--- title: "save" description: "The save command description and usage" keywords: "tarred, repository, backup" --- <!-- This file is maintained within the docker/docker Github repository at https://github.com/docker/docker/. Make all pull requests against that repo. If you see this file in another repository, consider it read-only there, as it will periodically be overwritten by the definitive file. Pull requests which include edits to this file in other repositories will be rejected. --> # save ```markdown Usage: docker save [OPTIONS] IMAGE [IMAGE...] Save one or more images to a tar archive (streamed to STDOUT by default) Options: --help Print usage -o, --output string Write to a file, instead of STDOUT ``` Produces a tarred repository to the standard output stream. Contains all parent layers, and all tags + versions, or specified `repo:tag`, for each argument provided. It is used to create a backup that can then be used with `docker load` $ docker save busybox > busybox.tar $ ls -sh busybox.tar 2.7M busybox.tar $ docker save --output busybox.tar busybox $ ls -sh busybox.tar 2.7M busybox.tar $ docker save -o fedora-all.tar fedora $ docker save -o fedora-latest.tar fedora:latest It is even useful to cherry-pick particular tags of an image repository $ docker save -o ubuntu.tar ubuntu:lucid ubuntu:saucy