List containers in Docker

The docker container ls command lists out all running containers:

$ docker container ls
 
CONTAINER ID   IMAGE                      COMMAND                  CREATED       STATUS                 PORTS                                                                                                                       NAMES
1a2e8f9de9b4   nginx:1.27-alpine          "/docker-entrypoint.…"   3 hours ago   Up 3 hours             0.0.0.0:8000->80/tcp, [::]:8000->80/tcp                                                                                     nginx-dev
3050d0a5f901   codex-phpfpm:dev           "docker-php-entrypoi…"   3 hours ago   Up 3 hours             9000/tcp                                                                                                                    phpfpm-dev
78c9101c6d5d   bitnami/pgbouncer:latest   "/opt/bitnami/script…"   3 hours ago   Up 3 hours             0.0.0.0:6432->6432/tcp, [::]:6432->6432/tcp                                                                                 pgbouncer
236c919071c1   pgvector/pgvector:pg17     "docker-entrypoint.s…"   3 hours ago   Up 3 hours             0.0.0.0:5432->5432/tcp, [::]:5432->5432/tcp                                                                                 postgresql
965ce015468e   redis:7.4-alpine           "docker-entrypoint.s…"   3 hours ago   Up 3 hours             0.0.0.0:6379->6379/tcp, [::]:6379->6379/tcp                                                                                 redis
93137d8beb17   codex-node                 "docker-entrypoint.s…"   3 hours ago   Up 3 hours             0.0.0.0:5173->5173/tcp, [::]:5173->5173/tcp                                                                                 codex-node-1
de9433010a10   axllent/mailpit:v1.22      "/mailpit"               3 hours ago   Up 3 hours (healthy)   0.0.0.0:1025->1025/tcp, [::]:1025->1025/tcp, 0.0.0.0:8025->8025/tcp, [::]:8025->8025/tcp, 1110/tcp                          codex-mailpit-1
8a2abaec8c93   traefik:3.3                "/entrypoint.sh trae…"   3 hours ago   Up 3 hours             0.0.0.0:80->80/tcp, [::]:80->80/tcp, 0.0.0.0:443->443/tcp, [::]:443->443/tcp, 0.0.0.0:8080->8080/tcp, [::]:8080->8080/tcp   codex-traefik-1
40bd5aef5062   memcached:1.6-alpine       "docker-entrypoint.s…"   3 hours ago   Up 3 hours             0.0.0.0:11211->11211/tcp, [::]:11211->11211/tcp                                                                             memcached

But we can also use the shorter alias docker ps, which does the exact same thing.

The ps in docker ps stands for “process status”. It’s a reference to the old-school heritage and philosophy of Unix. In these systems, the ps command is the traditional command for viewing all running processes. But here, instead of viewing processes, we’re viewing containers (aka services).

Show all running and non-running containers

The problem with docker ps is that it only shows running containers. But sometimes you want to see ALL of the containers on your machine, including ones that are in a stopped state.

We can do this by passing in the --all flag, or just -a for short:

docker ps -a

This comes in handy when debugging crashed containers, or if you need to get an inventory of what containers you've accumulated over time.

Additional flags

Showing all Docker containers (including stopped ones) has the potential to return hundreds of containers, so you also can keep adding on flags to return only the containers that you want output.

There are a few simple flags available, including: