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This article will introduce how to delete local images in Docker.

Delete unused and dangling local images in Docker

Suppose that besides having untagged docker images, you also have unused images and some containers that you also want to delete. In this case, choose the command shown below.

$ docker system prune -a

This command will prompt a warning to let you know that if you select Yes, this command will:

• Delete all stopped containers;
• Remove all networks that are not used by at least one container;
• Remove all images that do not have at least one container associated with them;
• Delete all caches.

However, if this command doesn't fit what you need to accomplish, and you just want to remove:

• Unlabeled or dangling mirror images;
• Stopped container;
• Dangling cache;
• The network is not used by at least one container.

In this case, use prunethe command without including -athe tag, as shown below.

$ docker system prune

Delete a specific local image in Docker

We may also want to remove a specific image from our local system and keep all other files intact.

In this case, we need the image ID of a specific image that we want to remove. We can access this through the Images page in the Docker Desktop application.

We can also access the image ID using our terminal or Docker CLI by running the following command.

isaactonyloi@DESKTOP-HV44HT6:~$ docker images -a
REPOSITORY   TAG       IMAGE ID       CREATED       SIZE
nginx        latest    c316d5a335a5   3 weeks ago   142MB

Now that we have the image ID, we can docker rmiremove that specific image using the remove command appended to the image ID as shown below.

$ docker rmi c316d5a335a5

Output:

Untagged: nginx:latest
Untagged: nginx@sha256:2834dc507516af02784808c5f48b7cbe38b8ed5d0f4837f16e78d00deb7e7767
Deleted: sha256:c316d5a335a5cf324b0dc83b3da82d7608724769f6454f6d9a621f3ec2534a5a
Deleted: sha256:67e568696593c33b4a15c9d81dc6f67499b8d973b88eb49b53d47bf4dbf4d187
Deleted: sha256:0f8d4e3d979c540644f248b4206cf540978166b095223bdc950628dca2e8f3f1
Deleted: sha256:5d75bfe8a7422476a495b27c8a1598d1206137631d350b8bdee13bc88f365282
Deleted: sha256:8284a9e28c625b2826efdd6160ea1ff7f710881a4a2afe1ef58a5eb51d3f919e
Deleted: sha256:89a1db9e1079b7574c1a707bc8c1fe04ff723bc71d4bca8bc48653e9a32186d2
Deleted: sha256:7d0ebbe3f5d26c1b5ec4d5dbb6fe3205d7061f9735080b0162d550530328abd6

Use filters in Docker to remove untagged local images

We can also use filters and wildcards to identify dangling images, that is, images that are not associated with any container. We can use filter tags -fto find images that meet the conditions dangling=true.

The command below should list all images not associated with any container. However, note that if you do not have untagged images on your system, the command will only return the headers.

$ docker images -a -f dangling=true
REPOSITORY   TAG       IMAGE ID       CREATED       SIZE
nginx        latest    c316d5a335a5   3 weeks ago   142MB

Delete all local images in Docker

-aWhen used with the tag, -qthe tag allows us to retrieve and list all image IDs in the local system.

$ docker images -a -q
54c9d81cbb44
c316d5a335a5

Using this command, we can list docker rmiall the images under to remove all images from our system. This is how we can nest this command to eliminate all images.

$ docker rmi $(docker images -a -q)

Output:

Untagged: ubuntu:latest
Untagged: ubuntu@sha256:669e010b58baf5beb2836b253c1fd5768333f0d1dbcb834f7c07a4dc93f474be
Deleted: sha256:54c9d81cbb440897908abdcaa98674db83444636c300170cfd211e40a66f704f
Deleted: sha256:36ffdceb4c77bf34325fb695e64ea447f688797f2f1e3af224c29593310578d2