Foxel is an MIT-licensed, self-hosted private cloud storage server for individuals and teams that gathers files spread across local disks, S3-compatible buckets, WebDAV, SFTP, FTP and consumer cloud drives into one interface and adds AI-powered semantic search over images, documents and other unstructured content.

What it is

Foxel is a Python application (Python 3.14+) with a FastAPI and Tortoise ORM backend on SQLite and a React 19 and TypeScript frontend built with Vite and Ant Design. It deploys with Docker under Gunicorn and Uvicorn, authenticates with JWT (OAuth2) and bcrypt, and uses Milvus Lite/Server or Qdrant for vector search. Alongside storage it provides a Task Processing Center for asynchronous jobs such as file indexing and backups, a manifest-based plugin system, and an AI agent with tools for VFS operations, web fetching and file processing. It is listed here under Miscellaneous / Photo & Video Editors, with topics including ai, cloud, filesystem, image, photo-gallery, photos, python, react, typescript and video.

The problem it solves is fragmentation. Files commonly sit across a local disk, an S3-compatible bucket, an SFTP or FTP server, a WebDAV share and consumer drives such as Google Drive, OneDrive, Dropbox and Quark, each with its own client, sharing model and search. Foxel's extensible adapter pattern replaces that patchwork with a single interface for browsing, uploading, downloading, moving, copying and deleting files, and a single permissions model to secure the result.

Key capabilities

• Unified file management over pluggable adapters: Local, S3-compatible, WebDAV, SFTP and FTP for standard protocols; Google Drive, OneDrive, Dropbox and Quark as cloud drives; Telegram, AList and Foxel-to-Foxel for special cases.
• AI-powered semantic search by natural language description rather than filename, covering images, documents and other unstructured data, with configurable embedding providers and Milvus (Lite or Server) or Qdrant vector databases.
• Built-in preview of images, videos, PDFs, Office documents, text and code files in the browser, without downloading.
• Role-Based Access Control with Admin, User and Viewer system roles, custom roles carrying fine-grained system and adapter permissions, path-based read/write/delete/share rules using wildcards, regex patterns and priority ordering, and audit logging of user, IP, method, status and duration.
• Sharing as public or password-protected links with configurable expiration dates, browsable by recipients without logging in.
• A manifest-based plugin system that loads React frontend components and custom backend routes at runtime without modifying the core codebase.
• Protocol mappings for outward access: an S3-compatible endpoint, WebDAV for mounting as an operating-system network drive, and temporary signed URLs for direct file access.

Who uses it and how

• Individuals consolidating a personal media library held across local storage and Google Drive, OneDrive, Dropbox or Quark accounts, matching the project's photo-gallery and photos topics.
• Small teams needing a shared private cloud with governance: the three built-in roles cover common cases, custom roles and path rules handle finer splits, and audit logs record who did what from which IP.
• Self-hosters keeping data on their own hardware, since the documented deployment is Docker Compose with persistent data/db and data/mount directories, leaving the SQLite database and mounted files under the operator's control.
• Users needing access beyond the web interface: WebDAV presents an instance as a network drive, the S3-compatible endpoint serves programmatic clients, signed URLs allow direct downloads, and the AList and Foxel-to-Foxel adapters bridge existing deployments.

Getting started

The documented route is Docker Compose: create the data/db and data/mount directories, download compose.yaml from the project's GitHub raw path, replace the default SECRET_KEY and TEMP_LINK_SECRET_KEY with randomly generated strong keys, and start the services. A public demo runs at https://demo.foxel.cc with the credentials admin / admin.

How it compares

No set of paid products that Foxel replaces is given in the facts provided, so no licence, hosting or cost comparison can be drawn here. The comparable names that do appear, namely AList, Google Drive, OneDrive, Dropbox, Quark and Telegram, are integrated as storage adapters rather than offered as alternatives, and Foxel therefore stands alone in this registry's Miscellaneous / Photo & Video Editors category.

When to use it — and when not to

A self-hoster must operate the whole stack: Docker Compose, persistent database and mount directories, securely generated SECRET_KEY and TEMP_LINK_SECRET_KEY values, and, if semantic search is wanted, a vector database such as Milvus Lite/Server or Qdrant plus a configured embedding provider. Anyone wanting a managed service with no infrastructure work should look elsewhere, because the facts describe only self-hosted deployment, and the demo instance with admin / admin credentials is a shared demonstration rather than a production offering. The README excerpt supplied also ends mid-instruction at "Start the Services", so complete deployment steps and operational detail must be read from the repository itself.

mkdir -p data/db data/mount
chmod 777 data/db data/mount

curl -L -O https://github.com/DrizzleTime/Foxel/raw/main/compose.yaml

docker-compose up -d