With
Docker Compose
, you
use a YAML file
to configure all application services so you can easily start them with a single command.
Before you proceed, make sure you have
Docker
installed on your system. It is available for
Mac
,
Linux
, and
Windows
.
Alternatively,
Podman Compose
is supported as a drop-in replacement for Docker Compose on Red Hat-compatible Linux distributions like
RHEL
, CentOS, Fedora, AlmaLinux, and Rocky Linux.
Download our
compose.yaml
example
(right click and
Save Link As...
or use
wget
) to a folder of your choice,
and change the
configuration
as needed:
wgethttps://dl.photoprism.app/docker/compose.yaml
Commands on Linux may have to be prefixed with sudo when not running as root.
Note that this will point the home directory shortcut ~ to /root in the volumes:
section of your config file. Kernel security modules such as AppArmor and SELinux
have been reported to cause issues.
Download our docker-compose.yml example
(right click and Save Link As... or use wget) to a folder of your choice,
and change the configuration as needed:
Download our compose.yaml example for
the Raspberry Pi and other ARM64-based devices (right click and Save Link As... or use wget) to a folder of your choice,
and change the configuration as needed:
Download our compose.yaml example for
older ARMv7-based devices (right click and Save Link As... or use wget) to a folder of your choice,
and change the configuration as needed:
It is important to increase the Docker memory limit to 4 GB or more when using Hyper-V. The default of 2 GB can reduce indexing performance and cause unexpected restarts. Also make sure you configure at least 4 GB of swap space. Docker Desktop uses dynamic memory allocation with WSL 2, meaning you do not need to change any memory-related settings (depending on which version of Windows and Docker you are using).
Before you run this, make sure you are in the directory where you want to install PhotoPrism and that Docker Desktop is installed and started on your PC.
Download our compose.yaml example for macOS
(right click and Save Link As...) to a folder of your choice, and change the configuration as needed:
Always change PHOTOPRISM_ADMIN_PASSWORD so that the app starts with a secure initial password.
Never use easy-to-guess passwords or default values like insecure on publicly accessible servers.
There is no default in case no password was provided. A minimum length of 8 characters is required.
Our example includes a pre-configured MariaDB database server. If you remove it and provide no other database server credentials, SQLite database files will be created in the storage folder. Local SSD storage is best for databases of any kind.
Never store database files on an unreliable device such as a USB flash drive, SD card, or shared network folder. These may also have unexpected file size limitations, which is especially problematic for databases that do not split data into smaller files.
You cannot change the database password with MARIADB_PASSWORD after MariaDB has been started for the first time. However, choosing a secure password is not essential if you do not share the database with other applications or expose it over a network. To enable automatic schema updates when upgrading to a new major version, please make sure that MARIADB_AUTO_UPGRADE is set to a non-empty value.
You must explicitly specify the directories you want to mount from your host, since PhotoPrism can't see files in folders that have not been shared. This is an important security feature and allows for a flexible configuration without having to change any other variables.
It is important that all folders are mounted to persistent volumes. We recommend changing the relative paths used in our examples to absolute paths and to avoid using named or anonymous volumes in order to prevent potential data loss when the container is recreated, e.g. after an update of the Docker image.
The originals folder contains your original photo and video files. ~/Pictures will be mounted by default, where ~ is a shortcut for your home directory:
When read-only mode is enabled, all features that require write permission to the originals folder are disabled, e.g. WebDAV, uploading and deleting files. To do this, set PHOTOPRISM_READONLY to "true" in the environment section of your compose.yaml file.2 You can additionally mount volumes with the :ro flag so that writes are also blocked by Docker.
The storage folder is used to save config, cache, backup, thumbnail, and sidecar files. It must always be specified so that you do not lose these files after a restart or upgrade.
If available, we recommend you put the storage folder on a local SSD drive for best performance. You can otherwise keep the default and store the files in a folder relative to the current directory:
Never configure the storage folder to be inside the originals folder unless the name starts with a . to indicate that it is hidden.
