Docker: Remove All Images and Containers

By  on  
Docker

I've moved to a new project at Mozilla which uses a much different stack than I'm used to; suddenly I'm thrust into a world of Mercurial, Docker, and a few other technologies I'm not accustomed to.  You know what that leads to:  foul language, frustration, booze, and...lots of starting over.  Some hate starting over but wiping the slate clean provides me a bit of ease, knowing that I'm not compounding the problem by trying to patch a fix of a shim.

Starting over in this case means wiping clean my Docker images and containers, just to make sure there are no conflicts or duplicates.  The following commands delete all containers and images:

# Delete every Docker containers
# Must be run first because images are attached to containers
docker rm -f $(docker ps -a -q)

# Delete every Docker image
docker rmi -f $(docker images -q)

Of course you don't want to do this if you're using Docker across multiple projects -- you'll find yourself in a world of hurt if you break your other images and containers.

There you have it -- a clean Docker slate in one pass!

Recent Features

  • By
    Welcome to My New Office

    My first professional web development was at a small print shop where I sat in a windowless cubical all day. I suffered that boxed in environment for almost five years before I was able to find a remote job where I worked from home. The first...

  • By
    5 More HTML5 APIs You Didn’t Know Existed

    The HTML5 revolution has provided us some awesome JavaScript and HTML APIs.  Some are APIs we knew we've needed for years, others are cutting edge mobile and desktop helpers.  Regardless of API strength or purpose, anything to help us better do our job is a...

Incredible Demos

  • By
    MooTools Zoomer Plugin

    I love to look around the MooTools Forge. As someone that creates lots of plugins, I get a lot of joy out of seeing what other developers are creating and possibly even how I could improve them. One great plugin I've found is...

  • By
    Use Custom Missing Image Graphics Using MooTools

    Missing images on your website can make you or your business look completely amateur. Unfortunately sometimes an image gets deleted or corrupted without your knowledge. You'd agree with me that IE's default "red x" icon looks awful, so why not use your own missing image graphic? The MooTools JavaScript Note that...

Discussion

  1. Raul Leite

    -f to brute force and resolve any conflicts between images and containers:

    docker rmi -f $ (docker images -q)
    
    docker rm -f $ (ps docker -q -a)
    
  2. #Stop all dockers

    docker stop $(ps docker -q -a)
    
  3. Ivan

    Force delete everything with attached volumes:

    docker rm -vf $(docker ps -aq)
    • Vish

      This doesn’t work.

  4. There is also new docker command, that will delete all unused images and volumes. It is less brute force and is usually save enough to put in cron on dev machine.

    docker system prune --all

    https://docs.docker.com/engine/reference/commandline/system_prune/

  5. Umesh

    How to remove all docker images in Windows 10?

  6. There is also new docker command, that will delete all unused images and volumes. It is less brute force and is usually save enough to put in cron on dev machine.

    docker system prune --all
    

    https://docs.docker.com/engine/reference/commandline/system_prune/

  7. Vish

    Perhaps you should have added how to remove all volumes too.

  8. There is also new docker command, that will delete all unused images and volumes. It is less brute force and is usually save enough to put in cron on dev machine. Ok!

  9. pavnesh yadav

    try this command

    docker system prune --all

    – all stopped containers
    – all networks not used by at least one container
    – all images without at least one container associated to them
    – all build cache

Wrap your code in <pre class="{language}"></pre> tags, link to a GitHub gist, JSFiddle fiddle, or CodePen pen to embed!