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Let’s take a closer look at removing exited containers in docker.

Removing Exited Containers in Docker

With Docker, it is now simple to aggregate an excessive number of exited containers, which clutter the output and consume disc space. Docker also provides command-line tools for cleaning the system.

If we know from the start that a container will not be around for long, then we can use the following command to delete it when it exits:

docker run --rm image_name

We can also use docker ps -a to find containers and filter them based on their status: created, restarting, running, paused, or exited. Use the -f flag to filter the list of exited containers based on status. When we are certain that we want to remove those containers, we can use the -q flag to pass the IDs to the docker rm command.

Firstly, to get the list of the exited containers, use the command:

docker ps -a -f status=exited

Then to remove the exited containers, we can use the command:

docker rm $(docker ps -a -f status=exited -f status=created -q)

Other commands we can use to remove the exited containers include:

For removing all exited containers, we can try using any of the following commands:

sudo docker ps -a | grep Exit | cut -d ' ' -f 1 | xargs sudo docker rm

$ docker rm $(docker ps -a -q -f status=exited)

(docker ps -a |findstr Exited) | foreach-object {docker rm $_.split(" ")[-1]}

From Docker 1.13.x onwards, we can use Docker container prune to remove all stopped containers. This will work on all platforms the same way. The command is as follows:

$ docker container prune
WARNING! This will remove all stopped containers.
Are you sure you want to continue? [y/N] y
Deleted Containers:
4a9f7edbae0f63178aff7eb0aa39f0627a203ab2df258c1a00b456cf20063
f98f9c2aa1eaf727e4ea9c0283bcaa4762fbdba7f36191f26c97f64090361 Total reclaimed space: 212 B

There is also a Docker system prune which will clean up all unused containers in one command:

docker system prune -a

WARNING! This will remove:
    - all stopped containers
    - all volumes not used by at least one container
    - all images without at least one container associated to them
Are you sure you want to continue? [y/N] y

For older versions of Docker, we can combine it with other Unix commands to serve the purpose:

$ docker ps --filter "status=exited" | grep 'weeks ago' | awk '{print $1}' | xargs --no-run-if-empty docker rm

To remove all containers we can use the command:

docker rm `docker ps --no-trunc -aq`

For windows, the command will be:

FOR /f "tokens=*" %i IN ('docker ps -a -q') DO docker rm %i

For PowerShell, the command is:

docker rm @(docker ps -aq)

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Conclusion

Docker makes it simple to containerize applications and services so that they can run anywhere. When working with Docker, it’s easy to accumulate an excessive number of unused images, containers, and data volumes, which clutter the output and consume disc space. In this article, we provide different ways to remove exited containers in docker.