I'm not going to lie, no Docker Extension will ever 4.2x or even 10x your productivity. Nevertheless, I think Docker Extensions are still heavily under-utilized by most. A little clickbait is worth it (is it?) if I can help just one person build cool stuff with Docker!

Anyway, check out these 5 extensions (that I actually use!)

0. What are Docker Extensions?!

Docker Extensions allow you to integrate third-party apps in your Docker Desktop app, possibly improving excessive context-switching between your development environment and your favorite tools. They can be developed by Docker or by other companies, and are free for all Docker users! If you want to know more you can watch this announcement video from last year.

1. Livecycle

Livecycle is a pretty cool extension that allows you to share your local docker-compose apps with the internet in a single click. You can use this to show your teammates your progress or to win hackathons!

To get started you first need to start your docker compose app with docker-compose up or docker-compose watch. You will then see it in your Livecycle dashboard. Clicking on the toggle switch will allow you to select which of your services you want to share with the public. After deciding it takes a few seconds and you will have your apps available! If you need help getting started with docker compose, check out this official tutorial

2. JMeter

JMeter is an open-source load-testing tool for web apps such as APIs or Websites. Setting up JMeter can be a struggle in the beginning but worth it in the long run. There are a few good resources on YouTube that can help you get started. If you want something super simple, check out Ddosify. Ddosify lets you select the endpoint to test, how many requests should be made and the pattern:

After running it, you will get the results in a simple tabular format. While this is quite rudimentary, it's certainly helpful to get a rough overview of what your app can handle!

3. ContainerWatch

ContainerWatch is a lightweight extension, that as the name already suggests, gives you some additional monitoring for your container CPU and memory usage.

After installing and opening the extension you will see a simple graph like this:

This will already be enough to do some super simple benchmarking in combination with ddosify. If you are doing some longer checks, you can even set up some email alerts if your container goes over some defined limits! This is also pretty cool if you are running something like a one-off scraper locally.

4. Docketeer

If ContainerWatch isn't enough, check out Docketeer! Docketeer is basically a Grafana dashboard inside Docker Desktop with super detailed metrics:

You even get a network graph of your docker containers (to be fair, this doesn't look super interesting in my case :D)

While Docketeer is certainly awesome and has its place, keep in mind that it takes quite a few more resources to run and also can make easy debugging harder with that much information. Choose wisely!

5. PGAdmin

PGAdmin is an open-source GUI for your Postgres database. While there are certainly better ones out there, PGAdmin is incredibly feature-rich and free! Installing it as a Docker extension simply means that it's always ready to go, this is just something that saves me a few seconds every day. Docker starts automatically and I never need to worry about starting PGAdmin. And since I rarely use one without the other, this works perfectly for me, and maybe for you as well? :)

Conclusion

Docker Extensions are still relatively new (released last year), so I hope you might have learned something from this that will help you with your journey to become a better developer.

Are there any extensions that you would recommend to others? Would love to hear about them!

Cheers, Jonas :D