How do I use Docker for local development without losing the hot-reloading feature?

All answers to this question.

You can definitely achieve this by using a Bind Mount in your docker-compose.yml. By mapping your local source code directory to the app directory inside the container, any change you save on your host machine is instantly reflected inside the running container. For a React app, your volume section would look like "- .:/app". Just make sure you don't overwrite the node_modules inside the container if you have different architectures. You might need to add an anonymous volume like "- /app/node_modules" to protect the container's installed dependencies from being shadowed by your local ones.

   Answered 2025-10-05 by Dorothy Taylor

Are you seeing any performance lag on Windows or Mac when mounting large folders, and have you tried using the "delegated" or "cached" flags to speed it up?

   Answered 2025-10-15 by William Nelson

• William, the performance hit on macOS used to be huge. Using the "virtiofs" setting in Docker Desktop has largely fixed this, but the "cached" flag is still a great tip for anyone on older versions to keep their IDE feeling snappy while the container syncs.

     Commented 2025-10-18 by Charles Wright

Make sure your application framework is set to watch for file changes. In some environments, you might need to set an environment variable like CHOKIDAR_USEPOLLING=true for it to work.

   Answered 2025-10-25 by Nancy Harris

• Nancy saved me! I spent hours wondering why my mount wasn't triggering a refresh, and it was exactly that polling issue with the filesystem events in a virtualized environment.

     Commented 2025-10-30 by Dorothy Taylor