How to fix WARN[0000] Found orphan containers ([container-name]) for this project. If you removed or renamed this service in your compose file, you can run this command with the --remove-orphans flag to clean it up. in Docker

The simplest solution is to let Docker Compose remove the orphan containers automatically:

# Remove orphans when starting services
docker-compose up -d --remove-orphans

# Or remove orphans when stopping services
docker-compose down --remove-orphans

This tells Docker Compose to stop and remove any containers that belong to this project but aren't defined in the current compose file.

If you have multiple projects or compose files that might conflict, give each a unique project name. There are three ways to do this:

Option 1: Use the -p flag

docker-compose -p my-unique-project up -d

Option 2: Set COMPOSE_PROJECT_NAME in a .env file
Create a .env file in the same directory as your docker-compose.yml:

COMPOSE_PROJECT_NAME=my-unique-project

Option 3: Add a top-level name in docker-compose.yml

name: my-unique-project

services:
  web:
    image: nginx
  # ... other services

This ensures different projects don't interfere with each other even if they're in directories with the same name.

If the orphan containers are expected and you don't want to remove them, you can suppress the warning:

Set environment variable for a single command:

COMPOSE_IGNORE_ORPHANS=true docker-compose up -d

Or add to your .env file for permanent effect:

COMPOSE_IGNORE_ORPHANS=true

Use this option when you intentionally have containers from different compose files that you want to keep running.

If you want to inspect and selectively remove orphan containers:

# List all containers including stopped ones
docker ps -a

# Find containers belonging to the current project
docker ps -a --filter "label=com.docker.compose.project=$(basename $PWD)"

# Remove specific containers manually
docker rm -f <container_name_or_id>

This gives you more control if you only want to remove certain orphaned containers.

When working with multiple compose files (e.g., docker-compose.yml and docker-compose.test.yml), specify all files you want to use:

# Explicitly use multiple compose files
docker-compose -f docker-compose.yml -f docker-compose.test.yml up -d

Or set the COMPOSE_FILE environment variable in your .env file:

COMPOSE_FILE=docker-compose.yml:docker-compose.test.yml

This tells Docker Compose about all the services across both files, preventing false orphan warnings.