--- title: Setup --- # Installation !!! tip "Quick Start" If you just want Paperless-ngx running quickly, use our installation script: ```shell-session bash -c "$(curl --location --silent --show-error https://raw.githubusercontent.com/paperless-ngx/paperless-ngx/main/install-paperless-ngx.sh)" ``` _If piping into a shell directly from the internet makes you nervous, inspect [the script](https://github.com/paperless-ngx/paperless-ngx/blob/main/install-paperless-ngx.sh) first!_ ## Overview Choose the installation route that best fits your setup: | Route | Best for | Effort | | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ------ | | [Installation script](#docker_script) | Fastest first-time setup with guided prompts (recommended for most users) | Low | | [Docker Compose templates](#docker) | Manual control over compose files and settings | Medium | | [Bare metal](#bare_metal) | Advanced setups, packaging, and development-adjacent workflows | High | | [Hosted providers (wiki)](https://github.com/paperless-ngx/paperless-ngx/wiki/Related-Projects#hosting-providers) | Managed hosting options maintained by the community — check details carefully | Varies | For most users, Docker is the best option. It is faster to set up, easier to maintain, and ships with sensible defaults. The bare-metal route gives you more control, but it requires manual installation and operation of all components. It is usually best suited for advanced users and contributors. !!! info Because [superuser](usage.md#superusers) accounts have full access to all objects and documents, you may want to create a separate user account for daily use, or "downgrade" your superuser account to a normal user account after setup. ## Installation Script {#docker_script} Paperless-ngx provides an interactive script for Docker Compose setups. It asks a few configuration questions, then creates the required files, pulls the image, starts the containers, and creates your [superuser](usage.md#superusers) account. In short, it automates the [Docker Compose setup](#docker) described below. #### Prerequisites - Docker and Docker Compose must be [installed](https://docs.docker.com/engine/install/){:target="\_blank"}. - macOS users will need [GNU sed](https://formulae.brew.sh/formula/gnu-sed) with support for running as `sed` as well as [wget](https://formulae.brew.sh/formula/wget). #### Run the installation script ```shell-session bash -c "$(curl --location --silent --show-error https://raw.githubusercontent.com/paperless-ngx/paperless-ngx/main/install-paperless-ngx.sh)" ``` #### After installation Paperless-ngx should be available at `http://127.0.0.1:8000` (or similar, depending on your configuration) and you will be able to login with the credentials you provided during the installation script. ## Docker Compose Install {#docker} #### Prerequisites - Docker and Docker Compose must be [installed](https://docs.docker.com/engine/install/){:target="\_blank"}. #### Installation 1. Go to the [/docker/compose directory on the project page](https://github.com/paperless-ngx/paperless-ngx/tree/main/docker/compose){:target="\_blank"} and download one `docker-compose.*.yml` file for your preferred database backend. Save it in a local directory as `docker-compose.yml`. Also download `docker-compose.env` and `.env` into that same directory. If you want to enable optional support for Office and other documents, download a file with `-tika` in the file name. !!! tip For new installations, it is recommended to use PostgreSQL as the database backend. 2. Modify `docker-compose.yml` as needed. For example, you may want to change the paths for `consume`, `media`, and other directories to use bind mounts. Find the line that specifies where to mount the directory, e.g.: ```yaml - ./consume:/usr/src/paperless/consume ``` Replace the part _before_ the colon with your local directory: ```yaml - /home/jonaswinkler/paperless-inbox:/usr/src/paperless/consume ``` You may also want to change the default port that the webserver will use from the default (8000) to something else, e.g. for port 8010: ```yaml ports: - 8010:8000 ``` 3. Modify `docker-compose.env` with any configuration options you need. See the [configuration documentation](configuration.md) for all options. You may also need to set `USERMAP_UID` and `USERMAP_GID` to the UID and GID of your user on the host system. Use `id -u` and `id -g` to get these values. This ensures both the container and the host user can write to the consumption directory. If your UID and GID are `1000` (the default for the first normal user on many systems), this usually works out of the box without modifications. Run `id "username"` to check. !!! note You can utilize Docker secrets for configuration settings by appending `_FILE` to configuration values. For example [`PAPERLESS_DBUSER`](configuration.md#PAPERLESS_DBUSER) can be set using `PAPERLESS_DBUSER_FILE=/var/run/secrets/password.txt`. 