You can set it up as a [command-line tool](#quickstart), [web app](#quickstart), and [desktop app](https://github.com/ArchiveBox/electron-archivebox) (alpha), on Linux, macOS, and Windows.
**You can feed it URLs one at a time, or schedule regular imports** from browser bookmarks or history, feeds like RSS, bookmark services like Pocket/Pinboard, and more. See <ahref="#input-formats">input formats</a> for a full list.
**It saves snapshots of the URLs you feed it in several formats:** HTML, PDF, PNG screenshots, WARC, and more out-of-the-box, with a wide variety of content extracted and preserved automatically (article text, audio/video, git repos, etc.). See <ahref="#output-formats">output formats</a> for a full list.
The goal is to sleep soundly knowing the part of the internet you care about will be automatically preserved in durable, easily accessable formats for decades after it goes down.
- [**Free & open source**](https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox/blob/master/LICENSE), doesn't require signing up for anything, stores all data locally
- [**Powerful, intuitive command line interface**](https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox/wiki/Usage#CLI-Usage) with [modular optional dependencies](#dependencies)
- [**Comprehensive documentation**](https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox/wiki), [active development](https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox/wiki/Roadmap), and [rich community](https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox/wiki/Web-Archiving-Community)
- [**Extracts a wide variety of content out-of-the-box**](https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox/issues/51): [media (youtube-dl), articles (readability), code (git), etc.](#output-formats)
- [**Supports scheduled/realtime importing**](https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox/wiki/Scheduled-Archiving) from [many types of sources](#input-formats)
- [**Uses standard, durable, long-term formats**](#saves-lots-of-useful-stuff-for-each-imported-link) like HTML, JSON, PDF, PNG, and WARC
- [**Usable as a oneshot CLI**](https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox/wiki/Usage#CLI-Usage), [**self-hosted web UI**](https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox/wiki/Usage#UI-Usage), [Python API](https://docs.archivebox.io/en/latest/modules.html) (BETA), [REST API](https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox/issues/496) (ALPHA), or [desktop app](https://github.com/ArchiveBox/electron-archivebox) (ALPHA)
- [**Saves all pages to archive.org as well**](https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox/wiki/Configuration#submit_archive_dot_org) by default for redundancy (can be [disabled](https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox/wiki/Security-Overview#stealth-mode) for local-only mode)
- Planned: support for archiving [content requiring a login/paywall/cookies](https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox/wiki/Configuration#chrome_user_data_dir) (working, but ill-advised until some pending fixes are released)
- Planned: support for running [JS during archiving](https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox/issues/51) to adblock, [autoscroll](https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox/issues/80), [modal-hide](https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox/issues/175), [thread-expand](https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox/issues/345)...
<code>docker-compose</code> is the recommended way to run ArchiveBox because it includes <i>all</i> the extractor dependencies + full-text search out-of-the-box, and it's the easiest way to keep those dependencies up-to-date and securely isolated from the rest of your system.
<li>Install <ahref="https://docs.docker.com/get-docker/">Docker</a> and <ahref="https://docs.docker.com/compose/install/#install-using-pip">Docker Compose</a> on your system (if not already installed).</li>
<li>Download the <ahref="https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox/master/docker-compose.yml"download><code>docker-compose.yml</code></a> file into a new empty directory (can be anywhere).
<prelang="bash"><codestyle="white-space: pre-line">mkdir ~/archivebox && cd ~/archivebox
<li>Install <ahref="https://realpython.com/installing-python/">Python >= v3.7</a> and <ahref="https://nodejs.org/en/download/package-manager/">Node >= v14</a> on your system (if not already installed).</li>
<sub><i>Referral links marked 🎗 provide $5-10 of free credit for new users and help pay for our <ahref="https://demo.archivebox.io">demo server</a> hosting costs.</i></sub>
It also includes a built-in scheduled import feature with `archivebox schedule` and browser bookmarklet, so you can pull in URLs from RSS feeds, websites, or the filesystem regularly/on-demand.
All of ArchiveBox's state (including the index, snapshot data, and config file) is stored in a single folder called the "ArchiveBox data folder". All `archivebox` CLI commands must be run from inside this folder, and you first create it by running `archivebox init`.
The on-disk layout is optimized to be easy to browse by hand and durable long-term. The main index is a standard `index.sqlite3` database in the root of the data folder (it can also be exported as static JSON/HTML), and the archive snapshots are organized by date-added timestamp in the `./archive/` subfolder.
```bash
./
index.sqlite3
ArchiveBox.conf
archive/
...
1617687755/
index.html
index.json
screenshot.png
media/some_video.mp4
warc/1617687755.warc.gz
git/somerepo.git
...
```
Each snapshot subfolder `./archive/<timestamp>/` includes a static `index.json` and `index.html` describing its contents, and the snapshot extrator outputs are plain files within the folder.
