Configuration

Copy .env.example to .env, or set the same variables in Docker Compose.

Environment variables

Var	Purpose
`SESSION_SECRET`	Required in production. Sign/encrypt session cookies. Generate with `openssl rand -hex 32`.
`ADMIN_PASSWORD_HASH`	bcrypt hash of the admin password. Empty → a temporary password is printed to the logs on first run. Generate with `node scripts/hash-password.mjs 'your-password'` (or via Compose: `docker compose run --rm gallery node scripts/hash-password.mjs "pw"`).
`BASE_URL`	Public https origin visitors use. Used for share links and as the WebAuthn/passkey origin + RP ID. Example: `https://gallery.example.com`
`DATA_DIR`	Runtime data root (SQLite DB, photos, backups). In Docker this is the mounted volume (default `/data`).
`PORT`	HTTP port the app listens on (default `3200`). Put TLS on a reverse proxy in front.
`NEXT_PUBLIC_SITE_NAME`	Site name in headers/titles (default `Albm`).
`RP_ID`	Optional WebAuthn RP ID override (defaults to the host of `BASE_URL`).
`DISABLE_UPDATE_CHECK`	Set to `1` to skip the daily GitHub release check.
`SMTP_HOST`, `SMTP_PORT`, `SMTP_USER`, `SMTP_PASS`, `SMTP_FROM`, `SMTP_TO`	Optional. Only used as a fallback if SMTP isn't configured in Settings → Email (the admin UI is the preferred way to set this up — no env vars or restart needed). Powers new-inquiry email notifications; everything else works without it.

When setting ADMIN_PASSWORD_HASH, wrap the hash in single quotes so the shell does not mangle $2b$….

All photos and the SQLite database live under DATA_DIR. Nothing there is served statically — every image goes through an auth-checked handler.

DATA_DIR/
  gallery.db
  backups/gallery-<timestamp>.db
  photos/<galleryId>/{originals,web,thumb,print}/…

Back up DATA_DIR — that is your galleries and database. Migration backups also land in DATA_DIR/backups/.

dcraw — improves proprietary RAW decode. Set DCRAW_PATH if it is not on PATH.
Bib OCR and face search use WASM so they build without native ONNX.