4. Run `docker compose pull`. This pulls the image from the GitHub container registry by default, but you can pull from Docker Hub by changing the `image` line to `image: paperlessngx/paperless-ngx:latest`. 5. Run `docker compose up -d`. This will create and start the necessary containers. #### After installation Your Paperless-ngx instance should now be accessible at `http://127.0.0.1:8000` (or similar, depending on your configuration). When you first access the web interface, you will be prompted to create a [superuser](usage.md#superusers) account. #### Optional Advanced Compose Configurations {#advanced_compose data-toc-label="Advanced Compose Configurations"} **Rootless** !!! warning It is currently not possible to run the container rootless if additional languages are specified via `PAPERLESS_OCR_LANGUAGES`. If you want to run Paperless as a rootless container, make this change in `docker-compose.yml`: - Set the `user` running the container to map to the `paperless` user in the container. This value (`user_id` below) should be the same ID that `USERMAP_UID` and `USERMAP_GID` are set to in `docker-compose.env`. See `USERMAP_UID` and `USERMAP_GID` [here](configuration.md#docker). Your entry for Paperless should contain something like: > ``` > webserver: > image: ghcr.io/paperless-ngx/paperless-ngx:latest > user: > ``` **File systems without inotify support (e.g. NFS)** Some file systems, such as NFS network shares, don't support file system notifications with `inotify`. When the consumption directory is on such a file system, Paperless-ngx will not pick up new files with the default configuration. Use [`PAPERLESS_CONSUMER_POLLING`](configuration.md#PAPERLESS_CONSUMER_POLLING) to enable polling and disable inotify. See [here](configuration.md#polling). ## Bare Metal Install {#bare_metal} #### Prerequisites - Paperless runs on Linux only, Windows is not supported. - Python 3 is required with versions 3.10 - 3.12 currently supported. Newer versions may work, but some dependencies may not be fully compatible. #### Installation 1. Install dependencies. Paperless requires the following packages: - `python3` - `python3-pip` - `python3-dev` - `default-libmysqlclient-dev` for MariaDB - `pkg-config` for mysqlclient (python dependency) - `fonts-liberation` for generating thumbnails for plain text files - `imagemagick` >= 6 for PDF conversion - `gnupg` for handling encrypted documents - `libpq-dev` for PostgreSQL - `libmagic-dev` for mime type detection - `mariadb-client` for MariaDB compile time - `poppler-utils` for barcode detection Use this list for your preferred package management: ``` python3 python3-pip python3-dev imagemagick fonts-liberation gnupg libpq-dev default-libmysqlclient-dev pkg-config libmagic-dev poppler-utils ``` These dependencies are required for OCRmyPDF, which is used for text recognition. - `unpaper` - `ghostscript` - `icc-profiles-free` - `qpdf` - `liblept5` - `libxml2` - `pngquant` (suggested for certain PDF image optimizations) - `zlib1g` - `tesseract-ocr` >= 4.0.0 for OCR - `tesseract-ocr` language packs (`tesseract-ocr-eng`, `tesseract-ocr-deu`, etc) Use this list for your preferred package management: ``` unpaper ghostscript icc-profiles-free qpdf liblept5 libxml2 pngquant zlib1g tesseract-ocr ``` On Raspberry Pi, these libraries are required as well: - `libatlas-base-dev` - `libxslt1-dev` - `mime-support` You will also need these for installing some of the python dependencies: - `build-essential` - `python3-setuptools` - `python3-wheel` Use this list for your preferred package management: ``` build-essential python3-setuptools python3-wheel ``` 2. Install `redis` >= 6.0 and configure it to start automatically. 3. Optional: Install `postgresql` and configure a database, user, and password for Paperless-ngx. If you do not wish to use PostgreSQL, MariaDB and SQLite are available as well. !!! note On bare-metal installations using SQLite, ensure the [JSON1 extension](https://code.djangoproject.com/wiki/JSON1Extension) is enabled. This is usually the case, but not always. 