<br/>
## Output formats
Inside each Snapshot folder, ArchiveBox save these different types of extractor outputs as plain files:
It does everything out-of-the-box by default, but you can disable or tweak [individual archive methods](https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox/wiki/Configuration) via environment variables / config.
*Note about large exports: These exports are not paginated, exporting many URLs or the entire archive at once may be slow. Use the filtering CLI flags on the `archivebox list` command to export specific Snapshots or ranges.*
ArchiveBox can be configured via environment variables, by using the `archivebox config` CLI, or by editing the `ArchiveBox.conf` config file directly.
```bash
archivebox config # view the entire config
archivebox config --get CHROME_BINARY # view a specific value
archivebox config --set CHROME_BINARY=chromium # set a config value
env CHROME_BINARY=chromium archivebox add ... # set a value temporarily
```
**The config file definition with all the options is in [`archivebox/config.py`](https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox/blob/master/archivebox/config.py).**
Most options are also documented on the **[Configuration Wiki page](https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox/wiki/Configuration)**.
#### Most Common Archiving Options
These are the most common archiving behavior options that you may want to tweak.
```bash
# increase these values (in seconds) to account for slower network speeds
archivebox config --set TIMEOUT=60
archivebox config --set MEDIA_TIMEOUT=3600
# set this to True to allow archiving pages with invalid/expired SSL certs
archivebox config --set CHECK_SSL_VALIDITY=False
# set this to False to disable submitting all URLs to Archive.org
archivebox config --set SAVE_ARCHIVE_DOT_ORG=True
# configure whether or not audio/video files are saved, and their max size
archivebox config --set SAVE_MEDIA=True
archivebox config --set MAX_MEDIA_SIZE=750m
# set these to authenticate before archiving using your chrome user or cookies
For better security, easier updating, and to avoid polluting your host system with extra dependencies, **it is strongly recommended to use the official [Docker image](https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox/wiki/Docker)** with everything preinstalled for the best experience.
To achieve high fidelity archives in as many situations as possible, ArchiveBox depends on a variety of 3rd-party tools and libraries that specialize in extracting different types of content. These optional dependencies used for archiving sites include:
-`chromium` / `chrome` (for screenshots, PDF, DOM HTML, and headless JS scripts)
-`node`&`npm` (for readability, mercury, and singlefile)
-`wget` (for plain HTML, static files, and WARC saving)
You don't need to install every dependency to use ArchiveBox. ArchiveBox will automatically disable extractors that rely on dependencies that aren't installed, based on what is configured and available in your `$PATH`.
However, if you prefer not using Docker, you *can* install ArchiveBox and its dependencies using your [system package manager](https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox/wiki/Install) or `pip` directly on any Linux/macOS system. Just make sure to keep the dependencies up-to-date and check that ArchiveBox isn't reporting any incompatibility with the versions you install.
Installing directly on **Windows without Docker or WSL/WSL2/Cygwin is not officially supported**, but some advanced users have reported getting it working.
If you're importing URLs containing secret slugs or pages with private content (e.g Google Docs, unlisted videos, etc), **you may want to disable some of the extractor modules to avoid leaking private URLs to 3rd party APIs** during the archiving process.
Be aware that malicious archived JS can access the contents of other pages in your archive when viewed. Because the Web UI serves all viewed snapshots from a single domain, they share a request context and **typical CSRF/CORS/XSS/CSP protections do not work to prevent cross-site request attacks**. See the [Security Overview](https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox/wiki/Security-Overview#stealth-mode) page for more details.
Support for saving multiple snapshots of each site over time will be [added eventually](https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox/issues/179) (along with the ability to view diffs of the changes between runs). For now **ArchiveBox is designed to only archive each URL with each extractor type once**. A workaround to take multiple snapshots of the same URL is to make them slightly different by adding a hash:
Because ArchiveBox is designed to ingest a firehose of browser history and bookmark feeds to a local disk, it can be much more disk-space intensive than a centralized service like the Internet Archive or Archive.today. However, as storage space gets cheaper and compression improves, you should be able to use it continuously over the years without having to delete anything.
**ArchiveBox can use anywhere from ~1gb per 1000 articles, to ~50gb per 1000 articles**, mostly dependent on whether you're saving audio & video using `SAVE_MEDIA=True` and whether you lower `MEDIA_MAX_SIZE=750mb`.
Storage requirements can be reduced by using a compressed/deduplicated filesystem like ZFS/BTRFS, or by turning off extractors methods you don't need. **Don't store large collections on older filesystems like EXT3/FAT** as they may not be able to handle more than 50k directory entries in the `archive/` folder.
**Try to keep the `index.sqlite3` file on local drive (not a network mount)**, and ideally on an SSD for maximum performance, however the `archive/` folder can be on a network mount or spinning HDD.
