CLI completion

Table of contents

You can generate a shell completion script for the Docker CLI using the docker completion command. The completion script gives you word completion for commands, flags, and Docker objects (such as container and volume names) when you hit <Tab> as you type into your terminal.

You can generate completion scripts for the following shells:

Bash
Zsh
fish

Bash

To get Docker CLI completion with Bash, you first need to install the bash-completion package which contains a number of Bash functions for shell completion.

# Install using APT:
sudo apt install bash-completion

# Install using Homebrew (Bash version 4 or later):
brew install bash-completion@2
# Homebrew install for older versions of Bash:
brew install bash-completion

# With pacman:
sudo pacman -S bash-completion

After installing bash-completion, source the script in your shell configuration file (in this example, .bashrc):

# On Linux:
cat <<EOT >> ~/.bashrc
if [ -f /etc/bash_completion ]; then
    . /etc/bash_completion
fi
EOT

# On macOS / with Homebrew:
cat <<EOT >> ~/.bash_profile
[[ -r "$(brew --prefix)/etc/profile.d/bash_completion.sh" ]] && . "$(brew --prefix)/etc/profile.d/bash_completion.sh"
EOT

And reload your shell configuration:

$ source ~/.bashrc

Now you can generate the Bash completion script using the docker completion command:

$ mkdir -p ~/.local/share/bash-completion/completions
$ docker completion bash > ~/.local/share/bash-completion/completions/docker

Zsh

The Zsh completion system takes care of things as long as the completion can be sourced using FPATH.

If you use Oh My Zsh, you can install completions without modifying ~/.zshrc by storing the completion script in the ~/.oh-my-zsh/completions directory.

$ mkdir -p ~/.oh-my-zsh/completions
$ docker completion zsh > ~/.oh-my-zsh/completions/_docker

If you're not using Oh My Zsh, store the completion script in a directory of your choice and add the directory to FPATH in your .zshrc.

$ mkdir -p ~/.docker/completions
$ docker completion zsh > ~/.docker/completions/_docker

$ cat <<EOT >> ~/.zshrc
fpath=(~/.docker/completions \\$fpath)
autoload -Uz compinit
compinit
EOT

Fish

fish shell supports a completion system natively. To activate completion for Docker commands, copy or symlink the completion script to your fish shell completions/ directory:

$ mkdir -p ~/.config/fish/completions
$ docker completion fish > ~/.config/fish/completions/docker.fish