---
description: Learn how to configure logging driver for the Docker daemon
keywords: docker, logging, driver
title: Configure logging drivers
aliases:
  - /config/containers/logging/logentries/
  - /engine/reference/logging/overview/
  - /engine/reference/logging/
  - /engine/admin/reference/logging/
  - /engine/admin/logging/logentries/
  - /engine/admin/logging/overview/
  - /config/containers/logging/configure/
  - /config/containers/
---

Docker includes multiple logging mechanisms to help you get information from
running containers and services. These mechanisms are called logging drivers.
Each Docker daemon has a default logging driver, which each container uses
unless you configure it to use a different logging driver, or log driver for
short.

As a default, Docker uses the [`json-file` logging driver](drivers/json-file.md), which
caches container logs as JSON internally. In addition to using the logging drivers
included with Docker, you can also implement and use [logging driver plugins](plugins.md).

> [!TIP]
>
> Use the `local` logging driver to prevent disk-exhaustion. By default, no log-rotation is performed. As a result, log-files stored by the
> default [`json-file` logging driver](drivers/json-file.md) logging driver can cause
> a significant amount of disk space to be used for containers that generate much
> output, which can lead to disk space exhaustion.
>
> Docker keeps the json-file logging driver (without log-rotation) as a default
> to remain backwards compatible with older versions of Docker, and for situations
> where Docker is used as runtime for Kubernetes.
>
> For other situations, the `local` logging driver is recommended as it performs
> log-rotation by default, and uses a more efficient file format. Refer to the
> [Configure the default logging driver](#configure-the-default-logging-driver)
> section below to learn how to configure the `local` logging driver as a default,
> and the [local file logging driver](drivers/local.md) page for more details about the
> `local` logging driver.

## Configure the default logging driver

To configure the Docker daemon to default to a specific logging driver, set the
value of `log-driver` to the name of the logging driver in the `daemon.json`
configuration file. Refer to the "daemon configuration file" section in the
[`dockerd` reference manual](/reference/cli/dockerd/#daemon-configuration-file)
for details.

The default logging driver is `json-file`. The following example sets the default
logging driver to the [`local` log driver](drivers/local.md):

```json
{
  "log-driver": "local"
}
```

If the logging driver has configurable options, you can set them in the
`daemon.json` file as a JSON object with the key `log-opts`. The following
example sets four configurable options on the `json-file` logging driver:

```json
{
  "log-driver": "json-file",
  "log-opts": {
    "max-size": "10m",
    "max-file": "3",
    "labels": "production_status",
    "env": "os,customer"
  }
}
```

Restart Docker for the changes to take effect for newly created containers.
Existing containers don't use the new logging configuration automatically.

> [!NOTE]
>
> `log-opts` configuration options in the `daemon.json` configuration file must
> be provided as strings. Boolean and numeric values (such as the value for
> `max-file` in the example above) must therefore be enclosed in quotes (`"`).

If you don't specify a logging driver, the default is `json-file`.
To find the current default logging driver for the Docker daemon, run
`docker info` and search for `Logging Driver`. You can use the following
command on Linux, macOS, or PowerShell on Windows:

```console
$ docker info --format '{{.LoggingDriver}}'

json-file
```

> [!NOTE]
>
> Changing the default logging driver or logging driver options in the daemon
> configuration only affects containers that are created after the configuration
> is changed. Existing containers retain the logging driver options that were
> used when they were created. To update the logging driver for a container, the