4. Create a system user with a new home folder in which you want to run Paperless-ngx. ```shell-session adduser paperless --system --home /opt/paperless --group ``` 5. Download a release archive from . For example: ```shell-session curl -O -L https://github.com/paperless-ngx/paperless-ngx/releases/download/vX.Y.Z/paperless-ngx-vX.Y.Z.tar.xz ``` Extract the archive with ```shell-session tar -xf paperless-ngx-vX.Y.Z.tar.xz ``` and copy the contents to the home directory of the user you created earlier (`/opt/paperless`). Optional: If you cloned the Git repository, you will need to compile the frontend yourself. See [here](development.md#front-end-development) and use the `build` step, not `serve`. 6. Configure Paperless-ngx. See [configuration](configuration.md) for details. Edit the included `paperless.conf` and adjust the settings to your needs. Required settings for getting Paperless-ngx running are: - [`PAPERLESS_REDIS`](configuration.md#PAPERLESS_REDIS) should point to your Redis server, such as `redis://localhost:6379`. - [`PAPERLESS_DBENGINE`](configuration.md#PAPERLESS_DBENGINE) is optional, and should be one of `postgres`, `mariadb`, or `sqlite` - [`PAPERLESS_DBHOST`](configuration.md#PAPERLESS_DBHOST) should be the hostname on which your PostgreSQL server is running. Do not configure this to use SQLite instead. Also configure port, database name, user and password as necessary. - [`PAPERLESS_CONSUMPTION_DIR`](configuration.md#PAPERLESS_CONSUMPTION_DIR) should point to the folder that Paperless-ngx should watch for incoming documents. Likewise, [`PAPERLESS_DATA_DIR`](configuration.md#PAPERLESS_DATA_DIR) and [`PAPERLESS_MEDIA_ROOT`](configuration.md#PAPERLESS_MEDIA_ROOT) define where Paperless-ngx stores its data. If needed, these can point to the same directory. - [`PAPERLESS_SECRET_KEY`](configuration.md#PAPERLESS_SECRET_KEY) should be a random sequence of characters. It's used for authentication. Failure to do so allows third parties to forge authentication credentials. - Set [`PAPERLESS_URL`](configuration.md#PAPERLESS_URL) if you are behind a reverse proxy. This should point to your domain. Please see [configuration](configuration.md) for more information. You can make many more adjustments, especially for OCR. The following options are recommended for most users: - Set [`PAPERLESS_OCR_LANGUAGE`](configuration.md#PAPERLESS_OCR_LANGUAGE) to the language most of your documents are written in. - Set [`PAPERLESS_TIME_ZONE`](configuration.md#PAPERLESS_TIME_ZONE) to your local time zone. !!! warning Ensure your Redis instance [is secured](https://redis.io/docs/latest/operate/oss_and_stack/management/security/). 7. Create the following directories if they do not already exist: - `/opt/paperless/media` - `/opt/paperless/data` - `/opt/paperless/consume` Adjust these paths if you configured different folders. Then verify that the `paperless` user has write permissions: ```shell-session ls -l -d /opt/paperless/media ``` If needed, change the owner with ```shell-session sudo chown paperless:paperless /opt/paperless/media sudo chown paperless:paperless /opt/paperless/data sudo chown paperless:paperless /opt/paperless/consume ``` 8. Install Python dependencies from `requirements.txt`. ```shell-session sudo -Hu paperless pip3 install -r requirements.txt ``` This will install all Python dependencies in the home directory of the new paperless user. !!! tip You can use a virtual environment if you prefer. If you do, you may need to adjust the example scripts for your virtual environment paths. !!! tip If you use modern Python tooling, such as `uv`, installation will not include dependencies for PostgreSQL or MariaDB. You can select those extras with `--extra `, or install all extras with `--all-extras`. 9. Go to `/opt/paperless/src` and execute the following command: ```bash # This creates the database schema. sudo -Hu paperless python3 manage.py migrate ``` 10. Optional: Test that Paperless-ngx is working by running ```bash # Manually starts the webserver sudo -Hu paperless python3 manage.py runserver ``` Then point your browser to `http://localhost:8000` if accessing from the same device on which Paperless-ngx is installed. If accessing from another machine, set up systemd services. You may need to set `PAPERLESS_DEBUG=true` in order for the development server to work normally in your browser. !!! warning This is a development server which should not be used in production. It is not audited for security, and performance is inferior to production-ready web servers. !!! tip This will not start the consumer. Paperless does this in a separate process. 