Docker Desktop’s single sign-on (SSO) and sign-in enforcement (also called login enforcement) features work together to enhance security and ease of use. SSO allows users to log in with corporate credentials, whereas login enforcement ensures every user is authenticated, giving IT tighter control over compliance. In this post, we’ll define each of these features, explain their unique benefits, and show how using them together streamlines management and improves your Docker Desktop experience.

Before diving into the benefits of login alongside SSO, let’s clarify three related terms: login, single sign-on (SSO), and enforced login.

• Login: Logging in connects users to Docker’s suite of tools, enabling access to personalized settings, team resources, and features like Docker Scout and Docker Build Cloud. By default, members of an organization can use Docker Desktop without signing in. Logging in can be done through SSO or by using Docker-specific credentials.
• Single sign-on (SSO): SSO allows users to access Docker using their organization’s central authentication system, letting teams streamline access across multiple platforms with one set of credentials. SSO standardizes and secures login and supports automation around provisioning but does not automatically log in users unless enforced.
• Enforced login: This policy, configured by administrators, ensures users are logged in by requiring login credentials before accessing Docker Desktop and associated tools. With enforced login, teams gain consistent access to Docker’s productivity and security features, minimizing gaps in visibility and control.

With these definitions in mind, here’s why being logged in matters, how SSO simplifies login, and how login enforcement ensures your team gets the full benefit of Docker’s powerful development tools.

Why logging in matters for admins and compliance teams

Enforcing sign-in with corporate credentials ensures that all users accessing Docker Desktop are verified and utilizing the benefits of your Docker Business subscription while adding a layer of security to safeguard your software supply chain. This policy strengthens your organization’s security posture and enables Docker to provide detailed usage insights, helping compliance teams track engagement and adoption. 

Enforced login will support cloud-based control over settings, allowing admins to manage application configurations across the organization more effectively. By requiring login, your organization benefits from greater transparency, control, and alignment with compliance standards. 

When everyone in your organization signs in with proper credentials:

• Access controls for shared resources become more reliable, allowing administrators to enforce policies and permissions consistently.
• Developers stay connected to their workspaces and resources, minimizing disruptions.
• Desktop Insights Dashboard provides admins actionable insights into usage, from feature adoption to image usage trends and login activity, helping administrators optimize team performance and security.
• Teams gain full visibility and access to Docker Scout’s security insights, which only function with logged-in accounts.

Read more about the benefits of login on our blog post, Maximizing Docker Desktop: How Signing In Unlocks Advanced Features.

Options for enforcing sign-in

Docker provides three options to help administrators enforce sign-in. 

• Registry key method (Windows Only): Integrates seamlessly with Windows, letting IT enforce login policies within familiar registry settings, saving time on configuration. 
• Plist or config profiles method (Mac): Provides an easy way for IT to manage access on macOS, ensuring policy consistency across Apple devices without additional tools. 
• Registry.json method (all platforms): Works across Windows, macOS, and Linux, allowing IT to enforce login on all platforms with a single, flexible configuration file, streamlining policy management for diverse environments.

Each method helps IT secure access, restrict to authorized users, and maintain compliance across all systems. You can enforce login without setting up SSO. Read the documentation to learn more about Docker’s sign-in enforcement methods.  

Single sign-on (SSO) 

Docker Desktop’s SSO capabilities allow organizations to streamline access by integrating with corporate identity providers, ensuring that only authorized team members can access Docker resources using their work credentials. This integration enhances security by eliminating the need for separate Docker-specific passwords, reducing the risk of unauthorized access to critical development tools. With SSO, admins can enforce consistent login policies across teams, simplify user management, and gain greater control over who accesses Docker Desktop. Additionally, SSO enables compliance teams to track access and usage better, aligning with organizational security standards and improving overall security posture.

Docker Desktop supports SSO integrations with a variety of idPs, including Okta, OneLogin, Auth0, and Microsoft Entra ID. By integrating with these IdPs, organizations can streamline user authentication, enhance security, and maintain centralized access control across their Docker environments.

Differences between SSO enforcement and SSO enablement

SSO and SCIM give your company more control over how users log in and attach themselves to your organization and Docker subscription but do not require your users to sign in to your organization when using Docker Desktop. Without sign-in enforcement, users can continue to utilize Docker Desktop without logging in or using their personal Docker IDs or subscriptions, preventing Docker from providing you with insights into their usage and control over the application. 

SSO enforcement usually applies to identity management across multiple applications, enforcing a single, centralized login for a suite of apps or services. However, a registry key or other local login enforcement mechanism typically applies only to that specific application (e.g., Docker Desktop) and doesn’t control access across different services.

Better together: Sign-in enforcement and SSO 

While SSO enables seamless access to Docker for those who choose to log in, enforcing login ensures that users fully benefit from Docker’s productivity and security features.

Docker’s SSO integration is designed to simplify enterprise user management, allowing teams to access Docker with their organization’s centralized credentials. This streamlines onboarding and minimizes password management overhead, enhancing security across the board. However, SSO alone doesn’t require users to log in — it simply makes it more convenient and secure. Without enforced login, users might bypass the sign-in process, missing out on Docker’s full benefits, particularly in areas of security and control.

By coupling SSO with login enforcement, organizations strengthen their Registry Access Management (RAM), ensuring access is restricted to approved registries, boosting image compliance, and centralizing control. Encouraging login alongside SSO ensures teams enjoy a seamless experience while unlocking Docker’s complete suite of features.

