How to remove old and unused Docker images

Question

When running Docker for a long time  there are a lot of images in system  How can I remove all unused Docker images at once safety to free up the storage   In addition  I also want to remove images pulled months ago  which have the correct TAG   So  I m not asking for removing untagged images only  I m searching for a way to remove general unused images  which includes both untagged and other images such as pulled months ago with correct TAG

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The other answers are great  specifically   docker system prune   doesn t clean out old images docker system prune --all   cleans out too much   But I needed something in the middle of the two commands so the filter option was what I needed   docker image prune --all --filter  until 4320h    delete images older than 6 months ago  4320h   24 hour day   30 days month   6 months   Hope that helps     For reference  https   docs docker com config pruning  prune-images

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Here is a script to clean up Docker images and reclaim the space      bin bash -x    Removing stopped container docker ps -a   grep Exited   awk   print  1     xargs docker rm     If you do not want to remove all container you can have filter for days and weeks old like below  docker ps -a   grep Exited   grep  days ago    awk   print  1     xargs docker rm  docker ps -a   grep Exited   grep  weeks ago    awk   print  1     xargs docker rm     Removing Dangling images    There are the layers images which are being created during building a Docker image  This is a great way to recover the spaces used by old and unused layers   docker rmi   docker images -f  dangling true  -q      Removing images of perticular pattern For example    Here I am removing images which has a SNAPSHOT with it   docker rmi   docker images   grep SNAPSHOT   awk   print  3        Removing weeks old images  docker images   grep  weeks ago    awk   print  3     xargs docker rmi     Similarly you can remove days  months old images too    Original script  https   github com vishalvsh1 docker-image-cleanup  Usually Docker keeps all temporary files related to image building and layers at   var lib docker  This path is local to the system  usually at THE root partition        You can mount a bigger disk space and move the content of  var lib docker to the new mount location and make a symbolic link   This way  even if Docker images occupy space  it will not affect your system as it will be using some other mount location   Original post   Manage Docker images on local disk

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If you wish to automatically periodically clean up exited containers and remove images and volumes that aren t in use by a running container you can download the image meltwater docker-cleanup   Just run   docker run -d -v  var run docker sock  var run docker sock rw  -v  var lib docker  var lib docker rw --restart unless-stopped meltwater docker-cleanup latest   It runs every 30 minutes by default  You can however set the delay time by using this flag in seconds  DELAY TIME 1800 option    More details  https   github com meltwater docker-cleanup blob master README md

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If you build these pruned images yourself  from some other  older base images  please be careful with the accepted solutions above based on docker image prune  as the command is blunt and will try to remove also all dependencies required by your latest images  the command should be probably renamed to docker image s  prune     The solution I came up for my docker image build pipelines  where there are daily builds and tags dates are in the YYYYMMDD format  is this     carefully narrow down the image to be deleted  to avoid removing useful static stuff like base images  my deleted image mirekphd ml-cpu-py37-vsc-cust    define the monitored image  tested for obsolescence   which will be usually the same as deleted one  unless deleting some very infrequently built image which requires a separate  clock  monitored image mirekphd ml-cache    calculate the oldest acceptable tag  date  date week ago   date -d  last week     Y m d      get the IDs of obsolete tags of our deleted image   note we use monitored image to test for obsolescence my deleted image obsolete tag ids   docker images --filter  before  monitored image  date week ago    grep  my deleted image   awk   print  3       remove the obsolete tags of the deleted image    note it typically has to be forced using -f switch  docker rmi -f  my deleted image obsolete tag ids

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Assuming you have Docker 1 13 or higher you can just use the prune commands  For your question specifically for removing old images  you want the first one     Remove unused images docker image prune    Remove stopped containers  docker container prune    Remove unused volumes docker volume prune    Remove unused networks docker network prune    Command to run all prunes  docker system prune   I would recommend not getting used to using the docker system prune command  I reckon users will accidentally remove things they don t mean to  Personally  I m going to mainly be using the docker image prune and docker container prune commands

