# ImgYoung

- [Introduction](/en/docs): ImgYoung is a self-hosted image host with multi-channel failover. Every image is stored on several storage channels, so losing one does not break uploads or links.
- [Quick start](/en/docs/quick-start): Run ImgYoung with Docker, sign in to the console, upload your first image and get its Markdown link.

- **Install**
- Install
  - [Installation](/en/docs/install): Five ways to install, compared - the install script, the Docker image, Docker Compose, release archives and building from source.
  - [Install script](/en/docs/install/script): Download a release on Linux or macOS, verify its sha256 and put it on the PATH; on Linux it can also register a systemd service. Running it again upgrades.
  - [Docker image](/en/docs/install/docker): Run ImgYoung from the multi-arch image on GHCR - the run command, image tags, the data volume, environment variables and settings behind a reverse proxy.
  - [Docker Compose](/en/docs/install/compose): Run ImgYoung with the compose.yaml from the repository, and pair it with Caddy for automatic HTTPS.
  - [Release archives](/en/docs/install/binary): Download the archive for your platform, verify its sha256 and run it directly; suited to Windows and to environments where the install script is inconvenient.
  - [Build from source](/en/docs/install/source): Build the single binary with the admin console from source, and why the build flags are what they are.

- **Usage**
- Guides
  - [Uploading](/en/docs/guides/upload): Upload images through the HTTP API, URL fetch or the admin console, plus format and size limits, EXIF handling, idempotency keys, how duplicates are handled and what a successful upload guarantees.
  - [Upload clients](/en/docs/guides/clients): Connect PicGo, PicList, Typora, the aws CLI, rclone and other clients to ImgYoung, either as a custom web uploader or over the S3 protocol.
  - [Accessing images](/en/docs/guides/access): The two forms of image links, caching and conditional requests, on-demand resizing and WebP negotiation, the proxy and 302 access modes, hotlink protection, and how accesses are counted.
  - [Lifecycle and deduplication](/en/docs/guides/lifecycle): How lifetimes are resolved across three levels and renewed on access, expiry sweeps and the three-stage delete, tagging and reviewing cold images, and automatic merging of exact duplicates alongside manual review of near-duplicates.
  - [Admin console](/en/docs/guides/admin): What each page of the admin console is for, how administrators and regular users differ, quotas and upload rate limits, the full lifecycle of upload tokens, and sign-in, sessions and interface preferences.

- **Storage channels**
- Storage channels
  - [Channels and failover](/en/docs/channels): What a channel is, where uploads go, how replicas are filled in, how reads fail over, and the rules for health checks, editing, deleting and usage alerts.
  - [Object storage and WebDAV](/en/docs/channels/object-storage): What each built-in object storage template asks for, why buckets must exist beforehand, public URLs and 302 direct links, custom mode and generic WebDAV, and how to read probe errors.
  - [Cloud drives and OAuth](/en/docs/channels/cloud-drives): Which drives need authorization, the two ways to authorize, how tokens are refreshed and stored, how Chinese cloud drives connect over WebDAV through a self-hosted aggregator, and the limits every drive channel shares.
  - [Channel encryption](/en/docs/channels/encryption): Store only ciphertext at your provider with rclone crypt — what it protects against, how to turn it on, why it is fixed at creation, where the keys come from, and how to decrypt a channel with stock rclone without ImgYoung.

- **Configure & operate**
- [Configuration](/en/docs/configuration): Every bootstrap setting (environment variable) and runtime setting (admin console), with defaults, valid ranges and when changes take effect, plus how to keep the master key safe.
- Operations
  - [Reverse proxy & HTTPS](/en/docs/operations/reverse-proxy): Put Caddy or Nginx in front of ImgYoung and get IMGYOUNG_TRUSTED_PROXIES, base_url and the upload size limit right.
  - [CDN](/en/docs/operations/cdn): Putting a CDN in front of ImgYoung — cache headers, WebP negotiation and Vary, cache keys for on-demand processing, Cloudflare cache purging, and how redirect mode and hotlink protection behave behind a CDN.
  - [Backup & restore](/en/docs/operations/backup): Automatic metadata snapshots, restoring from a snapshot, disaster recovery after losing the host, the metadata export, and reconciliation GC.
  - [Upgrading](/en/docs/operations/upgrade): Upgrade commands for each installation method, the database migrations that run automatically at startup, and what to watch out for when rolling back.
  - [Forgotten password](/en/docs/operations/password-reset): Recover the built-in administrator by clearing its password hash and restarting to get the factory password back; reset other users' passwords from the admin console.
  - [Monitoring & alerts](/en/docs/operations/monitoring): /healthz and /metrics, scraping with Prometheus, alert conditions and the webhook payload, and logs.

- **Developers**
- Go library
  - [Using it as a Go library](/en/docs/library): ImgYoung's storage layer ships as three public packages you can go get — a driver interface, an rclone implementation, and multi-store failover primitives.
  - [Driver interface and rclone implementation](/en/docs/library/driver): The Driver contract, rclone.Open options, password parameter encoding, OAuth token write-back, the crypt layer, and writing your own driver.
  - [Multi-store failover](/en/docs/library/failover): The write, read, and health check primitives in store/failover, a complete primary/backup example, and building replication on top of them.
- API reference
  - [API reference](/en/docs/api): Authentication, error format, and shared conventions of the ImgYoung HTTP API; per-group endpoint details are generated from the OpenAPI document.
  - [Data plane](/en/docs/api/data-plane): Uploads and URL fetch, authenticated with upload tokens
  - [Image access](/en/docs/api/image-access): Public image delivery, subject to hotlink protection
  - [System](/en/docs/api/system): Health check and API document
  - [Admin · Session](/en/docs/api/admin-session): Sign in, sign out, current user and password change
  - [Admin · Overview and settings](/en/docs/api/admin-overview): Dashboard and runtime configuration
  - [Admin · Upload](/en/docs/api/admin-upload): Session-authenticated uploads through the same pipeline as the data plane
  - [Admin · Images](/en/docs/api/admin-images): Image list, details, edits and deletion
  - [Admin · Upload tokens](/en/docs/api/admin-tokens): Issuing, rotating and revoking named upload tokens, and their S3 credentials
  - [Admin · Storage channels](/en/docs/api/admin-channels): Channel templates, creation, editing, probing, deletion and cloud drive authorization
  - [Admin · Users](/en/docs/api/admin-users): User accounts, quotas and password resets (admins only)
  - [Admin · Hotlink protection](/en/docs/api/admin-referer): Referer allowlist (admins only)
  - [Admin · Review](/en/docs/api/admin-review): Review of similar duplicates and cold images awaiting cleanup (admins only)
  - [Admin · Operations](/en/docs/api/admin-operations): Audit log, alerts, backup snapshots and metadata export (admins only)
- [Architecture](/en/docs/architecture): Single-instance design, layers and dependency direction, the data model, upload and access data flows, the outbox fence, periodic tasks, and why rclone is integrated in-process.

## Full text and other languages

- [English full text](/en/llms-full.txt)
- [中文索引 (Chinese index)](/zh/llms.txt)
- [中文全文 (Chinese full text)](/zh/llms-full.txt)