InvokeAI/docs/features/CONFIGURATION.md

title
Configuration

:material-tune-variant: InvokeAI Configuration

Intro

InvokeAI has numerous runtime settings which can be used to adjust many aspects of its operations, including the location of files and directories, memory usage, and performance. These settings can be viewed and customized in several ways:

1. By editing settings in the invokeai.yaml file.
2. By setting environment variables.
3. On the command-line, when InvokeAI is launched.

In addition, the most commonly changed settings are accessible graphically via the invokeai-configure script.

How the Configuration System Works

When InvokeAI is launched, the very first thing it needs to do is to find its "root" directory, which contains its configuration files, installed models, its database of images, and the folder(s) of generated images themselves. In this document, the root directory will be referred to as ROOT.

Finding the Root Directory

To find its root directory, InvokeAI uses the following recipe:

1. It first looks for the argument --root <path> on the command line it was launched from, and uses the indicated path if present.

2. Next it looks for the environment variable INVOKEAI_ROOT, and uses the directory path found there if present.

3. If neither of these are present, then InvokeAI looks for the folder containing the .venv Python virtual environment directory for the currently active environment. This directory is checked for files expected inside the InvokeAI root before it is used.

4. Finally, InvokeAI looks for a directory in the current user's home directory named invokeai.

Reading the InvokeAI Configuration File

Once the root directory has been located, InvokeAI looks for a file named ROOT/invokeai.yaml, and if present reads configuration values from it. The top of this file looks like this:

InvokeAI:
  Web Server:
    host: localhost
    port: 9090
    allow_origins: []
    allow_credentials: true
    allow_methods:
    - '*'
    allow_headers:
    - '*'
  Features:
    esrgan: true
    internet_available: true
    log_tokenization: false
    nsfw_checker: false
    patchmatch: true
    restore: true
...

This lines in this file are used to establish default values for Invoke's settings. In the above fragment, the Web Server's listening port is set to 9090 by the port setting.

You can edit this file with a text editor such as "Notepad" (do not use Word or any other word processor). When editing, be careful to maintain the indentation, and do not add extraneous text, as syntax errors will prevent InvokeAI from launching. A basic guide to the format of YAML files can be found here.

You can fix a broken invokeai.yaml by deleting it and running the configuration script again -- option [7] in the launcher, "Re-run the configure script".

Reading Environment Variables

Next InvokeAI looks for defined environment variables in the format INVOKEAI_<setting_name>, for example INVOKEAI_port. Environment variable values take precedence over configuration file variables. On a Macintosh system, for example, you could change the port that the web server listens on by setting the environment variable this way:

export INVOKEAI_port=8000
invokeai-web

Please check out these Macintosh and Windows guides for setting temporary and permanent environment variables.

Reading the Command Line

Lastly, InvokeAI takes settings from the command line, which override everything else. The command-line settings have the same name as the corresponding configuration file settings, preceded by a --, for example --port 8000.

If you are using the launcher (invoke.sh or invoke.bat) to launch InvokeAI, then just pass the command-line arguments to the launcher:

invoke.bat --port 8000 --host 0.0.0.0

The arguments will be applied when you select the web server option (and the other options as well).

If, on the other hand, you prefer to launch InvokeAI directly from the command line, you would first activate the virtual environment (known as the "developer's console" in the launcher), and run invokeai-web:

> C:\Users\Fred\invokeai\.venv\scripts\activate
(.venv) > invokeai-web --port 8000 --host 0.0.0.0

You can get a listing and brief instructions for each of the command-line options by giving the --help argument:

(.venv) > invokeai-web --help
usage: InvokeAI [-h] [--host HOST] [--port PORT] [--allow_origins [ALLOW_ORIGINS ...]] [--allow_credentials | --no-allow_credentials]
                [--allow_methods [ALLOW_METHODS ...]] [--allow_headers [ALLOW_HEADERS ...]] [--esrgan | --no-esrgan]
                [--internet_available | --no-internet_available] [--log_tokenization | --no-log_tokenization]
                [--nsfw_checker | --no-nsfw_checker] [--patchmatch | --no-patchmatch] [--restore | --no-restore]
                [--always_use_cpu | --no-always_use_cpu] [--free_gpu_mem | --no-free_gpu_mem] [--max_cache_size MAX_CACHE_SIZE]
                [--max_vram_cache_size MAX_VRAM_CACHE_SIZE] [--precision {auto,float16,float32,autocast}]
                [--sequential_guidance | --no-sequential_guidance] [--xformers_enabled | --no-xformers_enabled]
                [--tiled_decode | --no-tiled_decode] [--root ROOT] [--autoimport_dir AUTOIMPORT_DIR] [--lora_dir LORA_DIR]
                [--embedding_dir EMBEDDING_DIR] [--controlnet_dir CONTROLNET_DIR] [--conf_path CONF_PATH] [--models_dir MODELS_DIR]
                [--legacy_conf_dir LEGACY_CONF_DIR] [--db_dir DB_DIR] [--outdir OUTDIR] [--from_file FROM_FILE]
                [--use_memory_db | --no-use_memory_db] [--model MODEL] [--log_handlers [LOG_HANDLERS ...]]
                [--log_format {plain,color,syslog,legacy}] [--log_level {debug,info,warning,error,critical}]
...

