Docker Managing images Removing Images
Example
The docker rmi command is used to remove images:
docker rmi <image name>
The full image name must be used to remove an image. Unless the image has been tagged to remove the registry name, it needs to be specified. For example:
docker rmi registry.example.com/username/myAppImage:1.3.5
It is also possible to remove images by their ID instead:
docker rmi 693bce725149
As a convenience, it is possible to remove images by their image ID by specifying only the first few characters of the image ID, as long as the substring specified is unambiguous:
docker rmi 693
Note: Images can be removed even if there are existing containers that use that image; docker rmi simply "untags" the image.
If no containers are using an image it is garbage-collected. If a container uses an image, the image will be garbage-collected once all the containers using it are removed. For example:
$ docker ps -a
CONTAINER ID IMAGE COMMAND CREATED STATUS PORTS NAMES
5483657ee07b hello-world "/hello" Less than a second ago Exited (0) 2 seconds ago small_elion
$ docker rmi hello-world
Untagged: hello-world:latest
$ docker ps -a
CONTAINER ID IMAGE COMMAND CREATED STATUS PORTS NAMES
5483657ee07b 693bce725149 "/hello" Less than a second ago Exited (0) 12 seconds ago small_elion
Remove All Images With No Started Containers
To remove all local images that have no started containers, you can provide a listing of the images as a parameter:
docker rmi $(docker images -qa)
Remove All Images
If you want to remove images regardless of whether or not they have a started container use the force flag (-f):
docker rmi -f $(docker images -qa)
Remove Dangling Images
If an image is not tagged and not being used by any container, it is 'dangling' and may be removed like this:
docker images -q --no-trunc -f dangling=true | xargs -r docker rmi
