podman-image-pull

View documentation for the original command

$ tldr podman pull

podman image pull [options] <IMAGE> [<IMAGE> ...]

--all-tags, -a
    Pull all tags for the image

--arch ARCH
    Set architecture (e.g., amd64)

--authfile PATH
    Path to authentication file

--cert-dir DIR
    Directory for certificates

--creds CREDS
    Credentials as 'user:pass'

--detach
    Download in background

--os OS
    Set OS (e.g., linux, windows)

--platform PLATFORM
    Set OS/Arch (e.g., linux/amd64)

--policy POLICY
    missing|always|never for missing images

--quiet, -q
    Suppress output

--registry REGISTRY
    Registry URL (e.g., quay.io)

--tls-verify=false
    Disable TLS verification

--transport TRANSPORT
    Transport (e.g., docker://, oci://)

--variant VARIANT
    Architecture variant

The podman image pull command downloads one or more container images from a specified registry, such as Docker Hub, Quay.io, or a private repository. Podman, a daemonless container engine developed by Red Hat, provides Docker-compatible CLI functionality for managing OCI-compliant images without requiring a central daemon.

This command resolves image names to digests, fetches layers efficiently (avoiding re-downloads of cached layers), and supports multi-platform images (e.g., amd64, arm64). It handles authentication via <i>~/.config/containers/auth.json</i> or passed credentials, TLS verification, and custom transports like oci-archive or docker-archive.

Images are stored in Podman's local storage (default <i>~/.local/share/containers/storage</i>), queryable via <b>podman images</b>. Pulling by tag (e.g., <b>podman image pull ubuntu:latest</b>) gets the latest matching the tag; by digest ensures immutability. Options allow pulling all tags for a repo (--all-tags), specific architectures (--arch, --os, --platform), or overriding TLS (--tls-verify=false).

Ideal for air-gapped environments with pre-pulled images or CI/CD pipelines. Errors occur for invalid names, network issues, or insufficient storage/permissions. Progress is shown by default; use --quiet for silent operation.

Requires network access and sufficient disk space. Private registries need authentication. In rootless mode, storage limits apply. Pulling large images may timeout on slow connections.

podman image pull docker.io/library/alpine
podman image pull --all-tags quay.io/podman/stable
podman image pull --creds user:pass localhost:5000/myimage

Images stored in containers/storage; use podman system prune to reclaim space.

Introduced in Podman v1.0 (2018) as part of Red Hat's daemonless container tools. Evolved with OCI support in v2.0+, multi-platform in v3.0+, mirroring Docker's pull since inception.

podman(1), podman-image-ls(1), podman-image-rm(1), podman-pull(1)