Colima Commands Interpreted as Profiles Instead of Subcommands

[DebaJobGH]

Hi everyone,

I’m running into a strange issue with Colima on my Mac, and I’m hoping someone can help me understand what’s going on.

System Configuration

• Chip: Apple M4 Max
• OS: macOS 26.2

Installation Method
I installed everything using Homebrew:

• brew install colima
• brew install docker
• brew install docker-compose

Problem Description

When I run:

colima start

Colima starts successfully, but it starts with [profile=start] instead of using the default profile.

Under my home directory, it creates:

/Users//.colima/
├── _lima
├── _store
├── _templates
├── start
└── ssh_config

The issue is that any argument I pass after colima is treated as a profile name, not as a command.

For example:

• colima stop → starts Colima with [profile=stop]
• colima list → starts Colima with [profile=list]

Each time, a new profile directory is created under ~/.colima/ with the same name as the argument.

Because of this, none of the standard Colima commands work (stop, list, etc.).

Expected Behavior

On my teammates’ machines:

• colima start uses the default profile
• A default directory is created under ~/.colima/
• Standard commands like colima stop and colima list work as expected

What I’ve Tried

• Uninstalling and reinstalling Colima multiple times
• Uninstalling and reinstalling Docker and Docker Compose
• Verifying the Homebrew installation

Unfortunately, none of this resolved the issue.

Question

What could cause Colima to interpret every argument as a profile name instead of a command?
Is there a known configuration issue, environment variable, alias, or version mismatch that could explain this behavior?

Any help or pointers would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks in advance!

[abiosoft]

That is very strange.
Are you sure you do not have any command aliases causing the weird behaviour?

What is the output of which colima?

[abiosoft]

And there is the issue. You have a custom alias that adds extra arguments and flags.

Try the following for a temporary workaround.

# disable the alias
unlias colima

# start colima
colima start

For a permanent solution, you should rename the alias to something else to avoid clashing with the colima command.

[DebaJobGH]

Before I do that, just wanted to make sure I took all the details here. As you know I can not stop Colima because it starts with another profile. SO I have restart my machine to stop Colima. Then I can run unalias.

What is the permanent solution for this ? Because you are saying it's temporary fix.
I just ran

 unalias colima
which colima
/opt/homebrew/bin/colima

[DebaJobGH]

Now I am able to run colima start and colima stop. It works fine for me
Thank you so much

[abiosoft]

The permanent solution is modify $HOME/.zshrc to remove or rename the alias.