FileRise

FileRise is a modern, self-hosted web file manager / WebDAV server.
Drag & drop uploads, ACL-aware sharing, OnlyOffice integration, and a clean UI — all in a single PHP app that you control.

• 💾 Self-hosted “cloud drive” – Runs anywhere with PHP (or via Docker). No external DB required.
• 🔐 Granular per-folder ACLs – Manage, View (all/own), Upload, Create, Edit, Rename, Move, Copy, Delete, Extract, Share… all enforced centrally across the UI, API, and WebDAV.
• 🔄 Fast drag-and-drop uploads – Chunked, resumable uploads with pause/resume and progress. If your connection drops, FileRise resumes automatically.
• 🌳 Scales to huge trees – Tested with 100k+ folders in the sidebar tree without choking the UI.
• 🌈 Visual organization – Color-code folders in the tree, inline list, and folder strip, plus tag files with color-coded labels for quick scanning.
• 👀 Hover preview “peek” cards – On desktop, hover files or folders to see a thumbnail (for images/video), quick metadata (size, timestamps, tags), and effective permissions. Per-user toggle stored in localStorage.
• 🎬 Smart media handling – Track per-file video watch progress with a “watched” indicator, remember last volume/mute state, and reset progress when needed.
• 🧩 ONLYOFFICE support (optional) – Edit DOCX/XLSX/PPTX using your own Document Server; ODT/ODS/ODP supported as well. PDFs can be viewed inline.
• 🌍 WebDAV (ACL-aware) – Mount FileRise as a drive from macOS, Windows, Linux, or Cyberduck/WinSCP. Listings, uploads, overwrites, deletes, and folder creates all honor the same ACLs as the web UI.
• 🏷️ Tags, search & trash – Tag files, search by name/tag/uploader/content via fuzzy search, and recover mistakes via a Trash with time-based retention.
• 📚 API + live docs – OpenAPI spec (openapi.json) plus an embedded Redoc viewer (api.html) for exploring endpoints.
• 📊 Storage / disk usage summary – CLI scanner with snapshots, total usage, and per-volume breakdowns surfaced in the admin panel.
• 🎨 Polished, responsive UI – Dark/light mode, mobile-friendly layout, in-browser previews, and a built-in code editor powered by CodeMirror.
• 🌐 Internationalization – English, Spanish, French, German, and Simplified Chinese included; community translations welcome.
• 🔑 Login + SSO – Local users, TOTP 2FA, and OIDC (Auth0 / Authentik / Keycloak / etc.) with optional auto-provisioning, IdP-driven admin role, and Pro user-group mapping.
• 🛡️ ClamAV virus scanning (Core) + Pro virus log – Optional ClamAV upload scanning, with a Pro virus detection log in the admin panel and CSV export.
• 👥 Pro: user groups, client portals & storage explorer – Group-based ACLs, brandable client upload portals, and an ncdu-style storage explorer for drilling into largest folders/files and cleaning up space inline.

Full list of features available at Full Feature Wiki

💡 Looking for FileRise Pro (brandable header, user groups, client upload portals, license handling)? Check out filerise.net – FileRise Core stays fully open-source (MIT).

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Quick links

• 🚀 Live demo: Demo (username: demo / password: demo)
• 📚 Docs & Wiki: Wiki
  • Features overview
  • WebDAV
  • ONLYOFFICE
• 🐳 Docker image: Docker
• 💬 Discord: Join the FileRise server
• 📝 Changelog: Changes

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1. What FileRise does

FileRise turns a folder on your server into a web-based file explorer with:

• Folder tree + breadcrumbs for fast navigation
• Multi-file/folder drag-and-drop uploads
• Move / copy / rename / delete / extract ZIP
• Public share links (optionally password-protected & expiring)
• Tagging and search by name, tag, uploader, and content
• Trash with restore/purge
• Inline previews (images, audio, video, PDF) and a built-in code editor

Everything flows through a single ACL engine, so permissions are enforced consistently whether users are in the browser UI, using WebDAV, or hitting the API.

