Abstract violet and amber illustration representing a lightweight self-hosted web file manager

Filebrowser Quantum

Filebrowser Quantum

Filebrowser Quantum is a lightweight, self-hosted web file manager, and specifically a fork of the older, better-known Filebrowser project, rebuilt by a single very active maintainer who wanted faster development and a more ambitious feature set than the original project’s pace allowed. It’s not trying to be a full personal cloud platform like Nextcloud. It’s trying to be the best possible browser-based window into folders that already exist on a server.

What Filebrowser Quantum actually does

The name is a bit of a joke on the maintainer’s part, “Quantum” for packing a lot of advanced features into a genuinely tiny binary and Docker image. Under the hood, it indexes whatever folders it’s pointed at using an embedded SQLite database, so search is instant and results update in real time as files change, rather than scanning the filesystem fresh on every request the way plainer file browsers do.

License: Apache-2.0, confirmed directly from the LICENSE file in the gtsteffaniak/filebrowser GitHub repository. The project’s own documentation states the goal plainly: become the best open-source self-hosted file browser that exists, and stay free while doing it. There’s no paid tier anywhere in the project.

Worth knowing going in: this is a fork, not a from-scratch project, and the maintainer is upfront about why it exists separately rather than as pull requests back to the original Filebrowser. The original project’s maintainers had gone much less active, and the changes needed were closer to a rewrite than an incremental patch. Shell command execution, present in the original Filebrowser, was removed entirely from Quantum as a deliberate security decision.

Core features

  • Multiple sources: mount and browse several separate directories or storage locations from one interface, with include/exclude rules per source.
  • Real-time indexed search: instant search-as-you-type across file and folder names and sizes, with the index updating live as files change on disk.
  • Flexible authentication: password login with optional two-factor authentication, OIDC single sign-on, LDAP, JWT, and proxy authentication.
  • Configurable sharing: share links with expiration dates, anonymous or user-restricted access, and separate permissions for viewing, editing, and uploading.
  • Directory-level access control scoped to individual users or groups, plus a documented API with long-lived tokens and a Swagger endpoint.

Installing Filebrowser Quantum with Docker

Official images are published on both Docker Hub (gtstef/filebrowser) and GitHub Container Registry (ghcr.io/gtsteffaniak/filebrowser), documented at filebrowserquantum.com. The stable tag ships around 60MB with FFmpeg and document preview support built in; a stable-slim tag drops to roughly 15MB with core file-browsing only, no media or office previews.

Create a data directory with a config.yaml defining at least one source:

server:
  cacheDir: /home/filebrowser/data/tmp
  sources:
    - path: /folder
      config:
        defaultEnabled: true

Then a minimal docker-compose.yaml:

services:
  filebrowser:
    image: gtstef/filebrowser:stable
    volumes:
      - /path/to/your/folder:/folder
      - ./data:/home/filebrowser/data
    ports:
      - 80:80
    restart: unless-stopped

Bring it up with:

docker compose up -d

Open the server’s address in a browser; the default login is admin / admin, worth changing immediately. Config, database, and cache all live under the mounted ./data directory, which is what to back up.

Hardware: genuinely light. The official docs list 256MB of RAM as a typical minimum, since it’s a single Go binary with no external database or message queue running alongside it. The main variable is how much gets indexed; pointing it at a filesystem with millions of files needs more memory than a folder of a few thousand.

Prerequisites

Docker on a Linux, macOS, or Windows host (standalone binaries also exist for all three, if Docker isn’t wanted at all), and a folder that already exists somewhere on disk to point it at. No database server, no separate cache service, nothing else to stand up first.

Filebrowser Quantum vs. the alternatives

Filebrowser Quantum sits in the same rough space as Cloudreve and the classic Filebrowser it forked from: a browser-based window into files already on a server, rather than a full sync platform like Nextcloud or Seafile.

  • Genuinely tiny, both in Docker image size and memory footprint, noticeably lighter than Cloudreve or Nextcloud
  • Fully open source under Apache-2.0 with no paid tier at all, unlike Cloudreve’s Pro-gated frontend
  • Real-time indexed search is fast in a way plain directory listings aren’t, especially on large folder trees
  • No native mobile app, unlike Nextcloud, Seafile, or Cloudreve
  • No S3 or object-storage backend support; it works against filesystem paths, not cloud storage APIs
  • Younger project under fast-moving development, so expect more frequent releases and occasional rough edges than a decade-old project like the original Filebrowser

Against Cloudreve, Quantum trades storage-backend flexibility (no S3, no OneDrive) for a dramatically smaller footprint and zero licensing complexity. Against Nextcloud, it trades sync and groupware features entirely for being the fastest, lightest way to put a folder that already exists on a browsable, shareable web interface. For syncing files between multiple devices rather than browsing ones already on a server, Syncthing is a better fit.

Official resources

FAQ

Is Filebrowser Quantum free?

Yes, fully. It’s open source under Apache-2.0 with no paid tier, no license key, and no feature gate anywhere in the project, confirmed from its own documentation and GitHub repository.

How is this different from the original Filebrowser project?

Quantum is a fork by a single very active maintainer who wanted a faster pace of development and a more ambitious feature set: multiple sources, OIDC and LDAP login, real-time indexed search, and a documented API, among other additions. Shell command execution from the original project was removed for security.

Does Filebrowser Quantum sync files between devices?

No. It’s a web interface to files that already live in one place, not a sync tool. For syncing files between multiple devices, Syncthing or Nextcloud are better fits.

Do I need a database server to run it?

No. It uses an embedded SQLite database for its own index and configuration, stored on disk alongside the app. There’s nothing extra to install or maintain.