How to check if docker daemon is running?

Question

I am trying to create a bash utility script to check if a docker daemon is running in my server. Is there a better way of checking if the docker daemon is running in my serv

Answer 1

The following works on macOS and on Windows if git bash is installed. On macOS open /Applications/Docker.app would start the docker deamon. Haven't seen anything similar for Windows however.

## check docker is running at all
## based on https://stackoverflow.com/questions/22009364/is-there-a-try-catch-command-in-bash
{
  ## will throw an error if the docker daemon is not running and jump
  ## to the next code chunk     
  docker ps -q
} || {
  echo "Docker is not running. Please start docker on your computer"
  echo "When docker has finished starting up press [ENTER} to continue"
  read
}