Volumes

← Manual index

List volumes with driver, scope and mountpoint. Each volume shows which containers mount it (cross-referenced from container mounts) so you know what you'd affect before removing one. Filter by in use / unused / all, search and paginate as elsewhere.

Actions

• Create — a named volume with an optional driver (defaults to local). You can optionally seed the new volume by extracting an archive (.zip / .tar / .tar.gz) into it.
• Browse files — see below.
• Inspect — raw JSON (driver options, labels, mountpoint…).
• Remove — delete a volume; a force fallback appears if the daemon refuses it. Force is not a way past "volume is in use": the daemon rejects that immediately whether or not force is set. What it helps with is a volume whose last container has just gone away — teardown is asynchronous, so a removal can fail a moment before it would have succeeded.
• Prune unused (header) — remove all volumes not used by any container.

File browser

A named volume has no path reachable through the Docker API, so Browse files runs a tiny throwaway helper container with the volume mounted and reuses the in-container file operations against it (so it works on local / TCP / SSH hosts):

• Navigate directories and create new folders.
• Upload files, or upload & extract an archive (.zip / .tar / .tar.gz) into the current directory.
• Download a file (binary-safe) and delete files/folders.

The helper container is hidden from the Containers view and reaped automatically (on close, at startup, and after a TTL), so it never clutters the host.

Tips

• A volume marked in use by … is mounted by those containers — stop/remove them first, or use the volume inspector to understand the dependency.
• Reclaimable volume space is summarised on the Dashboard.