Install

Download the signed app, or install it with Homebrew.

Homebrew

brew install --cask wess/packages/hopper

Download

Grab Hopper.dmg from the latest release. Open it and drag Hopper.app to Applications.

The build is signed with a Developer ID and notarized, so Gatekeeper opens it without complaint. If you want to confirm that yourself:

spctl -a -t exec -vv /Applications/Hopper.app
# accepted
# source=Notarized Developer ID

What Hopper needs


Architecture	Apple silicon (arm64)
macOS	26 or later

Apple's container runtime needs macOS 26 for the vmnet APIs that give containers their own addresses. Hopper can also attach to Docker Desktop, Podman, Colima, Rancher Desktop, or a remote daemon from a supported Mac.

Hopper asks for very little

Three entitlements, and no more:

files.user-selected.read-write — bind-mounted directories, and the tars an import stages on disk
network.client and network.server — registry pulls and published ports

Notably not com.apple.security.virtualization. Hopper used to run a Linux VM of its own and needed it; Apple's runtime does its own virtualizing under its own privileged helpers, so the entitlement is gone and the release build asserts it has not come back.