skopeo Command

The skopeo command inspects, copies, and manages container images across registries without requiring a running container daemon or pulling the images locally. Part of the Podman ecosystem developed by Red Hat, Skopeo operates directly on container registries, making it ideal for CI/CD pipelines, registry management, and image mirroring.

Unlike docker pull (which downloads the entire image), skopeo inspect can retrieve image metadata (layers, labels, architecture, digests) from a remote registry with a single API call. skopeo copy can transfer images between registries, convert between formats (OCI, Docker v2s2), and even copy to/from local directory structures — all without a daemon.

Skopeo supports all major registry types: Docker Hub, GitHub Container Registry (GHCR), Amazon ECR, Google Container Registry (GCR), Azure Container Registry (ACR), Quay.io, Harbor, and private registries. It uses the same credentials as Docker/Podman from ~/.docker/config.json or containers-auth.json.

Option	Description	Example
inspect	Inspect image metadata without pulling	skopeo inspect docker://docker.io/library/nginx:alpine
copy	Copy image between registries/formats	skopeo copy docker://registry.example.com/app:v1 docker://ghcr.io/org/app:v1
list-tags	List all tags for a repository	skopeo list-tags docker://docker.io/library/nginx
delete	Delete an image from a registry	skopeo delete docker://registry.example.com/old-image:v1
sync	Sync images between registries	skopeo sync --src docker --dest docker registry.example.com/app ghcr.io/org
login	Login to a container registry	skopeo login docker.io -u username
--raw	Output raw manifest (with inspect)	skopeo inspect --raw docker://nginx:alpine
--override-arch	Inspect specific architecture	skopeo inspect --override-arch arm64 docker://nginx:alpine