21 Important Podman Commands Every Developer Should Know (2026 Updated)

What is Podman?

If you love Docker but want a more secure and rootless alternative, Podman is for you. Podman (short for Pod Manager) is a daemonless container engine developed by Red Hat. It lets you run containers without root access, and it’s fully compatible with Docker commands.

Think of Podman as Docker without the daemon — lightweight, secure, and perfect for developers, sysadmins, and DevOps engineers.

1. Check Podman Version

podman version

Displays podman version informations.
Output:

$ podman version
Client:       Podman Engine
Version:      5.6.2
API Version:  5.6.2
Go Version:   go1.22.5
Built:        2025-08-17T14:32:12Z
OS/Arch:      linux/amd64

2. Display System Information

podman info

Shows detailed info about storage drivers, registries, and system configuration.

3. Search for image on registry

podman search httpd

This searches for httpd in registry.
Output:

❯ podman search httpd

NAME                                  DESCRIPTION
registry.fedoraproject.org/f29/httpd  
docker.io/library/httpd               The Apache HTTP Server Project
docker.io/manageiq/httpd              Container with httpd, built on CentOS for Ma...

4. Pull the Image

podman pull registry.access.redhat.com/ubi9/httpd-24

This pull the image from redhat registry

5. List all images in local system

podman images

It will list podman images
Output:

$ podman images
REPOSITORY                           TAG         IMAGE ID      CREATED        SIZE
docker.io/library/ubuntu             latest      62ff5a5d9d4d  2 weeks ago    78.3 MB
docker.io/library/nginx              latest      7b36f48b5c7e  3 weeks ago    187 MB
quay.io/podman/hello                 latest      a23f9470bc18  4 weeks ago    12.4 MB
docker.io/library/mysql              8.0         79feff3f8b32  1 month ago    564 MB
registry.fedoraproject.org/fedora    41          21e6e8ccf3f7  2 months ago   182 MB

6. Run container

podman run -d --name myweb registry.access.redhat.com/ubi9/httpd-24

• -d means detached mode, it will run in background.
• --name is meaningful container name.

7. List running containers

podman ps

It will show running containers.

$ podman ps
CONTAINER ID  IMAGE                                        COMMAND               CREATED         STATUS             PORTS  NAMES
c7b9e4a2d78b  registry.access.redhat.com/ubi9/httpd-24     /usr/sbin/httpd -D...  5 seconds ago   Up 5 seconds ago         myweb

podman ps -a 

This will show all commands even if it’s stopped.

8. Stop the container

podman stop myweb

Podman stop will stop container gracefully.

9. Delete & remove the container

podman container rm -f myweb

This will forcefully remove the container even if it’s running.

10. Delete the image from system

podman image rm registry.access.redhat.com/ubi9/httpd-24

This will remove the image from system and clean up your environment.

11. podman log

Let’s start a database container.

podman run -d --name mydb docker.io/library/mariadb

You will notice this podman didn’t run using podman ps

You can check log using

podman logs mydb

12. Podman inspect

We use inspect to check relevent info to run the container

podman image inspect registry.fedoraproject.org/f31/mariadb | jq -r '.[0].Labels.usage'

13. Environment variables

Let’s rerun the container passing the env variables

podman run -d -e MYSQL_USER=myuser -e MYSQL_PASSWORD=mypass -e MYSQL_DATABASE=mydb --name mydb registry.fedoraproject.org/f31/mariadb

• -e environmental variables

14. Networking

Let’s pull an image of apache webserver.

podman pull registry.fedoraproject.org/f29/httpd

Let’s pull curl image

podman pull docker.io/curlimages/curl

Start the apache server

podman run -dit --name myserver -p 8080:8080 registry.fedoraproject.org/f29/httpd

Start the curl server. We will try to access apache server through curl image.

podman run --name myclient docker.io/curlimages/curl myserver:8080

It should fail.

curl: (6) Could not resolve host: myserver

Because it can’t access dns. Let’s check what network is available for our images.

podman network ls

Only podman image is available. We can inspect it.

podman network inspect podman

We can see that "dns_enabled": false,. That’s why curl can’t access apache server.

