Explore the Containers view in Docker Desktop

Table of contents

The Containers view lists all your running containers and applications. You must have running or stopped containers and applications to see them listed.

Container actions

Use the Search field to search for any specific container.

From the Containers view you can perform the following actions:

  • Pause/Resume
  • Stop/Start/Restart
  • View image packages and CVEs
  • Delete
  • Open the application in VS code
  • Open the port exposed by the container in a browser
  • Copy docker run. This lets you share container run details or modify certain parameters.

Resource usage

From the Containers view you can monitor your containers' CPU and memory usage over time. This can help you understand if something is wrong with your containers or if you need to allocate additional resources.

When you inspect a container, the Stats tab displays further information about a container's resource utilization. You can see how much CPU, memory, network and disk space your container is using over time.

Inspect a container

You can obtain detailed information about the container when you select it.

From here, you can use the quick action buttons to perform various actions such as pause, resume, start or stop, or explore the Logs, Inspect, Bind mounts, Exec, Files, and Stats tabs.

Logs

Select Logs to see logs from the container. You can also:

  • Use Cmd + f/Ctrl + f to open the search bar and find specific entries. Search matches are highlighted in yellow.
  • Press Enter or Shift + Enter to jump to the next or previous search match respectively.
  • Use the Copy icon in the top right-hand corner to copy all the logs to your clipboard.
  • Automatically copy any logs content by highlighting a few lines or a section of the logs.
  • Use the Clear terminal icon in the top right-hand corner to clear the logs terminal.
  • Select and view external links that may be in your logs.

Inspect

Select Inspect to view low-level information about the container. It displays the local path, version number of the image, SHA-256, port mapping, and other details.

Integrated terminal

From the Exec tab, you can use the integrated terminal, on a running container, directly within Docker Desktop. You are able to quickly run commands within your container so you can understand its current state or debug when something goes wrong.

Using the integrated terminal is the same as running one of the following commands:

  • docker exec -it <container-id> /bin/sh
  • docker exec -it <container-id> cmd.exe when accessing Windows containers
  • docker debug <container-id> when using debug mode

The integrated terminal:

  • Persists your session and Debug mode setting if you navigate to another part of the Docker Desktop Dashboard and then return.
  • Supports copy, paste, search, and clearing your session.
  • When not using debug mode, it automatically detects the default user for a running container from the image's Dockerfile. If no user is specified, or you're using debug mode, it defaults to root.

Open the integrated terminal

To open the integrated terminal, either:

  • Hover over your running container and under the Actions column, select the Show container actions menu. From the drop-down menu, select Open in terminal.
  • Or, select the container and then select the Exec tab.

To use your external terminal, navigate to the General tab in Settings and select the System default option under Choose your terminal.

Open the integrated terminal in debug mode

Debug mode requires a Pro, Team, or Business subscription. Debug mode has several advantages, such as:

  • A customizable toolbox. The toolbox comes with many standard Linux tools pre-installed, such as vim, nano, htop, and curl. For more details, see the docker debug CLI reference.
  • The ability to access containers that don't have a shell, for example, slim or distroless containers.

To open the integrated terminal in debug mode:

  1. Sign in to Docker Desktop with an account that has a Pro, Team, or Business subscription.

  2. After you're signed in, either:

    • Hover over your running container and under the Actions column, select the Show container actions menu. From the drop-down menu, select Use Docker Debug.
    • Or, select the container and then select the Debug tab. If the Debug tab isn't visible, select the Exec tab and then enable the Debug mode setting.

To use debug mode by default when accessing the integrated terminal, navigate to the General tab in Settings and select the Enable Docker Debug by default option.

Files

Select Files to explore the filesystem of running or stopped containers. You can also:

  • See which files have been recently added, modified, or deleted
  • Edit a file straight from the built-in editor
  • Drag and drop files and folders between the host and the container
  • Delete unnecessary files when you right-click on a file
  • Download files and folders from the container straight to the host

Additional resources