Lets make “docker ps” human readable: docker-pretty-ps

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Hey guys, long time reader first time poster.

I’ve been using docker for years, but cannot stand the “docker ps” output. I use a 13” monitor primarily and have bad eyesight. Shrinking my terminals font size to 8pt so I can fit everything on one line sucks... so I made docker-pretty-ps. Instead of going wide, lets go long. I also thought you might want to search through your containers, rather that dump them all to the screen, so i added that too.

The tool uses only built in python libraries, so it should install on any platform that's running Docker + Python.

docker-pretty-ps also has a handful of other CLI utilities to help you manage that docker ps data as well. This is my first published project so let me know your thoughts/ complaints and definitely bugs!

More info over at [https://github.com/politeauthority/docker-pretty-ps](https://github.com/politeauthority/docker-pretty-ps)

Or you can just install with

pip install docker-pretty-ps

Screenshot Regular Usage: [https://imgur.com/zgcKx3H](https://imgur.com/zgcKx3H)

Screenshot of SLIM mode: [https://imgur.com/AR1N0R9](https://imgur.com/AR1N0R9)

Project/ Source: [https://github.com/politeauthority/docker-pretty-ps](https://github.com/politeauthority/docker-pretty-ps)

TLDR: Let's make "docker ps " readable!

Edit: grammar

Edit2: Adding screenshots of --slim (s) mode

13 thoughts on “Lets make “docker ps” human readable: docker-pretty-ps”

  2. Looks pretty cool. The only issue I would have is that we simple run lots of containers. Having each one on a single line is pretty useful, even if it’s ugly!

    Should be useful for smaller host though!

    Reply

  3. I still prefer ps. This seems like it would get really messy once you get a few more containers running. Standard way is more compact.

    Reply

  5. I pretty much switched to ctop. Looks nice though!

    Edit: alias ctop=’docker run –rm -ti -v /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock quay.io/vektorlab/ctop:latest’

    Reply

  10. [Glances](https://nicolargo.github.io/glances/) has docker plugins so you can see each container, mem usage, cpu usage, etc. It also has a webui that works on mobile too.

    Just give the old
    >pip install glances

    and
    >pip install ‘glances[docker]’

    there’s a ton more plugins too.
    You don’t have to use the webui either. You can just use it from the cmdline most of the time which is what I do.

    Reply

  13. Like many others have said – It’s nicer to format and get the info right from Docker.

    I too am not necessarily a fan of installing something to get better output etc.

    However, if you are someone interested in installing something and want great looking output – plus – additional features, take a look at:

    [DRY](https://moncho.github.io/dry/)

    Also has the ability to be run via container:

    alias dry=’docker run –rm -ti -v /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock moncho/dry’

    Reply

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