Dockge: Manage Compose Stacks in the Browser

Anyone running several Compose stacks knows the routine: SSH in, change into the right folder, docker compose pull && up -d, check the logs, next stack. Dockge brings exactly those steps into the browser – while writing perfectly ordinary compose.yaml files that you can still touch from the CLI.

What are we building?

At the end, Dockge 1.5.0 runs behind your Traefik at https://YOUR_DOMAIN. You create stacks in the browser, edit their compose.yaml, deploy them with one click and watch the output of docker compose up live – including container logs and a Bash console per container.

The decisive difference from heavyweight Docker interfaces: Dockge does not invent a format of its own. Every stack is a folder under /opt/stacks/<name>/ with a compose.yaml and an .env. docker compose ls lists them as normal projects. You can switch Dockge off tomorrow and carry on as if it had never existed – no lock-in.

On resources: the container used around 143 MiB RAM in the test with virtually no CPU load. The image, however, is no lightweight at 1.17 GB – worth knowing if your VPS has a small system disk.

Prerequisites

• A server running Debian 13 with Docker (tested on a netcup VPS with Docker 29.6.1 and Compose v5.3.1)
• Docker Compose basics – Dockge does not save you the understanding, only the typing
• A running Traefik with its proxy network as in Traefik as a reverse proxy
• A subdomain pointing at your server (connecting a domain)

Step by step

1. Decide on the stacks directory

Dockge manages all stacks below one folder. The default is /opt/stacks, and we stick with it – it matches the convention used in the other recipes:

mkdir -p /opt/stacks /opt/dockge/data

2. The Compose file for Dockge

Create /opt/dockge/compose.yaml and replace YOUR_DOMAIN:

services:
  dockge:
    image: louislam/dockge:1.5.0
    restart: unless-stopped
    environment:
      DOCKGE_STACKS_DIR: /opt/stacks
    volumes:
      - /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock
      - ./data:/app/data
      - /opt/stacks:/opt/stacks
    networks: [proxy]
    labels:
      - "traefik.enable=true"
      - "traefik.http.routers.dockge.rule=Host(`YOUR_DOMAIN`)"
      - "traefik.http.routers.dockge.entrypoints=websecure"
      - "traefik.http.routers.dockge.tls.certresolver=le"
      - "traefik.http.services.dockge.loadbalancer.server.port=5001"

networks:
  proxy:
    external: true

How the pieces fit together:

• DOCKGE_STACKS_DIR must match the mount target exactly (step 1).
• ./data holds Dockge’s own SQLite database: users, settings, JWT secret.
• loadbalancer.server.port=5001 – inside the container Dockge listens on 5001. We publish no port to the outside; only Traefik reaches it through the proxy network.
• No user: entry: Dockge has to talk to the Docker daemon through the socket and write the stack files.

Start it:

cd /opt/dockge && docker compose up -d

docker compose ps

The container ships a healthcheck, so you should see (healthy):

NAME              STATUS
dockge-dockge-1   Up 12 seconds (healthy)

A look at the logs confirms the first start:

docker logs --tail 5 dockge-dockge-1

[SERVER] INFO: Connected to the database
[SERVER] INFO: JWT secret is not found, generate one.
[SERVER] INFO: Stored JWT secret into database
[SERVER] INFO: No user, need setup
[SERVER] INFO: Listening on 5001

No user, need setup means the server is waiting for your admin account.

3. Create the admin account

Open https://YOUR_DOMAIN. Dockge redirects to /setup and asks for a username and password. The interface follows your browser’s language.

After that the door is shut: there is no open registration, further accounts are created in the settings. Use a long, unique password from your password manager – see the warning above.

4. Understanding the home screen

After logging in you see every Compose project Docker knows about on this host – in the example the existing traefik stack plus the one just created:

On the left, Dockge counts active, exited and inactive. Important: the list shows all projects, but Dockge can only manage those below /opt/stacks. How to adopt existing stacks is step 7.

5. Create and deploy the first stack

Click Compose at the top. You land in the editor: on the left a form for the stack name and containers, on the right the compose.yaml – both sides are linked, so you can click or write YAML.

Give the stack a name (lowercase only – it becomes the folder and project name) and adjust the YAML. A click on Deploy runs docker compose up -d, and the real output scrolls by in the terminal pane:

The container entry shows status and published ports, with the logs running below. Each container also gets a Bash button that opens a console inside it – handy for quickly checking a configuration.