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To remove old tagged images that are more than a month old     docker images --no-trunc --format     ID      CreatedSince            grep   months    awk    print  1            xargs --no-run-if-empty docker rmi   Note that it ll fail to remove images that are used by a container  referenced in a repository  has dependent child images    which is probably what you want  Else just add -f flag   Example of  etc cron daily docker-gc script      bin sh -e    Delete all stopped containers  including data-only containers   docker ps -a -q --no-trunc --filter  status exited    xargs --no-run-if-empty docker rm -v    Delete all tagged images more than a month old    will fail to remove images still used   docker images --no-trunc --format     ID      CreatedSince      grep   months    awk    print  1      xargs --no-run-if-empty docker rmi    true    Delete all  untagged dangling    lt none gt   images   Those are used for Docker caching mechanism  docker images -q --no-trunc --filter dangling true   xargs --no-run-if-empty docker rmi    Delete all dangling volumes  docker volume ls -qf dangling true   xargs --no-run-if-empty docker volume rm

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Until now  Docker version 1 12  we are using the following command to delete all the running containers  Also  if we want to delete the volumes  we can do that manually using its respective tag -v in the following command   Delete all Exited Containers  docker rm   docker ps -q -f status exited    Delete all Stopped Containers  docker rm   docker ps -a -q    Delete All Running and Stopped Containers  docker stop   docker ps -a -q  docker rm   docker ps -a -q    Remove all containers  without any criteria  docker container rm   docker container ps -aq    But  in version 1 13 and above  for complete system and cleanup  we can directly user the following command   docker system prune   All unused containers  images  networks and volumes will get deleted  We can also do this using the following commands that clean up the individual components   docker container prune docker image prune docker network prune docker volume prune

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There is sparrow plugin docker-remove-dangling-images you can use to clean up stopped containers and unused  dangling  images     sparrow plg run docker-remove-dangling-images  It works both for Linux and Windows OS

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If you have a lot of them  it can be really tedious to  remove  them  but lucky for us Docker has a few commands to help us eliminate  dangling images  In older versions of Docker  and this still works today   you can  delete dangling images  on their own by running docker rmi -f   docker  images  -f  quot dangling true quot  -q

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The following command will delete images older than 48 hours     docker image prune --all --filter until 48h

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Occasionally I have run into issues where Docker will allocate and continue to use disk space  even when the space is not allocated to any particular image or existing container  The latest way I generated this issue accidentally was using  quot docker-engine quot  centos build instead of  quot docker quot  in RHEL 7 1   What seems to happen is sometimes the container clean-ups are not completed successfully and then the space is never reused  When the 80GB drive I allocated as   was filled with  var lib docker files I had to come up with a creative way to resolve the issue  Here is what I came up with   First to resolve the disk full error   Stop docker  systemctl stop docker  Allocated a new drive mounted as say  mnt docker    Move all the files in  var lib docker to  mnt docker    I used the command  rsync -aPHSx --remove-source-files  var lib docker   mnt docker    Mount the new drive to  var lib docker    At this point I no longer had a disk full error  but I was still wasting a huge amount of space    The next steps are to take care of that   Start Docker  systemctl start docker  Save the all the images  docker save   docker images  sed -e     lt none gt  d  -e    REPOSITORY d  -e  s             -e  s            gt   root docker img   Uninstall docker   Erase everything in  var lib docker  rm -rf  var lib docker  cdintv     Reinstall docker  Enable docker  systemctl enable docker  Start docker  systemctl start docker  Restore images  docker load  lt   root docker img   Start any persistent containers you need running    This dropped my disk usage from 67 GB for docker to 6 GB for docker  I do not recommend this for everyday use    But it is useful to run when it looks like docker has lost track of used disk space do to software errors  or unexpected reboots

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I m using this command   export BEFORE DATETIME   date --date  10 weeks ago     Y- m- dT H  M  S  NZ   docker images -q   while read IMAGE ID  do     export IMAGE CTIME   docker inspect --format     Created    --type image   IMAGE ID       if       BEFORE DATETIME    gt     IMAGE CTIME       then         echo  Removing   IMAGE ID     BEFORE DATETIME  is earlier then   IMAGE CTIME           docker rmi -f   IMAGE ID       fi  done   This will remove all images whose creation time is greater than 10 weeks ago