Login & SSO (OIDC roles + groups)

FileRise supports local accounts, TOTP 2FA, and modern OIDC providers (Auth0, Authentik, Keycloak, …).
Beyond “just login”, OIDC can now drive roles and Pro user groups:

• 🧑‍💻 Auto-provision users
• 👑 IdP-driven admin role
• 👥 Pro: OIDC groups → FileRise Pro user groups
• 🧪 Admin: OIDC connectivity test

➡️ Full docs: OIDC / SSO setup

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2. Install (Docker – recommended)

The easiest way to run FileRise is the official Docker image.

Option A – Quick start (docker run)

docker run -d \
  --name filerise \
  -p 8080:80 \
  -e TIMEZONE="America/New_York" \
  -e TOTAL_UPLOAD_SIZE="10G" \
  -e SECURE="false" \
  -e PERSISTENT_TOKENS_KEY="default_please_change_this_key" \
  -e SCAN_ON_START="true" \
  -e CHOWN_ON_START="true" \
  -v ~/filerise/uploads:/var/www/uploads \
  -v ~/filerise/users:/var/www/users \
  -v ~/filerise/metadata:/var/www/metadata \
  error311/filerise-docker:latest

Then visit:

http://your-server-ip:8080

On first launch you’ll be guided through creating the initial admin user.

💡 After the first run, you can set CHOWN_ON_START="false" if permissions are already correct and you don’t want a recursive chown on every start.

⚠️ Uploads folder recommendation

It’s strongly recommended to bind /var/www/uploads to a dedicated folder (for example ~/filerise/uploads or /mnt/user/appdata/FileRise/uploads), not the root of a huge media share.

If you really want FileRise to sit “on top of” an existing share, use a subfolder (e.g. /mnt/user/media/filerise_root) instead of the share root, so scans and permission changes stay scoped to that folder.

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Option B – docker-compose.yml

services:
  filerise:
    image: error311/filerise-docker:latest
    container_name: filerise
    ports:
      - "8080:80"
    environment:
      TIMEZONE: "America/New_York"
      TOTAL_UPLOAD_SIZE: "10G"
      SECURE: "false"
      PERSISTENT_TOKENS_KEY: "default_please_change_this_key"
      SCAN_ON_START: "true"   # auto-index existing files on startup
      CHOWN_ON_START: "true"  # fix permissions on uploads/users/metadata on startup
    volumes:
      - ./uploads:/var/www/uploads
      - ./users:/var/www/users
      - ./metadata:/var/www/metadata

Bring it up with:

docker compose up -d

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Common environment variables

Variable	Required	Example	What it does
TIMEZONE	✅	America/New_York	PHP / container timezone.
TOTAL_UPLOAD_SIZE	✅	10G	Max total upload size per request (e.g. 5G, 10G). Also used to set PHP upload_max_filesize and post_max_size, and Apache LimitRequestBody.
SECURE	✅	false	true when running behind HTTPS / a reverse proxy, else false.
PERSISTENT_TOKENS_KEY	✅	change_me_super_secret	Secret used to sign “remember me”/persistent tokens. Do not leave this at the default.
DATE_TIME_FORMAT	Optional	Y-m-d H:i	Overrides DATE_TIME_FORMAT in config.php (controls how dates/times are rendered in the UI).
SCAN_ON_START	Optional	true	If true, runs scan_uploads.php once on container start to index existing files.
CHOWN_ON_START	Optional	true	If true (default), recursively chowns uploads/, users/, and metadata/ to www-data:www-data on startup. Set to false if you manage ownership yourself.
PUID	Optional	99	If running as root, remap www-data user to this UID (e.g. Unraid’s 99).
PGID	Optional	100	If running as root, remap www-data group to this GID (e.g. Unraid’s 100).
HTTP_PORT	Optional	8080	Override Apache Listen 80 and vhost port with this port inside the container.
HTTPS_PORT	Optional	8443	If you terminate TLS inside the container, override Listen 443 with this port.
SERVER_NAME	Optional	files.example.com	Sets Apache’s ServerName (defaults to FileRise if not provided).
LOG_STREAM	Optional	error	Controls which logs are streamed to container stdout: error, access, both, or none.
VIRUS_SCAN_ENABLED	Optional	true	If true, enable ClamAV-based virus scanning for uploads.
VIRUS_SCAN_CMD	Optional	clamscan	Command used to scan files. Can be clamscan, clamdscan, or a wrapper with flags.
CLAMAV_AUTO_UPDATE	Optional	true	If true and running as root, call freshclam on startup to update signatures.
SHARE_URL	Optional	https://files.example.com	Overrides the base URL used when generating public share links (useful behind reverse proxies).