11. Set up systemd services to run Paperless-ngx automatically. You may use the service definition files included in the `scripts` folder as a starting point. Paperless needs: - The `webserver` script to run the webserver. - The `consumer` script to watch the input folder. - The `taskqueue` script for background workers (document consumption, etc.). - The `scheduler` script for periodic tasks such as email checking. !!! note The `socket` script enables `granian` to run on port 80 without root privileges. For this you need to uncomment the `Require=paperless-webserver.socket` in the `webserver` script and configure `granian` to listen on port 80 (set `GRANIAN_PORT`). These services rely on Redis and optionally the database server, but don't need to be started in any particular order. The example files depend on Redis being started. If you use a database server, you should add additional dependencies. !!! note For instructions on using a reverse proxy, [see the wiki](https://github.com/paperless-ngx/paperless-ngx/wiki/Using-a-Reverse-Proxy-with-Paperless-ngx#). !!! warning If Celery won't start, check `sudo systemctl status paperless-task-queue.service` for `paperless-task-queue.service` and `paperless-scheduler.service`. You may need to change the path in the files. Example: `ExecStart=/opt/paperless/.local/bin/celery --app paperless worker --loglevel INFO` 12. Configure ImageMagick to allow processing of PDF documents. Most distributions have this disabled by default, since PDF documents can contain malware. If you don't do this, Paperless-ngx will fall back to Ghostscript for certain steps such as thumbnail generation. Edit `/etc/ImageMagick-6/policy.xml` and adjust ``` ``` to ``` ``` **Optional: Install the [jbig2enc](https://ocrmypdf.readthedocs.io/en/latest/jbig2.html) encoder.** This will reduce the size of generated PDF documents. You'll most likely need to compile this yourself, because this software has been patented until around 2017 and binary packages are not available for most distributions. **Optional: download the NLTK data** If using the NLTK machine-learning processing (see [`PAPERLESS_ENABLE_NLTK`](configuration.md#PAPERLESS_ENABLE_NLTK) for details), download the NLTK data for the Snowball Stemmer, Stopwords and Punkt tokenizer to `/usr/share/nltk_data`. Refer to the [NLTK instructions](https://www.nltk.org/data.html) for details on how to download the data. #### After installation Your Paperless-ngx instance should now be accessible at `http://localhost:8000` (or similar, depending on your configuration). When you first access the web interface you will be prompted to create a [superuser](usage.md#superusers) account. ## Build the Docker image yourself {#docker_build data-toc-label="Building the Docker image"} Building the Docker image yourself is typically used for development, but it can also be used for production if you want to customize the image. See [Building the Docker image](development.md#docker_build) in the development documentation. ## Migrating to Paperless-ngx You can migrate to Paperless-ngx from Paperless-ng or from the original Paperless project.

Migrating from Paperless-ng

Paperless-ngx is meant to be a drop-in replacement for Paperless-ng, and upgrading should be trivial for most users, especially when using Docker. However, as with any major change, it is recommended to take a full backup first. Once you are ready, simply change the docker image to point to the new source. For example, if using Docker Compose, edit `docker-compose.yml` and change: ``` image: jonaswinkler/paperless-ng:latest ``` to ``` image: ghcr.io/paperless-ngx/paperless-ngx:latest ``` and then run `docker compose up -d`, which will pull the new image and recreate the container. That's it. Users who installed with the bare-metal route should also update their Git clone to point to `https://github.com/paperless-ngx/paperless-ngx`, for example using: `git remote set-url origin https://github.com/paperless-ngx/paperless-ngx` and then pull the latest version.