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If you want to remove images pulled X months ago  you can try the below example which remove images created three months ago   three months old images  docker images   grep -vi   lt none gt     tr -s       cut -d    -f3 4 5 6   grep  3 months ago    cut -d    -f1  docker rmi  three months old images

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This worked for me   docker rmi   docker images   grep    lt none gt     awk   print  3

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How to remove a tagged image   docker rmi the tag first  docker rmi the image      that can be done in one docker rmi call e g     docker rmi  lt repo tag   lt imageid     this works Nov 2016  Docker version 1 12 2   e g     docker images  REPOSITORY              TAG                 IMAGE ID            CREATED             SIZE usrxx the-application   16112805            011fd5bf45a2        12 hours ago        5 753 GB usryy the-application   vx xx xx            5af809583b9c        3 days ago          5 743 GB usrzz the-application   vx xx xx            eef00ce9b81f        10 days ago         5 747 GB usrAA the-application   vx xx xx            422ba91c71bb        3 weeks ago         5 722 GB usrBB the-application   v1 00 18            a877aec95006        3 months ago        5 589 GB    docker rmi usrxx the-application 16112805  amp  amp  docker rmi 011fd5bf45a2   docker rmi usryy the-application vx xx xx  amp  amp  docker rmi 5af809583b9c   docker rmi usrzz the-application vx xx xx eef00ce9b81f   docker rmi usrAA the-application vx xx xx 422ba91c71bb   docker rmi usrBB the-application v1 00 18 a877aec95006   e g  Scripted remove anything older than 2 weeks   IMAGESINFO   docker images --no-trunc --format     ID      Repository      Tag      CreatedSince     grep -E    weeks months years    TAGS   echo   IMAGESINFO    awk    print  2      3      IDS   echo   IMAGESINFO    awk    print  1      echo remove old images TAGS  TAGS IDS  IDS for t in  TAGS  do docker rmi  t  done for i in  IDS  do docker rmi  i  done

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Remove old containers weeks ago   docker rm   docker ps -a   grep  weeks    awk    print  1       Remove old images weeks ago  Be careful  This will remove base images which was created weeks ago but which your new images might be using   docker rmi   docker images   grep  weeks    awk    print  3

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docker system prune -a   You ll be asked to confirm the command  Use -f to force run  if you know what you re doing

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To remove tagged images which have not container running  you will have to use a little script      bin bash    remove not running containers docker rm   docker ps -f  status exited  -q   declare -A used images    collect images which has running container for image in   docker ps   awk  NR gt 1  print  2      do     id   docker inspect --format     Id     image       used images  id   image  done    loop over images  delete those without a container for id in   docker images --no-trunc -q   do     if   -z   used images  id      then         echo  images is NOT in use   id          docker rmi  id     else         echo  images is in use        used images  id        fi done

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I usually do docker rm -f   docker ps -a -q  and docker system prune to purge all dangling containers

