How do I delete all running Docker containers?

Question

I remember using

docker rm -f `docker ps -aq`

to chain the commands without an issue a few months ago, but now this isn't working, and I'm getting the following output:

unknown shorthand flag: 'a' in -aq`
See 'docker rm --help'.

What changed? How can I delete all Docker running containers in one line? In case it helps, I'm using Docker for Windows (native with Hyper-V, not with VirtualBox) on Windows 10, and the command I used has worked fine with my previous Windows 8 Docker toolbox installation.

Answer 1

Till now (Docker version 1.12) we are using the following command to delete all the running containers (also, if we want to delete the volumes, we can do that manually using its respective tag -v in the following command),

Delete all Exited Containers

docker rm $(docker ps -q -f status=exited)

Delete all Stopped Containers

docker rm $(docker ps -a -q)

Delete All Running and Stopped Containers

docker stop $(docker ps -a -q)
docker rm $(docker ps -a -q)

Remove all containers, without any criteria

docker container rm $(docker container ps -aq)

But, in version 1.13 and above, for complete system and cleanup, we can directly user the following command,

docker system prune

All unused containers, images, networks and volumes will get deleted. Also, individually i.e. separately, we can do that using the following commands, that clean up the components,

docker container prune
docker image prune
docker network prune
docker volume prune

Answer 2

I had this issue when running in cmd. Switched to PowerShell and it worked!

Answer 3

Use:

docker rm -f $(docker ps -aq)