Commands

This section collects the most frequently used Docker commands for daily work, in the order "images → containers → volumes → networks → Compose". We recommend reading Basics / Install first to ensure your environment is ready.

📄️Image Commands

An image is the read-only template of a container. This page covers the common commands for pulling, building, inspecting, and cleaning up images.

📄️Container Commands

A container is a running instance of an image. This page covers the high-frequency operations for starting, entering, logging, and stopping containers. docker run is the single most-used command.

📄️Volume Commands

Containers are ephemeral — data written inside them is lost on restart. A volume is Docker-managed persistent storage, independent of the container lifecycle. Even if the container is removed, the volume's data remains.

📄️Network Commands

Multi-container communication relies on networks. Docker offers several drivers: bridge (default), host, none, and a custom bridge scoped per project.

📄️Docker Compose Commands

Docker Compose defines and manages multi-container apps with a single docker-compose.yml. Your environment already has it installed via docker-compose-plugin in the install guide, so the command is docker compose (note the space — not the legacy hyphenated docker-compose).