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Update Sept  2016  Docker 1 13  PR 26108 and commit 86de7c0 introduce a few new commands to help facilitate visualizing how much space the docker daemon data is taking on disk and allowing for easily cleaning up  unneeded  excess   docker system prune will delete ALL dangling data  i e  In order  containers stopped  volumes without containers and images with no containers   Even unused data  with -a option   You also have    docker container prune docker image prune docker network prune docker volume prune   For unused images  use docker image prune -a  for removing dangling and ununsed images   Warning   unused  means  images not referenced by any container   be careful before using -a   As illustrated in A L s answer  docker system prune --all will remove all unused images not just dangling ones    which can be a bit too much   Combining docker xxx prune with the --filter option can be a great way to limit the pruning  docker SDK API 1 28 minimum  so docker 17 04       The currently supported filters are     until   lt timestamp gt   - only remove containers  images  and networks created before given timestamp label  label  lt key gt   label  lt key gt   lt value gt   label   lt key gt   or label   lt key gt   lt value gt   - only remove containers  images  networks  and volumes with  or without  in case label      is used  the specified labels    See  Prune images  for an example     Original answer  Sep  2016   I usually do   docker rmi   docker images --filter  dangling true  -q --no-trunc    I have an alias for removing those  dangling images 13  drmi     The dangling true filter finds unused images   That way  any intermediate image no longer referenced by a labelled image is removed   I do the same first for exited processes  containers   alias drmae  docker rm   docker ps -qa --no-trunc --filter  status exited      As haridsv points out in the comments      Technically  you should first clean up containers before cleaning up images  as this will catch more dangling images and less errors      Jess Frazelle  jfrazelle  has the bashrc function   dcleanup        docker rm -v   docker ps --filter status exited -q 2 gt  dev null  2 gt  dev null     docker rmi   docker images --filter dangling true -q 2 gt  dev null  2 gt  dev null       To remove old images  and not just  unreferenced-dangling  images  you can consider docker-gc        A simple Docker container and image garbage collection script          Containers that exited more than an hour ago are removed    Images that don t belong to any remaining container after that are removed

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First  run docker images to see list of images and copy IMAGE HASH ID into clipboard   Run docker rmi -f  lt Image gt   Remember option -f is force deleting

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To prune all images and volumes as well docker system prune -af --volumes

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VonC already gave a very nice answer  but for completeness here is a little script I have been using---and which also nukes any errand Docker processes should you have some      bin bash  imgs   docker images   awk    lt none gt     print  3     if      imgs            then    echo docker rmi   imgs     docker rmi   imgs  else    echo  No images to remove  fi  procs   docker ps -a -q --no-trunc  if      procs            then    echo docker rm   procs     docker rm   procs  else    echo  No processes to purge  fi

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I recently wrote a script to solve this on one of my servers      bin bash    Remove all the dangling images DANGLING IMAGES   docker images -qf  dangling true   if    -n  DANGLING IMAGES     then     docker rmi   DANGLING IMAGES  fi    Get all the images currently in use USED IMAGES           docker ps -a --format     Image            sort -u         uniq         awk -F       2 print  1    2   2 print  1  latest            Get all the images currently available ALL IMAGES           docker images --format     Repository      Tag            sort -u         Remove the unused images for i in    ALL IMAGES       do     UNUSED true     for j in    USED IMAGES       do         if      i       j      then             UNUSED false         fi     done     if      UNUSED     true     then         docker rmi   i      fi done

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Update the second  2017-07-08    Refer  again  to VonC  using the even more recent system prune  The impatient can skip the prompt with the -f  --force option   docker system prune -f   The impatient and reckless can additionally remove  unused images not just the dangling ones  with the -a  --all option   docker system prune -af   https   docs docker com engine reference commandline system prune   Update   Refer to VonC s answer which uses the recently added prune commands  Here is the corresponding shell alias convenience   alias docker-clean       docker container prune -f       docker image prune -f       docker network prune -f       docker volume prune -f     Old answer   Delete stopped  exited  containers     docker ps --no-trunc -aqf  status exited    xargs docker rm   Delete unused  dangling  images     docker images --no-trunc -aqf  dangling true    xargs docker rmi   If you have exercised extreme caution with regard to irrevocable data loss  then you can delete unused  dangling  volumes  v1 9 and up      docker volume ls -qf  dangling true    xargs docker volume rm   Here they are in a convenient shell alias   alias docker-clean       docker ps --no-trunc -aqf  status exited    xargs docker rm       docker images --no-trunc -aqf  dangling true    xargs docker rmi       docker volume ls -qf  dangling true    xargs docker volume rm    References    docker ps -f docker rm docker images -f docker rmi Docker v1 9 0 release notes docker volume ls docker volume rm

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docker rm   docker ps -faq  docker rmi   docker ps -faq    -f force  -a all  -q in the mode

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docker rm  docker ps -aq    or    docker rm   docker ps -q -f status exited

[docker] How to remove old and unused Docker images

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