Migrating from Paperless

At its core, Paperless-ngx is still Paperless and fully compatible. However, some things have changed under the hood, so you need to adapt your setup depending on how you installed Paperless. This section describes how to update an existing Paperless Docker installation. Keep these points in mind: - Read the [changelog](changelog.md) and take note of breaking changes. - Decide whether to stay on SQLite or migrate to PostgreSQL. See [documentation](#sqlite_to_psql) for details on moving data from SQLite to PostgreSQL. Both work fine with Paperless. However, if you already have a database server running for other services, you might as well use it for Paperless as well. - The task scheduler of Paperless, which is used to execute periodic tasks such as email checking and maintenance, requires a [Redis](https://redis.io/) message broker instance. The Docker Compose route takes care of that. - The layout of the folder structure for your documents and data remains the same, so you can plug your old Docker volumes into paperless-ngx and expect it to find everything where it should be. Migration to Paperless-ngx is then performed in a few simple steps: 1. Stop Paperless. ```bash cd /path/to/current/paperless docker compose down ``` 2. Create a backup for two reasons: if something goes wrong, you still have your data; and if you don't like paperless-ngx, you can switch back to Paperless. 3. Download the latest release of Paperless-ngx. You can either use the Docker Compose files from [here](https://github.com/paperless-ngx/paperless-ngx/tree/main/docker/compose) or clone the repository to build the image yourself (see [development docs](development.md#docker_build)). You can either replace your current paperless folder or put Paperless-ngx in a different location. !!! warning Paperless-ngx includes a `.env` file. This will set the project name for Docker Compose to `paperless`, which will also define the volume names created by Paperless-ngx. However, if you notice that paperless-ngx is not using your old paperless volumes, verify the names of your volumes with ``` shell-session docker volume ls | grep _data ``` and adjust the project name in the `.env` file so that it matches the name of the volumes before the `_data` part. 4. Download the `docker-compose.sqlite.yml` file to `docker-compose.yml`. If you want to switch to PostgreSQL, do that after you migrated your existing SQLite database. 5. Adjust `docker-compose.yml` and `docker-compose.env` to your needs. See [Docker setup](#docker) for details on which edits are recommended. 6. Follow the update procedure in [Update paperless](administration.md#updating). 7. In order to find your existing documents with the new search feature, you need to invoke a one-time operation that will create the search index: ```shell-session docker compose run --rm webserver document_index reindex ``` This will migrate your database and create the search index. After that, Paperless-ngx will maintain the index automatically. 8. Start Paperless-ngx. ```bash docker compose up -d ``` This will run Paperless-ngx in the background and automatically start it on system boot. 9. Paperless may have installed a permanent redirect to `admin/` in your browser. This redirect is still in place and prevents access to the new UI. Clear your browser cache to fix this. 10. Optionally, follow the instructions below to migrate your existing data to PostgreSQL.

