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Theia IDE

What is Theia?​

Theia is an open-source, browser-based IDE with a VS Code-like editor, integrated terminal, and extension system. Running it in a container gives you a full development environment reachable from any browser, useful for remote work, pairing, or coding from a machine without your usual local setup. Laradock builds it from the official theiaide/theia image.

Start Theia​

./laradock start ide-theia

Open http://localhost:987 (or your custom IDE_THEIA_PORT). ${APP_CODE_PATH_HOST} is mounted into the container at /home/project, so Theia opens the same project code the rest of your Laradock containers work with.

ide-theia/Dockerfile also raises fs.inotify.max_user_watches to 524288 as root before switching back to the theia user, this avoids file-watcher errors ("ENOSPC") on projects with a large number of files.

Stop Theia​

Stopping just pauses the container:

./laradock stop ide-theia

The editor state itself isn't stored in a Laradock-managed volume, only your project files (via APP_CODE_PATH_HOST) persist independently of the container, so there's nothing to lose by stopping or removing it.

To delete the container entirely:

./laradock remove ide-theia

Configuration​

All settings live in ide-theia/defaults.env and can be overridden by adding the same line to your own .env:

VariableDefaultWhat it does
IDE_THEIA_PORT987Host-side port Theia is published on (host:3000, Theia listens on 3000 inside the container).

Rebuild after changing the Dockerfile​

ide-theia/Dockerfile is a thin wrapper on top of theiaide/theia. If you edit it, for example to add a system package or a Theia extension, rebuild the image for the change to take effect:

./laradock rebuild ide-theia

There's no IDE_THEIA_VERSION variable, the image always builds from theiaide/theia:latest as pinned in the Dockerfile's FROM line. To pick up upstream Theia updates, rebuild with --no-cache (docker compose build --no-cache ide-theia) so Docker re-pulls the base image instead of reusing a cached layer.

View logs​

If the page won't load or the editor gets stuck, check the container's startup output:

./laradock logs ide-theia

Open a terminal inside the container​

Theia ships its own in-browser terminal once it's loaded, but if the UI itself isn't coming up, get a shell directly to inspect the container:

./laradock enter ide-theia

Security: no built-in authentication​

Theia, as run here, has no login screen and no access control of its own, whoever can reach IDE_THEIA_PORT gets a full editor and terminal on your mounted project code. That's fine on localhost, but if you ever expose this container beyond your own machine (a shared dev box, a port forwarded through a tunnel, a cloud VM), put it behind something that authenticates first, for example an nginx vhost with basic auth or a VPN, never publish IDE_THEIA_PORT directly to the open internet.

Common issues​

  • Port already in use on your host. Another service (or another Laradock project) is already bound to 987. Change IDE_THEIA_PORT in .env and run ./laradock restart ide-theia.
  • File-watcher / "too many open files" errors on large projects. The Dockerfile already raises fs.inotify.max_user_watches, but this setting is applied inside the container's own namespace; on some Docker Desktop setups the host's inotify limit still applies. Raise the host limit too if you keep hitting it.
  • Editing files but no changes showing up in other containers. Confirm APP_CODE_PATH_HOST in .env points at the same project folder that php-fpm/nginx/etc. use, Theia only sees whatever is mounted to /home/project.
  • Blank page or connection refused. Give the container a few seconds after ./laradock start ide-theia; check ./laradock logs ide-theia for startup errors before assuming it's a port issue.

Need an API spec editor instead of a full IDE? See Swagger Editor. New to Laradock? Start at Getting Started.