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Docker Update Tool Watchtower Reaches End of Maintenance (linuxiac.com)
submitted 10 months ago by to c/containers@sh.itjust.works
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The Watchtower project has been officially archived and is no longer under active maintenance. The GitHub repository was switched to read-only status on December 17, 2025, marking the end of development for one of the most widely used Docker container auto-update tools.

It has long been used to automatically monitor running containers and pull updated images when new versions are published, making it a common component in many self-hosted and small-scale Docker deployments.

The announcement was made by one of Watchtower’s core maintainers in the project’s GitHub Discussions section, stating that they no longer actively use Docker and have lost both the time and interest required to continue maintaining Watchtower. As a result, they decided to archive the repository rather than leave it in a partially maintained state.

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[–] 5 points 10 months ago

Nextcloud has decided to use the following fork, which seemed good enough for me as well: https://github.com/nicholas-fedor/watchtower

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    4 comments in c/docker@programming.dev view that post
    [–] 14 points 10 months ago (2 children)

    Here is the most used fork for anyone intrested and a few thoughts on other tools:

    I tried the mentioned Whats up docker and Diun (docker image notifier), but was not satisfied with both.

    Nowadays I use Komodo, it uses basicly docker compose with a very nice web UI and it can do autopolling, notification or auto update itself. It is a very powerful tool and even replaces Portainer.

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  • [–] 3 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 child)

    If you’ve got your configs stored in git repos (even locally) you can set up renovate to scan for updates, you can even pin on hashes

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    • [–] 1 point 10 months ago*

    The announcement is thoughful. It explicitely tells user the tool won't reveive maintenance so they know to look for alternatives right know.

    Silently abandonning a project could cause an accumulation of issues, unmerged MRs over time until peole realize the maintainers aren't coming back.

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