Docker Remove Stopped Containers

The short answer

To remove (prune) all stopped Docker containers at once, you can use the following command:

$ docker container prune

If you want to remove these containers without being prompted for confirmation, you can use the -f flag (short for force):

$ docker container prune -f

Use Warp's Workflows feature to easily recall this syntax

If you’re using Warp as your terminal and you need to quickly retrieve this command, you can use Warp's Workflows feature by pressing CTRL-SHIFT-R and typing remove stopped containers:

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Then pressing ENTER to use the suggested command:

Filtering stopped containers by creation time

The docker container prune command offers the possibility to filter the containers that will be removed using the --filter flag.

To remove all stopped containers that were created before a certain time, you can use the until=<timestamp> filter, where timestamp can be a Unix timestamp, a date formatted timestamp, or Go duration string.

For example:

$ docker container prune --filter "until=10m"
 $ docker container prune --filter "until=2023-01-15"

Removing all stopped containers using docker rm

The docker rm command is used to remove one or more stopped containers using their name or ID.

$ docker rm  …
 $ docker rm  …

List and show the IDs of stopped containers with docker ps

To get a list of all stopped containers IDs – which are containers with a status equivalent to exited or dead – you can use the docker ps command combined with the --filter and the -q flags:

$ docker ps --filter "status=exited" --filter "status=dead" -q

Where:

• The --filter flag is used to filter the list of containers returned by the docker ps command.
• The -q flag is used to return their IDs only.

Removing all stopped containers

To remove all stopped containers at once with docker rm, you can combine it with the previous docker ps command using the command substitution syntax:

$ docker rm $(docker ps --filter "status=exited" --filter "status=dead" -q)

Where the expression contained in parenthesis $(expression) will be replaced by its result, which in this case will be the list of all stopped containers IDs.