A Silent Watchtower Replacement

Watchtower was the standard tool for keeping Docker containers up to date. Then Docker Engine 29 stopped accepting API versions below 1.44. Watchtower still asks for 1.25, so it cannot talk to a current Docker install, and the original project was archived in December 2025.

I looked around for alternatives. Almost everything I found wanted to notify me about every update, on Slack, Discord, Email, Telegram, you name it. I don’t want my homelab pinging my phone every time a minor patch is released. I wanted a tool that updates containers and says nothing, and I did not find one.

What it does

orbitd monitors your containers and updates them when new images are available, preserving networks, volumes, and labels. If an update fails, it rolls back to the previous container.

I also wanted control over what gets updated. Blindly pulling latest can break things when a major version drops. There is a semver policy engine for that. The default policy is digest, meaning same tag, new build. You can change it per container with a label:

services:
  api:
    image: myapi:1.0.0
    labels:
      # This will update to 1.9.0, but will ignore 2.0.0
      - 'orbitd.policy=minor'

Running it

Zero configuration works: mount the Docker socket read-only and drop this into your compose file.

services:
  orbitd:
    image: ghcr.io/mizuchilabs/orbitd:latest
    container_name: orbitd
    restart: unless-stopped
    volumes:
      - /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock:ro

The default check interval is 12 hours. On each check it updates what needs updating and cleans up the old images. If you prefer manual opt-in, set ORBITD_REQUIRE_LABEL=true and add orbitd.enable=true to the services you want monitored. It also runs on Docker Swarm if you deploy it to a manager node.

The tradeoff

By design, it sends no notifications. A failed update rolls back to the previous container and you read about it in the logs. If something rolls back more than once, that is your signal to look closer.

It replaced Watchtower in my homelab and has not pinged my phone once.

orbitd on GitHub →