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settings.yml

User interface, download, and indexing preferences are stored in a settings.yml file, located in the config path. If it does not exist yet, it will be created automatically.

Experienced users may edit this file directly to change certain settings, as not all of them can be changed through the user interface.

Note that changes to the settings.yml file require a restart to take effect and that settings changed through the web interface will also be saved to this file. We therefore recommend that you only edit it manually while your instance is stopped.

File Format

You can use any text editor to create or modify YAML config files. However, it is important that related values, e.g. key-value pairs, start at the same indentation level and that spaces are used for indentation, for example:

Index:
  Path: /
  Convert: true
  Rescan: false
  SkipArchived: false

To avoid ambiguity, it is recommended to enclose text strings in " (double quotes), especially if they contain spaces, a colon, or other special characters.

Global Defaults

User settings can optionally be initialized from a settings.yml file located in the same folder as the ↪ defaults.yml file, e.g. /etc/photoprism.

Sections

UI

The UI section allows you to change general user interface settings, such as which theme, language, time zone, and start page to use by default:

UI:
  Scrollbar: true
  Zoom: false
  Theme: default
  Language: en
  TimeZone: UTC
  StartPage: default

If you set Scrollbar to false, the browser scrollbar will be hidden regardless of which device you use and which page you are on. This is generally not recommended, but can be useful e.g. when taking screenshots.

Setting Zoom to true allows you to enlarge the user interface with gestures on mobile devices, making the app feel more like a regular web page. This can be useful for visually impaired users so that they can magnify text and images when needed.

Theme and Language change the theme and language of the user interface and correspond to the settings dropdowns you find when navigating to Settings > General.

In the Search section, you can turn off the list view and the display of titles and captions in search results:

Search:
  BatchSize: -1
  ListView: true
  ShowTitles: true
  ShowCaptions: true

The optional BatchSize setting allows you to configure how many search results are fetched from the backend with each request. We recommend that you do not change the default.

Albums

These settings allow you to change the default sort order for newly created albums, as well as configure or disallow downloads of entire albums:

Albums:
  Order:
    Album: added
    Folder: added
    Moment: oldest
    State: newest
    Month: oldest
  Download:
    Name: share
    Disabled: false
    Originals: true
    MediaRaw: false
    MediaSidecar: false

For details on the download settings, see the section below.

Available sort orders are: added, oldest, newest, name, size, duration, title.

Downloads

The following settings allow you to configure file downloads through the user interface:

Download:
  Name: file
  Disabled: false
  Originals: true
  MediaRaw: false
  MediaSidecar: false

The Name setting determines which file names are used when downloading pictures from search results or in the photo viewer. Currently, the following options are supported:

  • file uses the actual file name in the originals folder
  • original if the file was imported, the name before it was renamed is used
  • share uses a share-friendly file name based on the title and creation date

In case Originals is set to true, only the files in the originals folder will be downloaded, but not any files that were automatically created in the sidecar folder. This is the recommended default.

If you set MediaRaw to true, RAW image files are downloaded automatically, for example when you click the download button in the photo viewer.

Setting MediaSidecar to true will also download sidecar files as used for XMP metadata. This is generally not recommended except for some professional workflows.

Library

These settings affect which files are stacked, as well as your preferences when indexing or importing files:

Import:
  Path: /
  Move: false
  Dest: 2006/01/20060102_150405_82F63B78.jpg
Index:
  Path: /
  Convert: true
  Rescan: false
  SkipArchived: false
Stack:
  UUID: true
  Meta: true
  Name: false

Since you can also change these settings in Settings > Content and in the Library UI, it is not necessary to edit them directly in the settings.yml configuration file.

The date and time placeholders for the optional destination file path pattern in Import > Dest are described in the time package docs. Using a different 8 digit hex number such as 12345678 for the CRC32 checksum and .ext instead of .jpg for the file extension will work as well. Invalid and empty patterns are ignored and the default is used instead. Learn more ›