Feature suggestion:

[GuterPeter]

Hi Docker Team,

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been using Docker extensively and have encountered a repetitive challenge: managing multiple containers. Specifically, starting or stopping several containers often involves manually finding container IDs and executing individual commands for each one — a process that can be quite tedious.

To simplify this workflow, I created two small bash scripts: docker-shutdown and docker-startup. These scripts list all running (or stopped) containers, let me select them by number (or choose all), and then start or stop them in a single command. This has significantly streamlined my container management experience.

I believe this kind of functionality would be a valuable addition to the Docker CLI. It would greatly enhance the user experience, especially for developers managing multiple containers in local development environments or complex setups.

Unfortunately, I don’t have experience with Go and therefore can’t contribute this feature directly. However, I’m reaching out in the hope that the Docker CLI team might consider integrating something similar natively.

I’ve attached text versions of both scripts for reference. I’d love to hear your thoughts — do you think this is something the Docker community would find useful?

Best regards,
guterpeter
docker-startup.txt
docker-shutdown.txt

[thaJeztah]

Curious if you're familiar with docker compose, which allows you to define containers ("services") to start together and to define the configuration and relation between containers in a "compose file"

• https://docs.docker.com/compose/
• https://github.com/docker/compose

[GuterPeter]

Thank you for the fast reply,

Yes i am familiar with Docker Compose yet i still think the managment process and starting and stopping containers could be streamlined and simplified this way.

I feel like this feature could streamline and improve the UX as it would grant a more simplistic and straight forward way to do this without having to write you own docker-compose file.

[GuterPeter]

But if there is no intent to integrate this because it is seen as "not usefull" or already been done with docker compose, I completely understand this decicion. Allthough i Personally think this could actually be usefull especially for newer users :)

[GuterPeter]

But also correct me if im wrong but docker compose allows to define the config and relation between containers. But it doesnt give an easy way to start/stop already createt containers at once. As far as i know you would still have to shutdown containers seperately. Also with docker compose i can only start related containers but what if i want/need to start several unrelated containers. My tool is not supposed to be a "replacement" of docker compose rather I see it as a much needet addition.

I would greatly appreciate if you took the time to try it out and actually see what it does. Thank you very much!!