Migrating from LinuxServer.io Docker Image

As with any upgrade or large change, it is highly recommended to create a backup before starting. This assumes the image was running using Docker Compose, but the instructions are translatable to Docker commands as well. 1. Stop and remove the Paperless container. 2. If using an external database, stop that container. 3. Update Redis configuration. 1. If `REDIS_URL` is already set, change it to [`PAPERLESS_REDIS`](configuration.md#PAPERLESS_REDIS) and continue to step 4. 1. Otherwise, add a new Redis service in `docker-compose.yml`, following [the example compose files](https://github.com/paperless-ngx/paperless-ngx/tree/main/docker/compose) 1. Set the environment variable [`PAPERLESS_REDIS`](configuration.md#PAPERLESS_REDIS) so it points to the new Redis container. 4. Update user mapping. 1. If set, change the environment variable `PUID` to `USERMAP_UID`. 1. If set, change the environment variable `PGID` to `USERMAP_GID`. 5. Update configuration paths. 1. Set the environment variable [`PAPERLESS_DATA_DIR`](configuration.md#PAPERLESS_DATA_DIR) to `/config`. 6. Update media paths. 1. Set the environment variable [`PAPERLESS_MEDIA_ROOT`](configuration.md#PAPERLESS_MEDIA_ROOT) to `/data/media`. 7. Update timezone. 1. Set the environment variable [`PAPERLESS_TIME_ZONE`](configuration.md#PAPERLESS_TIME_ZONE) to the same value as `TZ`. 8. Modify `image:` to point to `ghcr.io/paperless-ngx/paperless-ngx:latest` or a specific version if preferred. 9. Start the containers as before, using `docker compose`. ## Running Paperless-ngx on less powerful devices {#less-powerful-devices data-toc-label="Less Powerful Devices"} Paperless runs on Raspberry Pi. Some tasks can be slow on lower-powered hardware, but a few settings can improve performance: - Stick with SQLite to save some resources. See [troubleshooting](troubleshooting.md#log-reports-creating-paperlesstask-failed) if you encounter issues with SQLite locking. - If you do not need the filesystem-based consumer, consider disabling it entirely by setting [`PAPERLESS_CONSUMER_DISABLE`](configuration.md#PAPERLESS_CONSUMER_DISABLE) to `true`. - Consider setting [`PAPERLESS_OCR_PAGES`](configuration.md#PAPERLESS_OCR_PAGES) to 1, so that Paperless OCRs only the first page of your documents. In most cases, this page contains enough information to be able to find it. - [`PAPERLESS_TASK_WORKERS`](configuration.md#PAPERLESS_TASK_WORKERS) and [`PAPERLESS_THREADS_PER_WORKER`](configuration.md#PAPERLESS_THREADS_PER_WORKER) are configured to use all cores. The Raspberry Pi models 3 and up have 4 cores, meaning that Paperless will use 2 workers and 2 threads per worker. This may result in sluggish response times during consumption, so you might want to lower these settings (example: 2 workers and 1 thread to always have some computing power left for other tasks). - Keep [`PAPERLESS_OCR_MODE`](configuration.md#PAPERLESS_OCR_MODE) at its default value `skip` and consider OCRing your documents before feeding them into Paperless. Some scanners are able to do this! - Set [`PAPERLESS_OCR_SKIP_ARCHIVE_FILE`](configuration.md#PAPERLESS_OCR_SKIP_ARCHIVE_FILE) to `with_text` to skip archive file generation for already OCRed documents, or `always` to skip it for all documents. - If you want to perform OCR on the device, consider using `PAPERLESS_OCR_CLEAN=none`. This will speed up OCR times and use less memory at the expense of slightly worse OCR results. - If using Docker, consider setting [`PAPERLESS_WEBSERVER_WORKERS`](configuration.md#PAPERLESS_WEBSERVER_WORKERS) to 1. This will save some memory. - Consider setting [`PAPERLESS_ENABLE_NLTK`](configuration.md#PAPERLESS_ENABLE_NLTK) to false, to disable the more advanced language processing, which can take more memory and processing time. For details, refer to [configuration](configuration.md). !!! note Updating the [automatic matching algorithm](advanced_usage.md#automatic-matching) takes quite a bit of time. However, the update mechanism checks if your data has changed before doing the heavy lifting. If you experience the algorithm taking too much CPU time, consider changing the schedule in the admin interface to daily. You can also manually invoke the task by changing the date and time of the next run to today/now. The actual matching of the algorithm is fast and works on Raspberry Pi as well as on any other device. ## Additional considerations **Using a reverse proxy with Paperless-ngx** Please see [the wiki](https://github.com/paperless-ngx/paperless-ngx/wiki/Using-a-Reverse-Proxy-with-Paperless-ngx#nginx) for user-maintained documentation on using nginx with Paperless-ngx. **Enhancing security** Please see [the wiki](https://github.com/paperless-ngx/paperless-ngx/wiki/Using-Security-Tools-with-Paperless-ngx) for user-maintained documentation on configuring security tools like Fail2ban with Paperless-ngx.