Environment

  • PC: macbook Air (M1)
  • OS: Big Sur 11.6.1

Problem

One day, when I pressed Preferences from the docker desktop for mac icon, the Docker screen did not come up (the icon bounced a couple of times and then dropped).
When I restarted my PC, I got an error window saying Fatal Error Failed to ping backend API and docker itself did not start up.
The Reset Docker to factory defaults, Diagnose & Feedback, Exit option is there, but I can’t press it (the cursor is going around) and it won’t let me reset it.

Apparently there are quite a few people in a similar situation, and it seems to be a known bug.(docker for mac issue)。It is still being discussed here, and it looks like there is no perfect solution yet.

I would like to leave you with the procedure as I was able to update it and work it with various references.

How To Update

command to turn it off, or check docker in the activity monitor and terminate the one that comes up.

$ killall Docker

Uninstall

It went from the Applications folder to the Trash. In hindsight, I think there was a smarter way to do it.

Install

Download & install the latest version from docs.docker.com.

Allow full access

If the above installation works, you can skip this step (docker will suggest you to change the access permissions at startup).

Go to System Preferences>Security and Privacy>Full Disk Access and grant full access to docker.

(Postscript)
I looked at another macbook that I hadn’t touched for a while and found that I hadn’t given docker such permissions (but it was working fine), so I may be a bit uncertain about this.

Restart docker

It worked well:)