Docker Cheatsheet

Download an image from a registry (Docker Hub by default)

💡 Always pin a specific tag in production instead of using :latest

Build an image from a Dockerfile in the specified path

💡 Use .dockerignore to exclude files and speed up your build context

List all locally available images

Remove one or more images from local storage

💡 Remove all dangling images with: docker image prune

Upload an image to a registry

💡 You must be logged in with docker login before pushing to a private registry

Create a new tag that refers to an existing image

Remove unused/dangling images to free up disk space

Return low-level JSON information about an image

Show the build history and layers of an image

💡 Useful for auditing image size and understanding layer caching

Export an image to a tar archive for offline transfer

Import an image from a tar archive

Create and start a new container from an image

💡 Use --rm for short-lived containers to avoid accumulating stopped containers

List running containers

Gracefully stop a running container (SIGTERM → SIGKILL)

Start one or more stopped containers

Remove one or more stopped containers

💡 Remove all stopped containers with: docker container prune

Run a command inside a running container interactively

💡 If bash isn't available try: docker exec -it <container> sh

Fetch the logs output from a container

Return detailed JSON metadata about a container

Display a live stream of resource usage for containers

Copy files between a container and the local filesystem

Create a new image from a container's current state

💡 Prefer Dockerfiles over docker commit for reproducible builds

Create a named volume managed by Docker

List all Docker volumes on the host

Remove one or more volumes

💡 A volume cannot be removed while in use by a container

Show detailed info about a volume including its mount point

Remove all unused local volumes

💡 Be careful - this permanently deletes all data in unused volumes

Mount a named volume into a container at a specific path

💡 Use named volumes for persistent data; bind mounts for dev workflows

Create a new Docker network

💡 Containers on the same custom bridge network can communicate by container name

List all Docker networks

Connect a running container to a network

Disconnect a container from a network

Show detailed info about a network including connected containers

Remove one or more networks

💡 All containers must be disconnected before a network can be removed

Remove all unused networks

Create and start all services defined in docker-compose.yml

💡 Always use --build in CI/CD to ensure fresh images

Stop and remove containers and networks

List containers for the current compose project

View log output from services

Execute a command inside a running service container

Build or rebuild service images without starting them

Validate and print the resolved compose configuration

💡 Useful for debugging variable substitution and extension merges

Authenticate to a Docker registry

💡 Use --password-stdin in CI: echo $TOKEN | docker login --username user --password-stdin

Log out from a Docker registry

Search Docker Hub for images

Show Docker disk usage - images, containers, volumes, build cache

Remove stopped containers, unused networks, dangling images and build cache

💡 Great for freeing disk space on CI runners between builds

Display system-wide information about the Docker daemon

Show Docker client and server version details

Stream real-time events from the Docker daemon