6. What happens on disk

This is the part that sets Dockge apart from heavyweight interfaces. After deploying, the server holds exactly what you would expect:

find /opt/stacks -type f

/opt/stacks/whoami-test/.env
/opt/stacks/whoami-test/compose.yaml

And Docker knows the stack as a perfectly ordinary Compose project:

docker compose ls

NAME                STATUS              CONFIG FILES
dockge              running(1)          /opt/dockge/compose.yaml
traefik             running(1)          /opt/traefik/compose.yaml
whoami-test         running(1)          /opt/stacks/whoami-test/compose.yaml

So you can SSH into the folder at any time and carry on as usual:

cd /opt/stacks/whoami-test && docker compose ps

NAME                   STATUS         PORTS
whoami-test-nginx-1    Up 35 seconds  0.0.0.0:8080->80/tcp, [::]:8080->80/tcp

Both hold at the same time: changes in the browser are visible to the CLI, changes from the CLI show up in the browser after a reload. Dockge is a remote control, not a new system.

7. Adopt existing stacks

A stack outside /opt/stacks appears in the list but cannot be touched – Dockge says so plainly: „This stack is not managed by Dockge." There is neither an edit nor a deploy button.

To adopt it, move the folder. Assuming your stack lives in /opt/myapp:

cd /opt/myapp && docker compose down
mv /opt/myapp /opt/stacks/myapp
cd /opt/stacks/myapp && docker compose up -d

The project name is derived from the folder name – keep it the same and your containers keep their names and named volumes survive. Dockge then manages the stack fully:

8. Convert docker run commands

Many projects only document a long docker run command. The home screen has a field for exactly that: paste the command, click Convert to Compose – and you land in the editor with finished YAML. This

docker run -d --name uptime -p 3001:3001 -v uptime-data:/app/data \
  --restart unless-stopped louislam/uptime-kuma:2.5.3

becomes:

services:
  uptime-kuma:
    container_name: uptime
    ports:
      - 3001:3001
    volumes:
      - uptime-data:/app/data
    restart: unless-stopped
    image: louislam/uptime-kuma:2.5.3
volumes:
  uptime-data:
    external: true
    name: uptime-data

Very handy – with one trap: the named volume is written as external: true, i.e. „already exists". On a fresh installation the volume does not exist yet, and the deployment fails. Either delete those two lines (then Compose creates the volume itself) or create it beforehand with docker volume create uptime-data. For the difference, see volumes vs. bind mounts.

9. Console and agents – decide deliberately

Two features you should know about before switching them on:

Console. The console menu entry is disabled by default, and that is a good thing. Dockge states why itself: it allows arbitrary commands inside the Dockge container – and that container has the Docker socket. Enabled, it means a root shell on your host in the browser. Leave it off; for the rare case, SSH is enough.

Agents (beta). Dockge can attach further servers and manage their stacks in the same interface. That is convenient if you run several machines – but the feature is marked beta, and every attached agent increases the damage if this one interface is ever compromised. To start with: one server, one Dockge.

10. Updates with one click

The Update button on a stack does exactly what you would otherwise type: pull new images and bring the stack back up. If the image is already current, nothing happens – in the test the container kept running unchanged afterwards (same start time), so it is not restarted without reason. That is convenient – and precisely why you should keep pinning your images instead of using latest. Otherwise one click turns into a jump across several major versions without you noticing. Why that matters is covered in keeping your Docker stack up to date.

When things go wrong

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Maintenance & backups

Honest about the project’s state. Dockge is popular (around 24,000 stars) and still being developed – the most recent commits in the repository are from April 2026, among them container controls and a resource display. The last stable release 1.5.0, however, dates from 30 March 2025, more than a year ago. There is a nightly tag with the newer features – but it is explicitly not a release.

In practice that means: stay on 1.5.0 (completely unproblematic with Docker 29.6.1 and Compose v5.3.1 in the test), do not expect quick bug fixes, and do not make an operational decision that depends on a new version arriving tomorrow. For „manage stacks conveniently" it is enough – you just want to know what you are getting into.

Updating Dockge itself works like any other stack, but from the CLI (the interface cannot restart itself):

cd /opt/dockge && docker compose pull && docker compose up -d

Backups. Two things need saving, and both are small:

• /opt/dockge/data – Dockge’s database with accounts and settings
• /opt/stacks – this is where the actual work lives: every compose.yaml and .env of your services

That makes /opt/stacks your central configuration location from now on – one more reason to back it up daily with Restic. The data of your applications (volumes, bind mounts) is not covered by Dockge; that still needs its own strategy.

Review access regularly. Because Dockge means root rights on the host, maintenance includes the question: who can actually reach it? The Traefik logs show who requests the login page – if unfamiliar IPs turn up there, an IP restriction or access only via WireGuard is the better answer than an even longer password.