Deleting All Docker Images with Commands and Explanation

Describes the command to delete all images in Docker with explanation.

command

# warning: use with caution
docker rmi $(docker images -aq) 

Use case

When playing around with Docker, it seems images are saved by default in the default machine, and if it gets full, it can cause unnecessary errors. It’s also troublesome to switch machines by running eval each time, so basically, it’s good to keep plenty of free space on the default machine.

Images that shouldn’t be deleted or frequently used images can be kept on docker hub or on other docker-machines.

# before

$ docker system df
TYPE                TOTAL               ACTIVE              SIZE                RECLAIMABLE
Images              40                  3                   16.43GB             15.79GB (96%)

$ docker-machine ls
NAME       ACTIVE   DRIVER       STATE     URL                         SWARM   DOCKER        ERRORS
default    *        virtualbox   Running   tcp://192.168.99.100:               v17.04.0-ce
docker-2   -        virtualbox   Stopped                                       Unknown

# after 

$ docker system df
TYPE                TOTAL               ACTIVE              SIZE                RECLAIMABLE
Images              8                   3                   2.401GB             1.566GB (65%)
Containers          5                   0                   63B                 63B (100%)
Local Volumes       17                  5                   754.7MB             437.5MB (57%)

Summary

Described the command to delete all images in Docker with explanation.

Please use caution when deleting images.