Create a group called “docker” with the following command:

sudo groupadd docker

Next, add your user to the docker group:

sudo usermod -aG docker $USER

After adding the user to the docker group, log out and log back in to take effect the changes.

Just in case, you already ran a few Docker commands with ‘sudo’ permission before adding your user to the Docker group, you will probably see an error something like below.

WARNING: Error loading config file: /home/user/.docker/config.json -
stat /home/user/.docker/config.json: permission denied

The above error message indicates that your ~/.docker/ directory was created with incorrect permissions due to the ‘sudo’ commands. To fix this problem, change this directory ownership and permissions using the following commands:

sudo chown "$USER":"$USER" /home/"$USER"/.docker -R
 
sudo chmod g+rwx "$HOME/.docker" -R

Log out and log back in for this to take effect.

If it still doesn’t fix the issue, you might need to remove your ~/.docker/ directory. It will be recreated automatically, but you will lose all custom settings, if there are any.