Running a Local Docker Registry with PowerShell

Setting up a local Docker registry is a great way to manage and share container images in your development environment without relying on external services like Docker Hub. This guide walks you through setting up a private Docker registry on your machine using PowerShell on Windows.

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✅ Prerequisites

• Docker Desktop installed
• Windows PowerShell
• Optional: curl or Invoke-RestMethod for testing

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🏗️ Step 1: Start the Docker Registry Container

Docker provides an official image for the registry. You can launch it using PowerShell:

docker run -d `
  -p 5000:5000 `
  --restart=always `
  --name registry `
  registry:2

This will expose your registry at http://localhost:5000.

🧪 Step 2: Test the Registry

Let’s push a simple image to the local registry:

# Pull an example image
docker pull hello-world

# Tag it for the local registry
docker tag hello-world localhost:5000/hello-world

# Push it to the local registry
docker push localhost:5000/hello-world

#🔍 Step 3: Check Available Images To verify that the image was stored, run:

Invoke-RestMethod -Uri http://localhost:5000/v2/_catalog

{
  "repositories": [
    "hello-world"
  ]
}

Conclusion

With just a few commands, you can spin up your own private Docker registry for local development. It’s a great tool for testing, internal CI/CD workflows, or teams working in isolated environments.