Learn more

• Learn how to enforce sign-in for Docker Desktop.
• Find out about single sign-on.
• Read Maximizing Docker Desktop: How Signing In Unlocks Advanced Features.
• Authenticate and update to receive your subscription level’s newest Docker Desktop features.
• New to Docker? Create an account.
• Subscribe to the Docker Newsletter.

Key features of the Docker Desktop 4.35 release include: 

• Secure development environments with organization access tokens (Beta) 
• Docker Home enhances your Docker experience (Beta) 
• Accelerate development with a terminal in Docker Desktop (GA)  
• Volumes Export (GA)
• Improved performance on macOS
• Docker Desktop for Red Hat Enterprise Linux

Organization access tokens (Beta) 

Before the beta release of organization access tokens, managing developer access to Docker resources was challenging, as it relied heavily on individual user accounts, leading to security risks and administrative inefficiencies. 

Organization access tokens let you manage access at the organizational level, providing enhanced security. This feature allows teams to operate more securely and efficiently with centralized user management, reduced administrative overhead, and the flexibility to scale access as the organization grows. For businesses, this feature offers significant value by improving governance, enhancing security, and supporting scalable infrastructure from an administrative perspective. 

Organizational access tokens empower organizations to maintain tighter control over their resources and security, making Docker Desktop even more valuable for enterprise users. This is one piece of the continuous updates we’re releasing to support administrators across large enterprise companies, ensuring they have the tools needed to manage complex environments with efficiency and confidence.

Docker Home (Beta) 

Sign in to your Docker account to see the release of the new Docker Home page (Figure 1). The new Docker Home marks a milestone in Docker’s journey as a multi-product company, reinforcing Docker’s commitment to providing an expanding suite of solutions that help developers and businesses containerize applications with ease.

• Unified experience: The home page provides a central hub for users to access Docker products, manage subscriptions, adjust settings, and find resources — all in one place. This approach simplifies navigation for developers and admins.
• Admin access: Administrators can manage organizations, users, and onboarding processes through the new portal, with access to dashboards for monitoring Docker usage.
• Future enhancements: Future updates will add personalized features for different roles, and business subscribers will gain access to tools like the Docker Support portal and organization-wide notifications.

Terminal experience in Docker Desktop

Our terminal feature in Docker Desktop is now generally available. While managing containerized applications, developers have often faced friction and inefficiencies when switching between the Docker Desktop CLI and GUI. This constant context switching disrupted workflows and reduced productivity. 

The terminal enhancement integrates a terminal directly within the Docker Desktop GUI, enabling seamless transitions between CLI and GUI interactions within a single window. By incorporating a terminal shell into the Docker Desktop interface (Figure 2), we significantly reduce the friction associated with context switching for developers.

This functionality is designed to streamline workflows, accelerate delivery times, and enhance overall developer productivity.

Volumes Export is GA 

With the 4.35 release, we’ve elevated volume backup capabilities in Docker Desktop, introducing an upgraded feature set (Figure 3). This enhancement directly integrates the previous Volumes Backup & Share extension directly into Docker Desktop, streamlining your backup processes.

Although this release marks a significant step forward, it’s just the beginning. We’re committed to expanding these capabilities, adding even more value in future updates. Check out the beta of Scheduled Backups as well as External Cloud Storage backups, which are also available. 

Significantly improved performance experience on macOS (Beta)

Docker Desktop 4.35 also includes a beta release of Docker VMM, a container-optimized hypervisor for Apple Silicon Macs. Local developer workflows rely heavily on the performance of the hypervisor layer for everything from handling individual timer interrupts to accessing files and downloading images from the network. 

Docker VMM allows us to optimize the Linux kernel and hypervisor layer together, massively improving the speed of many common developer tasks. For example, iterating over a large shared file system with find is now 2x faster than on Docker Desktop 4.34 with a cold cache and up to 25x faster — faster than running natively on the Mac — when the cache is warm. This is only the beginning. Thanks to Docker VMM, we have many exciting new performance improvements in the pipeline.

Enable Docker VMM via Settings > General > Virtual Machine options and try it for your developer workflows today (Figure 4).

Docker Desktop for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 

Today we are excited to announce the general availability of Docker Desktop for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). This feature marks a great milestone for both Docker and our growing community of developers.

By making Docker Desktop available on RHEL, we’re not only extending our reach — we’re meeting developers where they are. RHEL users can now access a seamless containerized development experience directly on the same OS that might power their production environments.

Docker Desktop for RHEL (Figure 5) offers the same intuitive interface, integrated tooling, and performance optimizations that you’ve come to expect on the other supported Linux distributions.

How to install Docker Desktop on Red Hat Enterprise Linux

Download links and information can be found in our release notes. 

Looking for support?

Did you know that you can get Premium Customer Support for Docker Desktop with a Pro or Team subscription? With this GA release, we’re now ready to officially help support you if you’re thinking about using Docker Desktop. Check out our pricing page to learn more about what’s included in a Pro or Team subscription, and if it’s right for you.

Explore the latest updates

With this latest wave of updates, from the security enhancements of organization access tokens to the performance boost of Docker VMM for Apple Silicon Macs, we’re pushing Docker Desktop forward to meet the evolving needs of developers and organizations alike. Each new feature is designed to make development smoother, faster, and more secure — whether you’re managing large teams or optimizing your individual workflow. 

We’re continuing to make improvements, with more tools and features on the way to help you build, manage, and scale your projects efficiently. Explore the latest updates and see how they can enhance your development experience

Learn more

• Subscribe to the Docker Newsletter.
• Authenticate and update to receive your subscription level’s newest Docker Desktop features.
• New to Docker? Create an account.
• Learn more about host networking support.
• Have questions? The Docker community is here to help.