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How to clean up your Docker environment

Deepu K Sasidharan on December 06, 2019

Originally published at deepu.tech. Cleanup your Docker setup If you are using Docker on your PC or Mac, over time it is gonna accumula...

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CyberJack • Dec 6 '19

Nice function, but did you know Docker has it's own clean up mechanism? It's called "docker system prune" and it's available since api version 1.25. It can be used to remove all unused containers, networks, images (both dangling and unreferenced), and optionally, volumes.

By default it will remove all stopped containers, all networks not used by at least one container, all dangling images and all build cache.

When adding the -a and --volumes parameters it will remove all stopped containers, all networks not used by at least one container, all volumes not used by at least one container, all images without at least one container associated to them and all build cache.

Deepu K Sasidharan • Dec 6 '19

Wow cool. I didn't know that and when I was originally writing this function few months ago it never came up in any of the resources I found. Cool. I'll try it out.

Deepu K Sasidharan • Dec 6 '19

Well talk about making the entire post irrelevant 😉

CyberJack • Dec 8 '19 • Edited

I don't think its irrelevant at all. The system prune command only works when you want to clean your entire docker setup. All these commands give you more control when you want to clean only certain parts of your docker setup.

Michael Wellner • Dec 6 '19 • Edited

my actual command:

# clean up docker images and volumes
dockercleanup() {
  docker system df
  docker system prune -f
  docker volume prune -f
  docker image prune -f
  docker system df
}

from github.com/m1well/env-setup