Podman Cheat Sheet

Start and Stop Containers

• Start a container:

  podman start <container_name_or_id>
  

• Stop a container:

  podman stop <container_name_or_id>
  

Build an Image

• Build an image from a Dockerfile:

  podman build -t <image_name:tag> .
  

Run a Container

• Run a container:

  podman run --name <container_name> <image_name:tag>
  

• Run a container and remove it after it exits:

  podman run --rm <image_name:tag>
  

Remove Containers and Images

• Remove a container:

  podman rm <container_name_or_id>
  

• Remove all stopped containers:

  podman container prune
  

• Remove an image:

  podman rmi <image_name_or_id>
  

Podman Compose (if using podman-compose)

• Start containers with Podman Compose:

  podman-compose up
  

• Stop containers with Podman Compose:

  podman-compose down
  

• Build images with Podman Compose:

  podman-compose build
  

Additional Useful Commands

Inspect

• Inspect a container (view details about a running or stopped container):

  podman inspect <container_name_or_id>
  

Logs

• View logs for a container:

  podman logs <container_name_or_id>
  

List Containers and Images

• List all containers:

  podman ps -a
  

• List running containers:

  podman ps
  

• List all images:

  podman images
  

Key Takeaways

• Podman is a drop-in replacement for Docker with a CLI that maps 1:1 for common container operations
• podman-compose handles multi-container setups, but requires the separate podman-compose package
• Rootless podman is the default and preferred mode — no daemon running as root is a security improvement over Docker
• Commands group by lifecycle: start/stop, build/run, remove, inspect/logs, and list

Next

• Self-Hosting Plausible Analytics with Podman and Cloudflare Tunnels — a real-world Podman deployment with troubleshooting notes
• Dev Magic with Docker — container basics and why they matter for development workflows