orbstack provides a docker engine and sets the socket to point at that. It's a complete system, it's not "just a gui for an existing docker instance". Your issue is your flawed understanding of what Orbstack is and not understanding docker contexts. You can use Docker contexts to run OrbStack and Colima side-by-side. Switching contexts affects all commands you run from that point on, see: https://docs.orbstack.dev/install#colima
You failed at thinking that orbstack is nothing but a UI-layer to docker.
It's certainly not that. In fact you don't even need to have the app running in order to use docker!
Ive lost the link now but somewhere @Danny explains the different layers (like networking, file sharing, domains etc) that he had to write from scratch that are not part of Docker (the engine)
For example. One of the longest bugs in Docker for Mac has been file-sharing/bind mounts... Orbstack performance over Docker for Mac in this respect is incredible. Also Docker for Mac (still) doesnt have ipv6 whereas Orbstack enables this out of the box seamlessly.
Thinking of Orbstack as "just another UI for docker" is completely wrong.
A responsive developer who knows his product inside out, who replies daily to GitHub issues, values reports and resolves issues reported and releases fixes for reported issues in hours/days instead of months/years(if at all) - That alone is priceless and beats "official" Docker for Mac any day!
Im a veteran paid-up Docker Desktop for Mac user... and I instantly paid for Orbstack.dev as soon as it was released. It's so so much better than Docker Desktop For Mac. Literally no reason to use slow bulky docker desktop when orbstack exceeds every expectation, and instant support from the solo developer who has put so much effort into this (and is still a teenager Im lead to believe!)
# Switch to OrbStack
docker context use orbstack
# Switch to Colima
docker context use colima