If DATE_TIME_FORMAT is not set, FileRise uses the default from config/config.php (currently m/d/y h:iA).

🗂 Using an existing folder tree

• Point /var/www/uploads at the folder you want FileRise to manage.
• Set SCAN_ON_START="true" on the first run to index existing files, then usually set it to "false" so the container doesn’t rescan on every restart.
• CHOWN_ON_START="true" is handy on first run to fix permissions. If you map a large share or already manage ownership yourself, set it to "false" to avoid recursive chown on every start.

Volumes:

• /var/www/uploads – your actual files
• /var/www/users – user & pro jsons
• /var/www/metadata – tags, search index, share links, etc.

More Docker / orchestration options (Unraid, Portainer, k8s, reverse proxy, etc.)

• Install & Setup
• Nginx
• FAQ
• Kubernetes / k8s deployment
• Portainer templates: add this URL in Portainer → Settings → App Templates:
  https://raw.githubusercontent.com/error311/filerise-portainer-templates/refs/heads/main/templates.json
• See also the Docker repo: error311/filerise-docker

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3. Manual install (PHP web server)

Prefer bare-metal or your own stack? FileRise is just PHP + a few extensions.

Requirements

• PHP 8.3+
• Web server (Apache / Nginx / Caddy + PHP-FPM)
• PHP extensions: json, curl, zip (and usual defaults)
• No database required

FileRise ships as a standard PHP app with this layout:

• config/
• public/ ← web server DocumentRoot
• src/
• uploads/, users/, metadata/ (data directories; you can create them up front as shown below — FileRise will attempt to create them on first run if they’re missing and permissions allow)

mkdir -p uploads users metadata
chown -R www-data:www-data uploads users metadata   # adjust for your web user
chmod -R 775 uploads users metadata

You can install from a release ZIP (recommended) or from git.

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3.1 Install from release ZIP (recommended)

1. Download the latest release ZIP to /var/www

   cd /var/www
   
   VERSION="v2.5.2"  # replace with the tag you want
   ASSET="FileRise-${VERSION}.zip"
   
   curl -fsSL "https://github.com/error311/FileRise/releases/download/${VERSION}/${ASSET}" -o "${ASSET}"
   unzip "${ASSET}"
   # The ZIP already contains config/, public/, src/, etc. at the top level

2. Create data directories (if they don’t exist) and set permissions

   mkdir -p uploads users metadata
   chown -R www-data:www-data uploads users metadata   # adjust for your web user
   chmod -R 775 uploads users metadata

3. (Usually optional) Install PHP dependencies

   Release ZIPs are built with vendor/ included for convenience.
   If vendor/ is missing and you have Composer:

   cd /var/www
   composer install --no-dev --optimize-autoloader

4. Point your web server at public/

   • Apache: DocumentRoot /var/www/public
   • Nginx / Caddy: root should also be /var/www/public
     (PHP via PHP-FPM)

   Enable URL rewriting:

   • Apache: allow .htaccess inside public/ or copy its rules into your vhost.
   • Nginx / Caddy: mirror the protections from public/.htaccess (no directory listing, block config, src, etc.).

