Galleries

A gallery is a named folder plus its own database and thumbnails. Each gallery is fully independent: its own images, tags, saved searches, collections and relations. One instance can hold several - art in one, photos in another - and the footer shows which one is active; click the name to switch when more than one is configured.

Manage them at Settings -> Galleries:

  • Add: give it a name and a path on disk (with Docker, a folder you mounted into the container). The form also accepts an import file (.db / .sqlite / .json / .zip) so you can create a populated gallery in one shot. Adding switches the active gallery to the new one for this session.
  • Switch: change the active gallery for this session. Not persisted; the default is restored on restart.
  • Set default: the gallery that loads on startup.
  • Rename: give it a new name.
  • Delete: type the gallery name to confirm. The database and thumbnails are erased; tick Also delete the gallery folder (source images) to remove the source files too. The active, default and last remaining gallery cannot be deleted - switch or demote first.

Export

Each gallery row has an Export with three formats:

  • db: a consistent SQLite snapshot of the gallery database. The natural full-fidelity backup.
  • json: one JSON document with every table, relations and collections included. Same fidelity, human-readable.
  • light: a portable tags.json listing {sha256, path, tags} per image, with everything monbooru-specific (SD/ComfyUI metadata, saved searches, tag attribution, manga metadata) stripped. Useful as a tags-only backup or as input for other software. Only images present on disk are listed.

Tick with images to bundle the chosen format plus every file under the gallery into a .zip. Thumbnails are excluded; they rebuild after import. A db or json export without images carries metadata only.

Import

Import accepts a .db, .sqlite, .json or .zip produced by Export, plus two foreign formats: a Blombooru full_backup.zip and a zipped Hydrus export folder (see Migrating). A .json upload can be a full export or a bare light tags.json; monbooru detects which.

Two modes:

  • Merge (preselected) adds new images and tags from the upload to the target gallery. Existing rows are kept; tags from the upload are layered onto matching images (matched by SHA-256). A .db or .json upload carries no image bytes, so on its own it applies tags only; new images arrive only from a .zip that bundles files.
  • Replace wipes the target gallery’s database and thumbnails, then loads the upload into the empty gallery. When the upload bundles image files, the gallery’s source folder is wiped and repopulated too; a bare .db / .json leaves the source files in place. You type the gallery’s name to confirm. Refused on the active and the default gallery - switch or demote first.

After an import monbooru switches to the imported gallery and rebuilds its thumbnails in the background. Import is refused while any background job is running. An imported entry whose file is not on disk still lands as a tagged row flagged missing; find those with missing:true. Files inside an archive are capped at the configured max_file_size_mb, the whole upload at 16 GiB.

Transfer

To move a few images to another gallery without an export/import cycle, use Transfer. It appears on the detail page and in the gallery batch bar (selection or whole search) whenever more than one gallery is configured.

The image is copied into the target gallery and re-ingested there, so it gets a fresh id and thumbnail. Its tags, rating, sources, artist commentary, annotations, note, original source and favorite come along. If the target already has the same file (matched by SHA-256), the transfer merges tags and provenance into that row instead of duplicating it, without overwriting a note, original source or favorite the row already has.

Relations and collections are not carried over: they point at other images that may not exist in the target. The transferred image lands in the target’s inbox for you to re-file. Tick Remove from this gallery after transfer to move instead of copy; the source is deleted once the copy succeeds.