Lazydocker: Terminal UI for Docker Management

Lazydocker is a terminal-based UI for Docker that provides a visual dashboard for managing containers, images, volumes, and networks without remembering complex CLI commands. It shows real-time logs, stats, and allows interactive container management — all within your terminal. This guide covers installation and productive usage.

Installation

# Binary installation
curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/jesseduffield/lazydocker/master/scripts/install_update_linux.sh | bash

# Go install
go install github.com/jesseduffield/lazydocker@latest

# Homebrew
brew install lazydocker

# Docker (no installation)
docker run --rm -it -v /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock lazyteam/lazydocker

Usage

# Simply run
lazydocker

# The interface shows:
# Left panels: Containers, Images, Volumes
# Right panels: Logs, Stats, Config for selected item
# Bottom: Key bindings and status

Key Bindings

• [ / ] — switch between panels (containers, images, volumes)
• Enter — focus on selected item
• d — remove container/image/volume
• s — stop container
• r — restart container
• a — attach to container (interactive shell)
• m — view container metrics (CPU, memory, network)
• l — view logs
• c — run custom command
• b — bulk actions
• x — open menu for selected item
• ? — help
• q — quit

Features

• Real-time logs — stream container logs with search and filtering
• Live stats — CPU, memory, network I/O for each container
• Container management — start, stop, restart, remove, attach
• Image management — view layers, remove unused images
• Volume management — inspect and remove volumes
• Docker Compose — manages Compose services if docker-compose.yml is in the current directory
• Custom commands — define frequently used commands in config

Configuration

# ~/.config/lazydocker/config.yml
gui:
  theme:
    activeBorderColor:
      - green
      - bold
  returnImmediately: false
  wrapMainPanel: true

commandTemplates:
  dockerCompose: docker compose
  
customCommands:
  containers:
    - name: bash
      attach: true
      command: docker exec -it {{ .Container.ID }} /bin/bash
    - name: view env
      command: docker exec {{ .Container.ID }} env

Docker Compose Integration

# Navigate to a directory with docker-compose.yml
cd /path/to/project
lazydocker
# Lazydocker detects Compose and shows service-level management

Best Practices

• Add alias lzd=lazydocker to your shell profile for quick access
• Use it for daily container monitoring and management on development machines
• Define custom commands for frequently used debug operations
• Use the Docker socket mount approach for server-side usage without installing on the host
• Combine with Docker contexts for managing remote servers interactively