Configuration

Stashes

This section allows you to add and remove directories from your library list. Files in these directories will be included when scanning. Files that are outside of these directories will be removed when running the Clean task.

⚠️ Note: Don’t forget to click Save after updating these directories!

Excluded Patterns

Given a valid regex, files that match even partially are excluded during the Scan process and are not entered in the database. Also during the Clean task if these files exist in the DB they are removed from it and their generated files get deleted. Prior to matching both the filenames and patterns are converted to lower case so the match is case insensitive.

Regex patterns can be added in the config file or from the UI. If you add manually to the config file a restart is needed while from the UI you just need to click the Save button. When added through the config file directly special care must be given to double escape the \ character.

Some examples

For the config file you need the following added

exclude:
- "sample\\.mp4$"
- "/\\.[[:word:]]+/"
- "c:\\\\stash\\\\videos\\\\exclude"
- "^/stash/videos/exclude/"
- "\\\\\\\\stash\\network\\\\share\\\\excl\\\\"

• the first excludes all files ending in sample.mp4 ( . needs to be escaped also)
• the second hidden directories /.directoryname/
• the third is an example for a windows directory c:\stash\videos\exclude
• the fourth the directory /stash/videos/exclude/
• and the last a windows network path \\stash\network\share\excl\

Note: if a directory is excluded for images and videos, then the directory will be excluded from scans completely.

a useful link to experiment with regexps

Hashing algorithms

Stash identifies video files by calculating a hash of the file. There are two algorithms available for hashing: oshash and MD5. MD5 requires reading the entire file, and can therefore be slow, particularly when reading files over a network. oshash (which uses OpenSubtitle’s hashing algorithm) only reads 64k from each end of the file.

The hash is used to name the generated files such as preview images and videos, and sprite images.

By default, new systems have MD5 calculation disabled for optimal performance. Existing systems that are upgraded will have the oshash populated for each scene on the next scan.

Changing the hashing algorithm

To change the file naming hash to oshash, all scenes must have their oshash values populated. oshash population is done automatically when scanning.

To change the file naming hash to MD5, the MD5 must be populated for all scenes. To do this, Calculate MD5 for videos must be enabled and the library must be rescanned.

MD5 calculation may only be disabled if the file naming hash is set to oshash.

After changing the file naming hash, any existing generated files will now be named incorrectly. This means that stash will not find them and may regenerate them if the Generate task is used. To remedy this, run the Rename generated files task, which will rename existing generated files to their correct names.

Step-by-step instructions to migrate to oshash for existing users

These instructions are for existing users whose systems will be defaulted to use and calculate MD5 checksums. Once completed, MD5 checksums will no longer be calculated when scanning, and oshash will be used for generated file naming. Existing calculated MD5 checksums will remain on scenes, but checksums will not be calculated for new scenes.

1. Scan the library (to populate oshash for all existing scenes).
2. In Settings -> Configuration page, untick Calculate MD5 and select oshash as file naming hash. Save the configuration.
3. In Settings -> Tasks page, click on the Rename generated files migration button.

Parallel Scan/Generation

Number of parallel task for scan/generation

This setting controls how many sub-tasks will be run in parallel during scanning and generation tasks. (See Tasks)

Auto-detection can be enabled by setting this to zero. This will calculate the number of parallel tasks to be cpu_cores/4 + 1.

This setting can be used to increase/decrease overall CPU utilisation in two scenarios: 1) High performance 4+ core cpus. 2) Media files stored on remote/cloud filesystem.

Note: If this is set too high it will decrease overall performance and causes failures (out of memory).

Scraping

User Agent string

Some websites require a legitimate User-Agent string when receiving requests, or they will be rejected. If entered, this string will be applied as the User-Agent header value in http scrape requests.

Chrome CDP path

Some scrapers require a Chrome instance to function correctly. If left empty, stash will attempt to find the Chrome executable in the path environment, and will fail if it cannot find one.

Chrome CDP path can be set to a path to the chrome executable, or an http(s) address to remote chrome instance (for example: http://localhost:9222/json/version).

Authentication

By default, stash is not configured with any sort of password protection. To enable password protection, both Username and Password must be populated. Note that when entering a new username and password where none was set previously, the system will immediately request these credentials to log you in.

API key

If password protection is enabled, you may also generate an API key. An API key is used by external systems to access your stash system without needing to login first.

External systems using the API key must set the ApiKey header value to the configured API key in order to bypass the login requirement.

Logging out

The logout button is situated in the upper-right part of the screen when you are logged in.

Recovering from a forgotten username or password

Stash saves login credentials in the config.yml file. You must reset both login and password if you have forgotten your password by doing the following:

• Close your Stash process
• Open the config.yml file found in your Stash directory with a text editor
• Delete the login and password lines from the file and save Stash authentication should now be reset with no authentication credentials.

Advanced configuration options

These options are typically not exposed in the UI and must be changed manually in the config.yml file.

Custom served folders

Custom served folders are served when the server handles a request with the /custom URL prefix. The following is an example configuration:

custom_served_folders:
  /: D:\stash\static
  /foo: D:\bar

With the above configuration, a request for /custom/foo/bar.png would serve D:\bar\bar.png.

The / entry matches anything that is not otherwise mapped by the other entries. For example, /custom/baz/xyz.png would serve D:\stash\static\baz\xyz.png.