What does the value "desktop" mean for the credStore attribute in docker config?

Question

In the .docker/config.json there is the credStore attribute, which apparently the documentation is meant to point to an external credential store like the native keychain of an OS, to look out for the credentials of a registry to push and pull images to and from.

But I could not find the meaning after researching the value desktop for that attribute. I am unsure whether I added it automatically by some configurations I did earlier.

"credsStore": "desktop"

Answer 1

I am using docker-desktop for windows, after reading this answer from the Docker Windows Desktop forum, i found out desktop in my case correspondes to the Credential Manager for Windows. I also get the same results for:

docker-credential-desktop.exe list
docker-credential-wincred.exe list

These docker-desktop commands can be found under Docker\resources\bin in the Docker installation directory.

I also checked the Credential Manager from Control Panel settings under windows and i found my docker credentials.

Cheers

Answer 2

My experience on Linux Ubuntu 22.04 :

Looks like the value desktop means to look for credentials on some Docker Desktop configuration, because I installed Docker desktop on Ubuntu, then I uninstalled it manually, but it left this key pair credsStore:desktop value in $HOME/.docker/config.json file.
A few days later I installed docker engine without docker desktop, and when I tried to build a container image I got an error about credentials not found in some desktop file not found.

ERROR: failed to solve: node: error getting credentials - err: docker-credential-desktop resolves to executable in current directory (./docker-credential-desktop), out: ``

So I remembered about uninstalling Docker Desktop a few days before, and checked config.json and found that "desktop" value for credsStore key . I deleted the key/value pair on that file, saved it, and tried to build my container image again, it worked smoothly :)