How to sort my Docker images by size with `docker images` command?

Question

To see all the images I have installed, I run docker images. I'd like to sort all my images by "SIZE". How can I do this? More generally, how does one sort the returned images by any parameter, such as "CREATED"

Answer 1

docker images supports --format flag to customize output -> https://docs.docker.com/engine/reference/commandline/images/#format-the-output

Adding custom formatting and using sort does the trick:

docker images --format "{{.ID}}\t{{.Size}}\t{{.Repository}}" | sort -k 2 -h

Answer 2

None of the answers correctly show how to sort the actual docker images command.

Here is a bona fide solution:

docker images | sort -k7 -h

Answer 3

Logical solution should be

docker images | sort -k5 -h

but this doesn't work, because docker emits spaces instead of tabs.

Created issue for that(https://github.com/docker/cli/issues/2406).

If you have time and know go, please contribute the fix :)

Till fixed, you can use some wrapper script like https://github.com/pixelastic/oroshi/blob/master/scripts/bin/docker-image-list

Answer 4

If using PowerShell, you can sort by arbitrary fields such as repo/image name as follows:

docker images --format="{{json .}}" |
    ConvertFrom-Json |
    Sort-Object Repository |
    Select-Object Repository,Tag,ID,CreatedSince,Size |
    Format-Table

though sadly it doesn't work well on human-readable fields such as Size so it unfortunately doesn't answer the more specific first part of your question.