How to See Docker Image Contents: Explore What’s Inside

When working with Docker images, you might wonder:
“What exactly is inside this image?”
Whether you’re auditing dependencies, debugging issues, or just curious, it’s useful to inspect the contents of a Docker image—such as files, directories, binaries, and installed packages.

In this post, we’ll explore several ways to view the contents of a Docker image using Docker CLI, containers, and third-party tools.

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✅ Method 1: Use docker run or docker create + docker exec

The easiest way to inspect an image is to start a container from it and browse its file system.

Step-by-step:

docker run -it --rm your-image-name sh

Or use bash if the image supports it:

docker run -it --rm your-image-name bash

Then inside the container:

ls /
ls /app
cat /etc/os-release

💡 --rm ensures the container is removed after exit
💡 Use sh for Alpine or minimal images, bash for Debian/Ubuntu-based ones

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✅ Method 2: Use docker export + tar

If you prefer to inspect the filesystem outside of a running container:

# Create a container (but don’t start it)
container_id=$(docker create your-image-name)

# Export its filesystem
docker export $container_id -o image.tar

# Extract contents
mkdir image-contents
tar -xf image.tar -C image-contents

# Browse the extracted folder
ls image-contents/

✅ This is great for scripting, security scans, or offline inspection

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✅ Method 3: Use Dive — A Visual Layer Explorer

dive is a CLI tool that lets you analyze Docker image layers, view file diffs, and see how each command in the Dockerfile affects the image.

Install Dive:

brew install dive        # macOS
sudo apt install dive    # Ubuntu (if available)

Then run:

dive your-image-name

You’ll see:

• Layer-by-layer file system changes
• File sizes and where space is used
• Which files were added/modified at each layer

🔍 Perfect for optimizing images and reducing size!

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✅ Method 4: Use docker history (Metadata Only)

For a high-level view of how the image was built:

docker history your-image-name

Output:

IMAGE        CREATED        CREATED BY             SIZE      COMMENT
<id>         2 hours ago    /bin/sh -c apt-get…    34MB      install packages

You’ll see all the RUN, COPY, and ADD instructions and how much each contributed to the image size.

❗ This doesn’t show actual files, just build commands and sizes.

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📝 Conclusion

Docker images may be black boxes at first—but with the right tools, you can explore, analyze, and understand what’s inside. Whether you’re debugging, optimizing, or auditing, knowing how to inspect image contents gives you greater control and confidence in your containerized apps.

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🔑 Summary

Task	Method
Quick inspection	docker run -it image-name sh
Extract full filesystem	docker export + tar
Layer-by-layer analysis	dive
View image build history	docker history image-name