The aim of ArchiveBox is to enable more of the internet to be archived by empowering people to self-host their own archives. The intent is for all the web content you care about to be viewable with common software in 50 - 100 years without needing to run ArchiveBox or other specialized software to replay it.
Vast treasure troves of knowledge are lost every day on the internet to link rot. As a society, we have an imperative to preserve some important parts of that treasure, just like we preserve our books, paintings, and music in physical libraries long after the originals go out of print or fade into obscurity.
Whether it's to resist censorship by saving articles before they get taken down or edited, or just to save a collection of early 2010's flash games you love to play, having the tools to archive internet content enables to you save the stuff you care most about before it disappears.
The balance between the permanence and ephemeral nature of content on the internet is part of what makes it beautiful. I don't think everything should be preserved in an automated fashion--making all content permanent and never removable, but I do think people should be able to decide for themselves and effectively archive specific content that they care about.
ArchiveBox archives the sites in **several different formats** beyond what public archiving services like Archive.org/Archive.is save. Using multiple methods and the market-dominant browser to execute JS ensures we can save even the most complex, finicky websites in at least a few high-quality, long-term data formats.
▶ **Check out our [community page](https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox/wiki/Web-Archiving-Community) for an index of web archiving initiatives and projects.**
A variety of open and closed-source archiving projects exist, but few provide a nice UI and CLI to manage a large, high-fidelity archive collection over time.
ArchiveBox tries to be a robust, set-and-forget archiving solution suitable for archiving RSS feeds, bookmarks, or your entire browsing history (beware, it may be too big to store), ~~including private/authenticated content that you wouldn't otherwise share with a centralized service~~ (this is not recommended due to JS replay security concerns).
Not all content is suitable to be archived in a centralized collection, wehther because it's private, copyrighted, too large, or too complex. ArchiveBox hopes to fill that gap.
By having each user store their own content locally, we can save much larger portions of everyone's browsing history than a shared centralized service would be able to handle. The eventual goal is to work towards federated archiving where users can share portions of their collections with each other.
ArchiveBox differentiates itself from [similar self-hosted projects](https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox/wiki/Web-Archiving-Community#Web-Archiving-Projects) by providing both a comprehensive CLI interface for managing your archive, a Web UI that can be used either indepenently or together with the CLI, and a simple on-disk data format that can be used without either.
ArchiveBox is neither the highest fidelity, nor the simplest tool available for self-hosted archiving, rather it's a jack-of-all-trades that tries to do most things well by default. It can be as simple or advanced as you want, and is designed to do everything out-of-the-box but be tuned to suit your needs.
*If being able to archive very complex interactive pages with JS and video is paramount, check out ArchiveWeb.page and ReplayWeb.page.*
*If you prefer a simpler, leaner solution that archives page text in markdown and provides note-taking abilities, check out Archivy or 22120.*
Whether you want to learn which organizations are the big players in the web archiving space, want to find a specific open-source tool for your web archiving need, or just want to see where archivists hang out online, our Community Wiki page serves as an index of the broader web archiving community. Check it out to learn about some of the coolest web archiving projects and communities on the web!
- Check out the ArchiveBox [Roadmap](https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox/wiki/Roadmap) and [Changelog](https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox/wiki/Changelog)
- Learn why archiving the internet is important by reading the "[On the Importance of Web Archiving](https://parameters.ssrc.org/2018/09/on-the-importance-of-web-archiving/)" blog post.
- Reach out to me for questions and comments via [@ArchiveBoxApp](https://twitter.com/ArchiveBoxApp) or [@theSquashSH](https://twitter.com/thesquashSH) on Twitter
**Need help building a custom archiving solution?**
> ✨ **[Hire the team that helps build Archivebox](https://monadical.com) to work on your project.** (we're [@MonadicalSAS](https://twitter.com/MonadicalSAS) on Twitter)
<sup>(They also do general software consulting across many industries)</sup>
We use the [Github wiki system](https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox/wiki) and [Read the Docs](https://archivebox.readthedocs.io/en/latest/) (WIP) for documentation.
All contributions to ArchiveBox are welcomed! Check our [issues](https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox/issues) and [Roadmap](https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox/wiki/Roadmap) for things to work on, and please open an issue to discuss your proposed implementation before working on things! Otherwise we may have to close your PR if it doesn't align with our roadmap.
This project is maintained mostly in <ahref="https://nicksweeting.com/blog#About">my spare time</a> with the help from generous contributors and <ahref="https://monadical.com">Monadical</a> (✨ <ahref="https://monadical.com">hire them</a> for dev work!).
<i>✨ Have spare CPU/disk/bandwidth and want to help the world?<br/>Check out our <ahref="https://github.com/ArchiveBox/good-karma-kit">Good Karma Kit</a>...</i>