5. Open FileRise in the browser

   Go to your URL (e.g. https://files.example.com) and follow the admin setup screen.

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3.2 Install from git (developer mode)

1. Clone into /var/www

   cd /var/www
   git clone https://github.com/error311/FileRise.git .

2. Create data directories and set permissions

   mkdir -p uploads users metadata
   chown -R www-data:www-data uploads users metadata   # adjust for your web user
   chmod -R 775 uploads users metadata

3. Install PHP dependencies

   composer install

4. Configure your web server

   • DocumentRoot → /var/www/public
   • PHP-FPM / mod_php enabled
   • Rewrites / protections as above

5. Hit your FileRise URL and complete setup

For detailed examples and reverse proxy snippets, see the Wiki:
Install & Setup.

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4. Updating an existing manual install

If you deployed FileRise directly in /var/www, you can use this helper script to update to a new release without touching your data.

Save this as scripts/update-filerise.sh update-filerise.sh (make it executable with chmod +x scripts/update-filerise.sh):

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4. WebDAV & ONLYOFFICE (optional)

WebDAV

Once enabled in the Admin panel, FileRise exposes a WebDAV endpoint (e.g. /webdav.php). Use it with:

• macOS Finder – Go → Connect to Server → https://your-host/webdav.php/
• Windows File Explorer – Map Network Drive → https://your-host/webdav.php/
• Linux (GVFS/Nautilus) – dav://your-host/webdav.php/
• Clients like Cyberduck, WinSCP, etc.

WebDAV operations honor the same ACLs as the web UI.

See: WebDAV

ONLYOFFICE integration

If you run an ONLYOFFICE Document Server you can open/edit Office documents directly from FileRise (DOCX, XLSX, PPTX, ODT, ODS, ODP; PDFs view-only).

Configure it in Admin → ONLYOFFICE:

• Enable ONLYOFFICE
• Set your Document Server origin (e.g. https://docs.example.com)
• Configure a shared JWT secret
• Copy the suggested Content-Security-Policy header into your reverse proxy

Docs: ONLYOFFICE

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5. Security & updates

• FileRise is actively maintained and has published security advisories.
• See SECURITY.md and GitHub Security Advisories for details.
• To upgrade:
  • Docker: docker pull error311/filerise-docker:latest and recreate the container with the same volumes.
  • Manual: replace app files with the latest release (keep uploads/, users/, metadata/, and your config).

Please report vulnerabilities responsibly via the channels listed in SECURITY.md.

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6. Community, support & contributing

• 🧵 GitHub Discussions & Issues: ask questions, report bugs, suggest features.
• 💬 Unraid forum thread: for Unraid-specific setup and tuning.
• 🌍 Reddit / self-hosting communities: occasional release posts & feedback threads.

Contributions are welcome — from bug fixes and docs to translations and UI polish.
See CONTRIBUTING.md for guidelines.

If FileRise saves you time or becomes your daily driver, a ⭐ on GitHub or sponsorship is hugely appreciated:

• ❤️ GitHub Sponsors
• ☕ Ko-fi

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7. License & third-party code

FileRise Core is released under the MIT License – see LICENSE.

It bundles a small set of well-known client and server libraries (Bootstrap, CodeMirror, DOMPurify, Fuse.js, Resumable.js, sabre/dav, etc.).
All third-party code remains under its original licenses.

The official Docker image includes the ClamAV antivirus scanner (GPL-2.0-only) for optional upload scanning.

See THIRD_PARTY.md and the licenses/ folder for full details.

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8. Press

• Heise / iX Magazin – “FileRise 2.0: Web-Dateimanager mit Client Portals” (DE)
• Heise / iX Magazin – “FileRise 2.0: Web File Manager with Client Portals” (EN)