How to Check Docker Version?

After you have successfully installed Docker, you can check the docker version with the following command:

docker version

The output will be similar to the following:

check the docker version with the docker version command

This docker version command gives you greater detail about the version of Docker engine installed on your system.

It displays version information for both the Docker client and engine. The Docker client is the program you use to interact with Docker through commands like docker run or docker ps. It's often simply referred to as the docker command.

Alternatively, run the following command which only prints the docker version without too many details:

docker --version

System Info Command

For even more detailed information about the Docker server, use the docker system info command.

docker system info

Here's an example of the output you'll see:

Server:
 Containers: 2
  Running: 0
  Paused: 0
  Stopped: 2
 Images: 3
 Server Version: 26.0.2
 Storage Driver: overlay2
  Backing Filesystem: extfs
  Supports d_type: true
  Using metacopy: false
  Native Overlay Diff: true
  userxattr: false
 Logging Driver: json-file
 Cgroup Driver: systemd
 Cgroup Version: 2
 Plugins:
  Volume: local
  Network: bridge host ipvlan macvlan null overlay
  Log: awslogs fluentd gcplogs gelf journald json-file local splunk syslog
 Swarm: inactive
 Runtimes: io.containerd.runc.v2 runc
 Default Runtime: runc
 Init Binary: docker-init
 containerd version: e377cd56a71523140ca6ae87e30244719194a521
 runc version: v1.1.12-0-g51d5e94
 init version: de40ad0
 Security Options:
  apparmor
  seccomp
   Profile: builtin
  cgroupns
 Kernel Version: 5.15.0-105-generic
 Operating System: Ubuntu 22.04 LTS
 OSType: linux
 Architecture: x86_64
 CPUs: 2
 Total Memory: 3.786GiB
 Name: srv01
 ID: dd9d768e-2f71-4e81-aff1-4ca092e835f2
 Docker Root Dir: /var/lib/docker
 Debug Mode: false
 Experimental: false
 Insecure Registries:
  127.0.0.0/8
 Live Restore Enabled: false

In the server section, you will find the Docker version, along with other information such as the number of containers, the number of images, the host operating system, and the location of the Docker root directory. The Docker root directory is where Docker containers and images are stored.

Now that you know how to check the Docker version, don't forget to read our Docker tutorial series to learn the basics.