---
description: Copy files among machines
keywords: machine, scp, subcommand
title: docker-machine scp
---

Copy files from your local host to a machine, from machine to machine, or from a
machine to your local host using `scp`.

The notation is `machinename:/path/to/files` for the arguments; in the host
machine's case, you don't have to specify the name, just the path.

Consider the following example:

```none
$ cat foo.txt
cat: foo.txt: No such file or directory
$ docker-machine ssh dev pwd
/home/docker
$ docker-machine ssh dev 'echo A file created remotely! >foo.txt'
$ docker-machine scp dev:/home/docker/foo.txt .
foo.txt                                                           100%   28     0.0KB/s   00:00
$ cat foo.txt
A file created remotely!
```

Just like how `scp` has a `-r` flag for copying files recursively,
`docker-machine` has a `-r` flag for this feature.

In the case of transferring files from machine to machine, they go through the
local host's filesystem first (using `scp`'s `-3` flag).