Docker Vitals

See what your containers are doing, without leaving VS Code.

Docker Vitals is a sidebar panel that shows your running containers, their live CPU and memory usage, and a timeline of what changed — all updating in real time. Save a docker-compose.yml or Dockerfile and it tells you exactly what happened to your containers as a result.

Unofficial. Not affiliated with Docker Inc. No data leaves your machine.

Getting started

1. Start Docker Desktop (or your Docker daemon).
2. Open the Docker Vitals icon in the activity bar.
3. That's it. Containers appear automatically.

No backend. No CLI wrapping. It talks directly to the Docker Engine API.

Remote daemon? Ctrl+Shift+P → Docker Vitals: Set Remote Host… → tcp://host:2375.

What you get

Containers. Running and stopped, with live CPU % and memory per container. Double-click a row to expand image, ports, created time, compose project, network I/O.

Show charts. Rolling CPU and memory history per session. A leaking container shows up as a shape, not a number you had to be staring at.

Images. Pulled images with size and tags. Remove what you don't need.

Logs. ▤ on any running container streams stdout/stderr live.

Timeline. Every container event — start, stop, die, restart — recorded with a timestamp. Save a compose file or Dockerfile and a diff entry shows what changed as a result. Temporal correlation, not proof of causation.

Search. Filter by name, image, or id prefix. Toggle running-only.

Commands

Settings

Notes

• CPU/memory header is aggregated from running containers plus daemon totals. Close to Docker Desktop, minus Desktop VM overhead. Disk comes from the Engine API directly.
• Per-container GPU % is not exposed by the Docker Engine API. The GPU badge shows whether an NVIDIA runtime is present, nothing more.
• Auto-generated names (silly_darwin style) get a dotted underline and an auto-named hover tag.

Requirements

• VS Code 1.85+
• Docker Desktop running, or a reachable daemon

License

MIT. See LICENSE.