ Host Compute Service. It has no buttons. When the VM service is not running, the row says what to do.

Bundled Tools

The real upstream binaries Ringleader ships and links onto your PATH: Docker, kubectl, kind and Helm, plus Lima on a Mac, with the version of each so you can confirm what is installed. Refresh versions reads them again.

Settings

How Ringleader behaves on this machine.

  • Launch Ringleader at login starts the app automatically when you sign in, so the daemon and your local runtime are always ready. You can also set this during onboarding, or later in macOS System Settings → General → Login Items.
  • Reach workstations with plain ssh manages a one-line include in your ~/.ssh/config so ssh <workstation> works without Ringleader in the loop. The switch reflects the real state of the file, and the text under it shows the path of the included config. When another tool has moved the include below other rules, the text says so. Turn the switch on again to put it back at the top. The switch runs the same install and uninstall as rl ssh-config, and reads that command’s status to show the state.
  • Closing the window explains that the app keeps running in the menu bar or tray. Try it hides the window.
  • Re-run the welcome flow opens the onboarding wizard again, with the same four choices: sign-in, local runtime, ssh, launch at login.

Let tools find Docker at /var/run/docker.sock

Some tools, such as testcontainers-go and testcontainers-java, look for Docker only at /var/run/docker.sock and ignore Docker contexts. Your local runtime is not at that path: the docker command reaches it through the ringleader Docker context. If you use only the docker command, you do not need this setting.

On a Mac, the Let tools find Docker at /var/run/docker.sock switch makes /var/run/docker.sock a link to your local runtime’s Docker socket. A startup job makes the link again each time your Mac starts. The switch is off by default, and the app on Windows does not have it.

Clicking the switch first shows what will change, with Continue and Cancel buttons. After Continue, macOS asks for an administrator password. If you choose Cancel, or cancel the password dialog, nothing changes. Turning the switch off removes the link and the startup job, and asks for the password the same way.

If another program already holds /var/run/docker.sock, Ringleader leaves it alone. Docker Desktop can hold it, through its Allow the default Docker socket to be used setting. The switch is then unavailable, and the text under its label says what holds the path. You can turn the switch on once nothing else holds the path. If you turned the switch on before the other program took the path, Ringleader’s startup job is still installed and would take the path first at the next start. The app then shows Remove Ringleader’s startup job in place of the switch, which removes the job after the same explanation and password.

From the command line, rl local-runtime default-socket changes the same setting. Its enable and disable each ask for an administrator password, and enable refuses, changing nothing, when another program holds the path:

rl local-runtime default-socket enable
rl local-runtime default-socket disable
rl local-runtime default-socket status

Troubleshoot

Diagnostics and logs for when something is wrong. Generate bundle packages a diagnostics bundle to send to the Ringleader team, shows where it saved the zip, and lists anything the bundle leaves out. The same bundle from the command line is rl troubleshoot --all --diagnostics. Below it, Logs shows the app’s log or the daemon’s, the same logs Troubleshooting describes.

About

The rl and daemon versions and your data directory (useful when filing an issue), and links to the website, the source and the licenses of the bundled tools. When a newer Ringleader is available, this page says so, with a Download button.

Where to go next