Let’s create our own network with DNS enabled.

podman network create mynetwork --subnet 192.168.1.0/24 --gateway 192.168.1.254

We can’t inspect that DNS is enabled.

podman network inspect mynetwork

Let’s remove previous containers. Restart containers.

podman container rm -f myserver 
podman container rm -f myclient

Run apache server using our newly created network

podman run -dit --name myserver --network mynetwork -p 8080:8080 registry.fedoraproject.org/f29/httpd

Now let’s try to connect our DNS enabled apache server using curl container.

podman run --name myclient --network mynetwork docker.io/curlimages/curl myserver:8080 | head

Let’s check without our system curl if it can connect with our container

curl localhost:8080 | head

It fails. This confirms our setup is correct. Outside network can’t access our server.

15. Volume management

Create a local directory to use as a bind mount for serving web content.

mkdir web_content

Add a sample HTML file inside your bind mount directory.

echo 'hello from bind mount' > web_content/index.html

Run an Apache container using the bind mount, forwarding host port 8080 to container port 80.

podman run -d --name httpd_bind -v ./web_content:/usr/local/apache2/htdocs:Z -p 8080:80 docker.io/library/httpd

Test that your Apache server is serving the bind-mounted content on port 8080.

curl localhost:8080

Create a new named Podman volume for persistent storage.

podman volume create my_volume

List all volumes on your system to verify the newly created volume exists.

podman volume ls

Display detailed information about the named volume, including its mount path.

podman volume inspect my_volume

Run an Apache container using the named volume, exposing it on host port 8090.

podman run -d --name httpd_volume -v my_volume:/usr/local/apache2/htdocs:Z -p 8090:80 docker.io/library/httpd

write inside volume

podman exec -t httpd_volume sh -c 'echo "hello from volume mount" > /usr/local/apache2/htdocs/index.html'

Verify that the container is serving the volume-mounted content on port 8090.

curl localhost:8090

Export the content of the named volume to a compressed tarball for backup.

podman volume export my_volume --output my_volume.tar.xz

Create a new volume to import your backup into.

podman volume create my_new_volume
podman volume import my_new_volume my_volume.tar.xz

Run a new Apache container using the restored volume, accessible on host port 9090.

podman run -d --name httpd_volume -v my_new_volume:/usr/local/apache2/htdocs:Z -p 9090:80 docker.io/library/httpd

test restored volume

curl localhost:9090

16. Podman secrets

Let’s create our secret files that containes secret data such as username or passwords.

mkdir secrets && cd secrets
echo -n 'my_user_name' > DB_user.txt
echo -n 'myDB' > DB_name.txt
echo -n 'redhat' > DB_pass.txt
echo -n 'redhat' > DB_root_pass.txt

Let’s create our podman secrets using this files.

podman secret create DB_user DB_user.txt
podman secret create DB_pass DB_pass.txt
podman secret create DB_name DB_name.txt
podman secret create DB_root_pass DB_root_pass.txt

We can check and inspect our secrets

podman secret ls
podman secret inspect DB_name

Let’s use our secrets in a container

podman run -d \
  --name myDB \
  --secret DB_root_pass,type=env,target=MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD \
  --secret DB_name,type=env,target=MYSQL_DATABASE \
  --secret DB_user,type=env,target=MYSQL_USER \
  --secret DB_pass,type=env,target=MYSQL_PASSWORD \
  -p 3306:3306 \
  docker.io/library/mariadb:latest

We can check if our secrets working as intended

podman exec -it myDB env

17. Clearn up unused containers

podman system prune -a

18. podman system usage

Shows each container using system resources

podman stats

19. System Maintenance & Cleanup

Display disk space used by images, containers, and volumes.

podman system df

20. Copy a file from inside a container to your host.

You can backup any container data to host

podman cp myweb:/usr/local/apache2/htdocs/index.html ./backup.html

21. Reset Podman

Make sure you backup everything. This will delete everything. And Reset podman to a clean state.

podman system reset