docker history

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Edge only: This is the CLI reference for Docker CE Edge versions. Some of these options may not be available to Docker CE stable or Docker EE. You can view the stable version of this CLI reference or learn about Docker CE Edge.

Description

Show the history of an image

Usage

docker history [OPTIONS] IMAGE

Options

Name, shorthand Default Description
--format Pretty-print images using a Go template
--human , -H true Print sizes and dates in human readable format
--no-trunc Don’t truncate output
--quiet , -q Only show numeric IDs

Parent command

Command Description
docker The base command for the Docker CLI.

Examples

To see how the docker:latest image was built:

$ docker history docker

IMAGE               CREATED             CREATED BY                                      SIZE                COMMENT
3e23a5875458        8 days ago          /bin/sh -c #(nop) ENV LC_ALL=C.UTF-8            0 B
8578938dd170        8 days ago          /bin/sh -c dpkg-reconfigure locales &&    loc   1.245 MB
be51b77efb42        8 days ago          /bin/sh -c apt-get update && apt-get install    338.3 MB
4b137612be55        6 weeks ago         /bin/sh -c #(nop) ADD jessie.tar.xz in /        121 MB
750d58736b4b        6 weeks ago         /bin/sh -c #(nop) MAINTAINER Tianon Gravi <ad   0 B
511136ea3c5a        9 months ago                                                        0 B                 Imported from -

To see how the docker:apache image was added to a container’s base image:

$ docker history docker:scm
IMAGE               CREATED             CREATED BY                                      SIZE                COMMENT
2ac9d1098bf1        3 months ago        /bin/bash                                       241.4 MB            Added Apache to Fedora base image
88b42ffd1f7c        5 months ago        /bin/sh -c #(nop) ADD file:1fd8d7f9f6557cafc7   373.7 MB
c69cab00d6ef        5 months ago        /bin/sh -c #(nop) MAINTAINER Lokesh Mandvekar   0 B
511136ea3c5a        19 months ago                                                       0 B                 Imported from -

Format the output

The formatting option (--format) will pretty-prints history output using a Go template.

Valid placeholders for the Go template are listed below:

Placeholder Description
.ID Image ID
.CreatedSince Elapsed time since the image was created if --human=true, otherwise timestamp of when image was created
.CreatedAt Timestamp of when image was created
.CreatedBy Command that was used to create the image
.Size Image disk size
.Comment Comment for image

When using the --format option, the history command will either output the data exactly as the template declares or, when using the table directive, will include column headers as well.

The following example uses a template without headers and outputs the ID and CreatedSince entries separated by a colon for all images:

$ docker images --format "{{.ID}}: {{.Created}} ago"

cc1b61406712: 2 weeks ago
<missing>: 2 weeks ago
<missing>: 2 weeks ago
<missing>: 2 weeks ago
<missing>: 2 weeks ago
<missing>: 3 weeks ago
<missing>: 3 weeks ago
<missing>: 3 weeks ago