miniserve(1) General Commands Manual miniserve(1)

miniserve - For when you really just want to serve some files over HTTP right now!

miniserve [-v|--verbose] [--temp-directory] [--index] [--spa] [--quiet] [--pretty-urls] [-p|--port] [-i|--interfaces] [--workers] [-a|--auth] [--auth-file] [--route-prefix] [--random-route] [-P|--no-symlinks] [-H|--hidden] [-S|--default-sorting-method] [-O|--default-sorting-order] [-c|--color-scheme] [-d|--color-scheme-dark] [-q|--qrcode] [-u|--upload-files] [--web-upload-files-concurrency] [--chmod] [--directory-size] [-U|--mkdir] [--pastebin] [-m|--media-type] [-M|--raw-media-type] [-o|--on-duplicate-files] [-R|--rm-files] [-r|--enable-tar] [-g|--enable-tar-gz] [-z|--enable-zip] [-C|--compress-response] [-D|--dirs-first] [-t|--title] [--header] [-l|--show-symlink-info] [-F|--hide-version-footer] [--hide-theme-selector] [-W|--show-wget-footer] [--print-completions] [--print-manpage] [--tls-cert] [--tls-key] [--readme] [-I|--disable-indexing] [--enable-webdav] [--size-display] [--file-external-url] [--log-color] [-h|--help] [-V|--version] [PATH]

For when you really just want to serve some files over HTTP right now!

Be verbose, includes emitting access logs
The path to where file uploads will be written to before being moved to their correct location. It's wise to make sure that this directory will be written to disk and not into memory.

This value will only be used **IF** file uploading is enabled. If this option is not set, the operating system default temporary directory will be used.

The name of a directory index file to serve, like "index.html"

Normally, when miniserve serves a directory, it creates a listing for that directory. However, if a directory contains this file, miniserve will serve that file instead.

Activate SPA (Single Page Application) mode

This will cause the file given by --index to be served for all non-existing file paths. In effect, this will serve the index file whenever a 404 would otherwise occur in order to allow the SPA router to handle the request instead.

Reduce output and silence warnings
Activate Pretty URLs mode

This will cause the server to serve the equivalent `.html` file indicated by the path.

`/about` will try to find `about.html` and serve it.

Port to use
Interface to listen on
Number of server workers
Set authentication

Currently supported formats: username:password, username:sha256:hash, username:sha512:hash (e.g. joe:123, joe:sha256:a665a45920422f9d417e4867efdc4fb8a04a1f3fff1fa07e998e86f7f7a27ae3)

Read authentication values from a file

Example file content:

joe:123 bob:sha256:a665a45920422f9d417e4867efdc4fb8a04a1f3fff1fa07e998e86f7f7a27ae3 bill:

Use a specific route prefix
Generate a random 6-hexdigit route
Hide symlinks in listing and prevent them from being followed
Show hidden files
Default sorting method for file list

Possible values:

  • name: Sort by name
  • size: Sort by size
  • date: Sort by last modification date (natural sort: follows alphanumerical order)
Default sorting order for file list

Possible values:

  • asc: Ascending order
  • desc: Descending order
Default color scheme

Possible values:

  • squirrel
  • archlinux
  • ayu-dark
  • zenburn
  • monokai
Default color scheme

Possible values:

  • squirrel
  • archlinux
  • ayu-dark
  • zenburn
  • monokai
Enable QR code display
Enable file uploading (and optionally specify for which directory)

The provided path is not a physical file system path. Instead, it's relative to the serve dir. For instance, if the serve dir is '/home/hello', set this to '/upload' to allow uploading to '/home/hello/upload'. When specified via environment variable, a path always needs to be specified.

Configure amount of concurrent uploads when visiting the website. Must have upload-files option enabled for this setting to matter.

For example, a value of 4 would mean that the web browser will only upload 4 files at a time to the web server when using the web browser interface.

When the value is kept at 0, it attempts to resolve all the uploads at once in the web browser.

NOTE: Web pages have a limit of how many active HTTP connections that they can make at one time, so even though you might set a concurrency limit of 100, the browser might only make progress on the max amount of connections it allows the web page to have open.

Set unix file permissions of uploaded files

This takes an octal number, for example 0600. By default 0666 & ~umask is used to simulate the system's default behavior.

Enable recursive directory size calculation

This is disabled by default because it is a potentially fairly IO intensive operation.

Enable creating directories
Enable creating pastebin 'pastes'

'pastes' are plaintext files created in the current directory. Creation requires file uploads be enabled.

Specify uploadable media types

Possible values:

  • image
  • audio
  • video
Directly specify the uploadable media type expression
What to do if existing files with same name is present during file upload

If you enable renaming files, the renaming will occur by adding a numerical suffix to the filename before the final extension. For example file.txt will be uploaded as file-1.txt, the number will be increased until an available filename is found.

Possible values:

  • error
  • overwrite
  • rename
Enable file and directory deletion (and optionally specify for which directory)
Enable uncompressed tar archive generation
Enable gz-compressed tar archive generation
Enable zip archive generation

WARNING: Zipping large directories can result in out-of-memory exception because zip generation is done in memory and cannot be sent on the fly

Compress response

WARNING: Enabling this option may slow down transfers due to CPU overhead, so it is disabled by default.

Only enable this option if you know that your users have slow connections or if you want to minimize your server's bandwidth usage.

List directories first
Shown instead of host in page title and heading
Inserts custom headers into the responses. Specify each header as a 'Header:Value' pair. This parameter can be used multiple times to add multiple headers.

Example: --header "Header1:Value1" --header "Header2:Value2" (If a header is already set or previously inserted, it will not be overwritten.)

Visualize symlinks in directory listing
Hide version footer
Hide theme selector
If enabled, display a wget command to recursively download the current directory
Generate completion file for a shell

Possible values:

  • bash
  • elvish
  • fish
  • powershell
  • zsh
Generate man page
TLS certificate to use
TLS private key to use
Enable README.md rendering in directories
Disable indexing

This will prevent directory listings from being generated and return an error instead.

Enable read-only WebDAV support (PROPFIND requests)
Show served file size in exact bytes

Possible values:

  • human
  • exact
Optional external URL (e.g., 'http://external.example.com:8081') prepended to file links in listings.

Allows serving files from a different URL than the browsing instance. Useful for setups like: one authenticated instance for browsing, linking files (via this option) to a second, non-indexed (-I) instance for direct downloads. This obscures the full file list on the download server, while users can still copy direct file URLs for sharing. The external URL is put verbatim in front of the relative location of the file, including the protocol. The user should take care this results in a valid URL, no further checks are being done.

Set the color style of the log output

"auto" (default) enables colors only when the output is a terminal. "always" always enables colors. "never" always disables colors.

Possible values:

  • auto
  • always
  • never
Print help (see a summary with '-h')
Print version
[PATH]
Which path to serve

v0.35.0

Sven-Hendrik Haase <svenstaro@gmail.com>, Boastful Squirrel <boastful.squirrel@gmail.com>

miniserve 0.35.0