Dive

Dive lets you explore Docker image layers and see exactly what each layer adds, removes, or modifies. If your container image ballooned to 2GB and you don't know why, Dive shows you the answer in seconds with an interactive TUI.

docker history is the built-in but barely useful alternative. Slim.ai analyzes and optimizes images commercially. Trivy focuses on security scanning, not size analysis. There's really nothing else that does exactly what Dive does in the open source space.

If you build Docker images, install Dive. Period. Run dive your-image and immediately see wasted space — cache files left behind, unnecessary build tools, duplicate layers. It's MIT licensed and works on any container runtime.

The catch: it's a diagnostic tool, not a fix. Dive tells you the problem but you still have to rewrite your Dockerfile. The TUI can be confusing at first with its layer-by-layer navigation. And it hasn't seen major feature updates recently — it's stable and complete, but don't expect new capabilities.