SimplyFiles

A minimal, self-hosted file system with full-text content search. Fast, filesystem-first document explorer built with NestJS, React, and PostgreSQL.

Features

• 📁 Nested folder management
• 📤 File upload (drag & drop or click)
• 👁️ File preview (images, PDF, text, video, audio)
• 🔍 Full-text content search (BM25 via PostgreSQL)
• 📥 File download
• 🐳 Docker Compose deployment

Quick Start (Production)

The fastest way to run SimplyFiles using pre-built Docker Hub images (no login required):

One-line setup:

mkdir -p ~/simplyfiles && cd ~/simplyfiles && wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/totolouis/SimplyFiles/main/docker-compose.prod.yml -O docker-compose.yml && wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/totolouis/SimplyFiles/main/.env.example -O .env

Or step by step:

# 1. Create directory
mkdir ~/simplyfiles && cd ~/simplyfiles

# 2. Download compose file
wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/totolouis/SimplyFiles/main/docker-compose.prod.yml -O docker-compose.yml

# 3. Download environment template
wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/totolouis/SimplyFiles/main/.env.example -O .env

# 4. Edit .env with your settings
nano .env

# 5. Start the services
docker compose up -d

Then open: http://localhost:23739

The web UI runs on port 23739, the API on port 3001.

Stop

cd ~/simplyfiles && docker compose down

Update to latest version

cd ~/simplyfiles && docker compose pull && docker compose up -d

Configuration

Create a .env file by copying .env.example. Here are all the available options:

Database (PostgreSQL)

Variable	Default	Description
POSTGRES_USER	simplyfiles	PostgreSQL username
POSTGRES_PASSWORD	simplyfiles	PostgreSQL password (change this!)
POSTGRES_DB	simplyfiles	PostgreSQL database name

Backend (NestJS API)

Variable	Default	Description
PORT	3001	API server port (internal, don't change unless you know what you're doing)
MAX_UPLOAD_SIZE	524288000 (500MB)	Maximum file upload size in bytes
SEARCH_LANG	english	PostgreSQL full-text search language. Supported: english, french, german, spanish, italian, etc.
SEARCH_CHUNK_SIZE	1500	Document indexing chunk size (characters). Larger = more accurate but slower search
OCR_ENABLED	true	Enable OCR for text extraction from images/PDFs (requires Tesseract)
CORS_ORIGIN	http://localhost:23739	Allowed CORS origin (should match your frontend URL)

Frontend (React)

Variable	Default	Description
MAX_FOLDER_DEPTH	5	Maximum nesting level for folders (UI restriction)

Deployment

Variable	Default	Description
APP_VERSION	latest	Docker image version tag to use

Development (Build from source)

Prerequisites

• Docker & Docker Compose

Run

docker compose up --build

Then open: http://localhost:3000

The API runs on port 3001, the web UI on port 3000.

Backend (NestJS)

cd backend
npm install
# Set env vars (see .env.example or docker-compose.yml)
npm run start:dev

Frontend (React + Vite)

cd frontend
npm install
npm run dev

The Vite dev server proxies /api to http://localhost:3001.

Architecture

Frontend (React + Vite) → Nginx → NestJS API → PostgreSQL (metadata + search)
→ Filesystem (binary files)

• Files are stored on disk by UUID, never in the database
• PostgreSQL tsvector + GIN index powers sub-50ms full-text search
• Only plain-text files are indexed (txt, md, csv, json, log, code files, etc.)

File Preview Support

Type	Preview
Images	Inline <img>
PDF	<iframe>
Text	Rendered text
Video	<video>
Audio	<audio>
Others	Download only

Security Note

No authentication is included by design. Deploy behind a reverse proxy (Caddy, Traefik, nginx) on a private network or VPN for production use.