watchtower/docs/container-selection.md

By default, watchtower will watch all containers. However, sometimes only some containers should be updated.

There are two options:

• Fully exclude: You can choose to exclude containers entirely from being watched by watchtower.
• Monitor only: In this mode, watchtower checks for container updates, sends notifications and invokes the pre-check/post-check hooks on the containers but does not perform the update.

Full Exclude

If you need to exclude some containers, set the com.centurylinklabs.watchtower.enable label to false.

LABEL com.centurylinklabs.watchtower.enable="false"

Or, it can be specified as part of the docker run command line:

docker run -d --label=com.centurylinklabs.watchtower.enable=false someimage

If you need to include only containers with the enable label, pass the --label-enable flag or the WATCHTOWER_LABEL_ENABLE environment variable on startup and set the com.centurylinklabs.watchtower.enable label with a value of true for the containers you want to watch.

LABEL com.centurylinklabs.watchtower.enable="true"

Or, it can be specified as part of the docker run command line:

docker run -d --label=com.centurylinklabs.watchtower.enable=true someimage

If you wish to create a monitoring scope, you will need to run multiple instances and set a scope for each of them.

Watchtower filters running containers by testing them against each configured criteria. A container is monitored if all criteria are met. For example:

• If a container's name is on the monitoring name list (not empty --name argument) but it is not enabled (centurylinklabs.watchtower.enable=false), it won't be monitored;
• If a container's name is not on the monitoring name list (not empty --name argument), even if it is enabled (centurylinklabs.watchtower.enable=true and --label-enable flag is set), it won't be monitored;

Monitor Only

Individual containers can be marked to only be monitored (without being updated).

To do so, set the com.centurylinklabs.watchtower.monitor-only label to true on that container.

LABEL com.centurylinklabs.watchtower.monitor-only="true"

Or, it can be specified as part of the docker run command line:

docker run -d --label=com.centurylinklabs.watchtower.monitor-only=true someimage

When the label is specified on a container, watchtower treats that container exactly as if WATCHTOWER_MONITOR_ONLY was set, but the effect is limited to the individual container.