Seven Docker Tips Every Engineer Should Know (from Docker Captains)

Mohammad-Ali A'RÂBI for Docker Posted on May 25 • Originally published at dockersecurity.io           Seven Docker Tips Every Engineer Should Know (from Docker Captains) # docker Between June and August 2025, Docker shared a short series of practical tips from Docker Captains on Twitter/X. The format was brief, but the advice is worth unpacking. This post is revisiting those seven tips with a little more context and newer examples. Here are the seven tips, in the chronological order they were shared! 1. Start New Projects with Docker Init Captain intro: Mohammad-Ali A'rabi is a Docker Captain from Freiburg, Germany, a backend software engineer, Docker community leader, and the author of Docker and Kubernetes Security . His work often sits at the intersection of practical engineering, education, community, and secure-by-default container workflows. The tweet points to docker init as the fastest way to get a clean Docker setup for a new project: docker init Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode The command analyzes your project and generates a set of files that follow Docker's best practices: Dockerfile .dockerignore compose.yaml README.Docker.md Read the following article for a detailed walkthrough of docker init with a Java project: Dockerize Java 26 with Docker Init . 2. Clean Up Docker Disk Usage Carefully Captain intro: Rafael Pazini is a Docker Captain from Sao Paulo, Brazil, and a Senior Software Engineer at Pluto TV. He has more than 10 years of experience building scalable applications, with expertise in distributed systems, microservices, Docker, and Kubernetes. The command docker system prune is no stranger to Docker users: docker system prune -a --volumes Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode The terminal will say: WARNING! This will remove: - all stopped containers - all networks not used by at least one container - all dangling images - unused build cache Are you sure you want to continue? [y/N] Enter fullscree