Getting started with Docker Desktop — first container in 5 minutes

Step 1 — Verify the install

Open a fresh terminal — PowerShell on Windows, Terminal on macOS, your shell of choice on Linux — and run:

$ docker --version
Docker version 27.2.0, build d5c9a4b

$ docker run --rm hello-world

The first command prints the engine version. The second pulls a tiny test image, runs it, prints a welcome message, and exits. --rm tells Docker to clean up the container when it finishes. If the welcome message appears, your install is working.

If you see Cannot connect to the Docker daemon, the engine isn’t reachable. Check the whale icon — it should be steady, not animating. If it’s stuck, jump to troubleshooting.

Step 2 — Run a real web server

Let’s start an Nginx server in the background, mapped to port 8080 on your machine:

$ docker run -d --name web -p 8080:80 nginx:alpine
8e0f4a3c2c5d...

$ curl -I http://localhost:8080
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Server: nginx/1.27.1

Open http://localhost:8080 in your browser and you’ll see the Nginx welcome page. The flag breakdown:

• -d — run in the background (detached).
• --name web — assign a friendly name so you can refer to it later.
• -p 8080:80 — map host port 8080 to the container’s port 80.
• nginx:alpine — the image to run, using the lighter Alpine variant.

Step 3 — Inspect, log, and exec

$ docker ps
CONTAINER ID   IMAGE          COMMAND        PORTS                   NAMES
8e0f4a3c2c5d   nginx:alpine   "nginx -g …"   0.0.0.0:8080->80/tcp    web

$ docker logs web --tail 5

$ docker exec -it web sh
/ # ls /usr/share/nginx/html
50x.html  index.html
/ # exit

docker ps lists running containers, docker logs tails their stdout/stderr, and docker exec -it opens an interactive shell inside the container. The -it flag combo is shorthand for “interactive + allocate a TTY.”

The Docker Desktop dashboard exposes the same operations graphically — click a container to view logs, inspect environment variables, or open a shell in one click.

Step 4 — Stop and clean up

$ docker stop web && docker rm web
$ docker ps -a    # confirm it is gone

docker stop sends SIGTERM and gives the process 10 seconds to exit cleanly. docker rm removes the container record. The image itself stays cached so the next pull is instant.

Step 5 — Build your first image

Create a small project directory with a Dockerfile like this:

# Dockerfile
FROM node:20-alpine
WORKDIR /app
COPY package*.json ./
RUN npm ci --omit=dev
COPY . .
EXPOSE 3000
CMD ["node", "server.js"]

Add a .dockerignore so big folders stay out of the build context:

# .dockerignore
node_modules
.git
.next
*.log

Build and run:

$ docker build -t myapp .
$ docker run --rm -p 3000:3000 myapp

Hit localhost:3000 and you should see your app responding from inside the container.

The next 30 minutes

• Multi-service stacks. Add a docker-compose.yml with your app + Postgres and run docker compose up. The Compose Specification at compose-spec.io is the cross-tool reference.
• Persistent volumes. Avoid bind-mounting database directories on macOS or Windows — use named volumes (-v pgdata:/var/lib/postgresql/data) which live inside the VM and are dramatically faster.
• Multi-arch builds. docker buildx build --platform linux/amd64,linux/arm64 -t myapp . produces images for both architectures from a single command.
• Local Kubernetes. Settings → Kubernetes → Enable Kubernetes. Wait a minute, then point kubectl at the docker-desktop context.
• Stuck on something? Jump to troubleshooting.

Frequently asked questions

Questions that come up most often when running Docker Desktop for the first time.