Should you later want to move your instance to another host, the easiest and most time-saving way is to copy the entire storage folder along with your originals and database.
You can optionally mount an import folder from which files can be transferred to the originals folder in a structured way that avoids duplicates, for example:
Imported files receive a canonical filename and will be organized by year and month. You should never configure the import folder to be inside the originals folder, as this will cause a loop by importing already indexed files.
Open a terminal and change to the folder in which your config file has been saved.1
Run this command to start the application and database services in the background:
dockercomposeup-d
Note that our examples use the new docker compose command by default. If your server does not yet support it, you can still use docker-compose or alternatively podman-compose on Red Hat-compatible distributions.
Now open the Web UI by navigating to http://localhost:2342/. You should see a login screen. Sign in with the user admin and the initial password configured via PHOTOPRISM_ADMIN_PASSWORD. You may change it on the account settings page. Enabling public mode will disable authentication.
You cannot change the password with PHOTOPRISM_ADMIN_PASSWORD after the app has been started for the first time. To change the admin password, run the docker compose exec photoprism photoprism passwd [username] command in a terminal. You can also run docker compose exec photoprism photoprism reset to delete the existing index database and start from scratch.
The server port and other config options can be changed in your compose.yaml file2 at any time.
Remember to restart the services for changes to take effect:
Our First Steps 👣 tutorial guides you through the user interface and settings to ensure your library is indexed according to your individual preferences.
If your server runs out of memory or other system resources:
Try reducing the number of workers by setting PHOTOPRISM_WORKERS to a reasonably small value in your compose.yaml file, depending on the CPU performance and number of cores
Ensure that your server has at least 4 GB of swap configured and avoid setting a hard memory limit as this can cause unexpected restarts when the indexer temporarily needs more memory to process large files
photoprism help lists all commands and config options available in the current version:
dockercomposeexecphotoprismphotoprismhelp
Use the --help flag to see a detailed command description, for example:
dockercomposeexecphotoprismphotoprismbackup--help
PhotoPrism's command-line interface is also well suited for job automation using a scheduler.
When using Docker Compose, you can prefix the commands you want to run with docker compose exec [service] to execute them in the specified service container.
If this fails with no container found, please make sure that the service has been started, you have specified an existing service (usually photoprism) and you are in the folder where your config file is located.
Since the above will open the terminal as root by default, we recommend that you pass the -u flag to explicitly open a non-root session if PhotoPrism is running under a specific user account, for example:
dockercomposeexec-u1000photoprismbash
This avoids potential filesystem permission issues that can occur when a command creates new files or folders, e.g. to store thumbnails.
Specifying a user with the -u flag is possible for all commands you run with Docker and Docker Compose. In the following examples, it is omitted for brevity.
Note, however, that commands that you run without an explicit user ID might be executed as root.
The currently supported user ID ranges are 0, 33, 50-99, 500-600, 900-1250, and 2000-2100.
We recommend running the photoprism service as a non-root user by setting either the user service property or the PHOTOPRISM_UIDenvironment variable in your config file. Don't forget to update file permissions and/or ownership with the chown command when you make changes.
Note that our examples use the new docker compose command by default. If your server does not yet support it, you can still use docker-compose or alternatively podman-compose on Red Hat-compatible distributions.
Complete Rescan
docker compose exec photoprism photoprism index -f rescans all originals, including already indexed and unchanged files.
This may be necessary after major upgrades and after migrations of the database schema, especially if search results are missing or incorrect. Note you can also start a rescan from the user interface by navigating to Library > Index, checking "Complete Rescan" and then clicking "Start". Manually entered information such as labels, people, titles or captions will not be modified when indexing, even if you perform a "complete rescan".
The default name for Docker Compose configuration files is compose.yaml. For simplicity, it does not need to be specified if you are running commands in the same directory. Config files for other applications and instances should be placed in separate folders. ↩
