Where is docker image location in Windows 10?

I'm using the Windows 10 Home operating system. I have installed Docker toolbox.

I have created a docker image of my .net core application by using following command.

$  docker build -t helloWorld:core .

Now I want to ship this image, to another machine. But I am not getting the image file.

Can someone please tell me, where my image will get saved? Or is there any way, to specify docker an image path in docker build command.

All the answers have been outdated or incorrect for me, I found it in "%localappdata%\Docker\wsl"

The answers are really confusing because there is more than one way to run Docker in Windows. The newest way is with Windows 10 Home May 2020 Update. It will use the new version of Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL2). This answer is about this configuration.

After activating WSL2, you'll install Docker Desktop. Docker Desktop is a client that'll connect to the host inside the WSL.

The image directory is somewhat inconsistent. If you run docker info in your host machine or inside WSL it will give you the path Docker Root Dir: /var/lib/docker which doesn't exist:

$ ls /var/lib/docker
ls: cannot access '/var/lib/docker': No such file or directory

You'll find the images in

/mnt/wsl/docker-desktop-data/

Or in this Windows Explorer path:

\\wsl$\docker-desktop-data\mnt\wsl\docker-desktop-data\data\docker\image

If you are using Windows 10 non-Home versions, it may work differently. Take a look at the other answers. Since I don't have access to this OS, I won't try to answer.

On Windows 10, right click on the docker icon in the system tray (right hand side of task bar) and choose Settings... In the Advanced pane, you'll see something like:

1. By using the docker info command.
2. In the result - check for Docker Root Dir

This folder will conatins images, containers, ...

If you are on windows 10 and running windows containers

In the above image, docker is running windows containers. So its showing switch to linux containers.

First run docker info command (more specific docker info --format “{{json .DockerRootDir}}”).

You should see root dir as

Docker Root Dir: C:\ProgramData\Docker

Now run a command to pull an image like

docker pull hello-world

After it pulls the image, you can look into the docker root dir.

Notice the current modified date time. In one of the folders you can see the sha of the layers.

Finally, you also have to take a look into the following folder, if you want to know where the images are downloaded. The two folders above and below are

• C:\ProgramData\Docker\image\windowsfilter
• C:\ProgramData\Docker\windowsfilter

Now for linux images.

If your docker is running windows containers, and then if you try to fetch a linux based container such as nginx, like so

docker pull nginx:latest

you will get a message as follows.

latest: Pulling from library/nginx
no matching manifest for windows/amd64 10.0.18363 in the manifest list entries

So switch to linux contaners. See the very first image.

Once the docker for linux is running, run the command again.

docker pull nginx:latest

You can see that image is downloading.

Now where is this image downloaded on your hard disk? docker info command may not help much in this case.

So start again. Click Settings and now "Switch to Windows Containers..."

And now see the path.

On my machine, it's C:\ProgramData\DockerDesktop\vm-data

Note the date modified column. Notice and observe that after you pull or remove a linux based image.

That's a diskspace reserved for linux env, so you will not be able to browse further down to see where the image is.

but if you have to, then launch a linux based VM, install docker and explore the path /var/lib/docker/

Sometimes you may encounter permission issues. If so see this and this

When you have Windows Containers activated, your images are stored by default in C:\ProgramData\Docker\

To change this, you can edit the C:\ProgramData\Docker\config\daemon.json and add a new "graph" key with the new path... (notice that every backslash is escaped with another backslash)

Example:

{
  "registry-mirrors": [],
  "insecure-registries": [],
  "debug": true,
  "experimental": false,
  "graph": "D:\\ProgramData\\Docker"
}

After that, you need to restart Docker service and you can verify your changes using docker info command and look at Docker Root Dir entry.

If you are using docker on Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL2), you can access the images via hidden share:

\\wsl$\docker-desktop-data\version-pack-data\community\docker\overlay2

The volums are also there at:

\\wsl$\docker-desktop-data\version-pack-data\community\docker\volumes

The docker version is 20.10.7

If you want to go deeper, the docker-desktop-data is actually located in a file at your AppData\Local as a vhdx ( virtual machine disk) C:\Users\YOUR_USER_NAME\AppData\Local\Docker\wsl\data\ext4.vhdx

You can terminate docker process and open ext4.vhdx file ( with 7zip for example), and there you can see version-pack-data\community\docker in this file.

mine can be found in "C:\Users\Public\Documents\Hyper-V\Virtual hard disks"

I was not able to find the location of a WSL based Docker installation. But there is a simple way with docker commands itself to get the image!

docker image save myimagename -o myimagename.tar

This creates an archive file you can browse through with 7zip or a similar program.

you can use below command to export your image and can copy same to linux / another machine docker export [OPTIONS] CONTAINER

example:

docker export --output="latest.tar" red_panda

To to ship this image, to another machine :

docker ps -a  
#or docker container ls -a
docker commit <container-id> mynewimage
#start here if you never started your image 
#(ex: if just created using docker build -t helloWorld:core .)
docker image ls
docker save mynewimage > /tmp/mynewimage.tar

On the other machine:

docker load < /tmp/mynewimage.tar
docker images

As explained in comments above, when working on windows with linux containers, containers resides within the docker disk image located at DockerDesktop/settings/advanced/DiskImageLocation

see here

In Recent Docker Desktop - which now uses WSL, the docker image location in Windows 10 is changed -

(last tested with Docker Desktop Community version 2.3.0.3)

First use Run - and type \\wsl$

This will open the file explorer, and display the folders as below -

1. docker-desktop
2. docker-desktop-data

Browse the directories to see the required files. Make sure docker desktop is running

The docker desktop for windows 10 has been moved here:

c:/users/<user>/AppData/Roaming/Docker/settings.json

I don't know why are you trying to reach the image, but you can create a backup file from it just using docker command and load it afterwards where you wish. Example:

$ docker save -o ubuntu.tar ubuntu:lucid ubuntu:saucy

It will save a tar file in your Windows home directory. To load it:

$ docker load --input ubuntu.tar

It should be here:

C:\ProgramData\Docker\tmp\

For me, the containers were under when using Docker desktop on Windows with WSL2.

For me, running on Window 10 Professional version 20H2 with Docker Desktop 4.5.1 (74721), the location of images seems to be under my user directory as the following picture.

This worked for me:

%USERPROFILE%/.docker/config.json

By default it is inside C:\Users\Public\Documents\Hyper-V\Virtual hard disks directory (.vhdx file). It can be changed in Docker's settings > Advanced > Disk image location

I am running on Windows 10 Home Version 2004 with Docker 19.03.8. This has the new WSL back-end - in that configuration, launch a WSL prompt (Win-r then wsl to launch) and my image files are under /mnt/host/wsl/docker-desktop-data/data/docker