The Configuration Settings

The configuration settings are divided into several distinct groups in invokeia.yaml:

Web Server

Setting	Default Value	Description
host	localhost	Name or IP address of the network interface that the web server will listen on
port	9090	Network port number that the web server will listen on
allow_origins	[]	A list of host names or IP addresses that are allowed to connect to the InvokeAI API in the format ['host1','host2',...]
`allow_credentials	true	Require credentials for a foreign host to access the InvokeAI API (don't change this)
allow_methods	*	List of HTTP methods ("GET", "POST") that the web server is allowed to use when accessing the API
allow_headers	*	List of HTTP headers that the web server will accept when accessing the API

The documentation for InvokeAI's API can be accessed by browsing to the following URL: [http://localhost:9090/docs].

Features

These configuration settings allow you to enable and disable various InvokeAI features:

Setting	Default Value	Description
esrgan	true	Activate the ESRGAN upscaling options
internet_available	true	When a resource is not available locally, try to fetch it via the internet
log_tokenization	false	Before each text2image generation, print a color-coded representation of the prompt to the console; this can help understand why a prompt is not working as expected
nsfw_checker	true	Activate the NSFW checker to blur out risque images
patchmatch	true	Activate the "patchmatch" algorithm for improved inpainting
restore	true	Activate the facial restoration features (DEPRECATED; restoration features will be removed in 3.0.0)

Memory/Performance

These options tune InvokeAI's memory and performance characteristics.

Setting	Default Value	Description
always_use_cpu	false	Use the CPU to generate images, even if a GPU is available
free_gpu_mem	false	Aggressively free up GPU memory after each operation; this will allow you to run in low-VRAM environments with some performance penalties
max_cache_size	6	Amount of CPU RAM (in GB) to reserve for caching models in memory; more cache allows you to keep models in memory and switch among them quickly
max_vram_cache_size	2.75	Amount of GPU VRAM (in GB) to reserve for caching models in VRAM; more cache speeds up generation but reduces the size of the images that can be generated. This can be set to zero to maximize the amount of memory available for generation.
precision	auto	Floating point precision. One of auto, float16 or float32. float16 will consume half the memory of float32 but produce slightly lower-quality images. The auto setting will guess the proper precision based on your video card and operating system
sequential_guidance	false	Calculate guidance in serial rather than in parallel, lowering memory requirements at the cost of some performance loss
xformers_enabled	true	If the x-formers memory-efficient attention module is installed, activate it for better memory usage and generation speed
tiled_decode	false	If true, then during the VAE decoding phase the image will be decoded a section at a time, reducing memory consumption at the cost of a performance hit

Paths

These options set the paths of various directories and files used by InvokeAI. Relative paths are interpreted relative to INVOKEAI_ROOT, so if INVOKEAI_ROOT is /home/fred/invokeai and the path is autoimport/main, then the corresponding directory will be located at /home/fred/invokeai/autoimport/main.

Setting	Default Value	Description
autoimport_dir	autoimport/main	At startup time, read and import any main model files found in this directory
lora_dir	autoimport/lora	At startup time, read and import any LoRA/LyCORIS models found in this directory
embedding_dir	autoimport/embedding	At startup time, read and import any textual inversion (embedding) models found in this directory
controlnet_dir	autoimport/controlnet	At startup time, read and import any ControlNet models found in this directory
conf_path	configs/models.yaml	Location of the models.yaml model configuration file
models_dir	models	Location of the directory containing models installed by InvokeAI's model manager
legacy_conf_dir	configs/stable-diffusion	Location of the directory containing the .yaml configuration files for legacy checkpoint models
db_dir	databases	Location of the directory containing InvokeAI's image, schema and session database
outdir	outputs	Location of the directory in which the gallery of generated and uploaded images will be stored
use_memory_db	false	Keep database information in memory rather than on disk; this will not preserve image gallery information across restarts

Note that the autoimport directories will be searched recursively, allowing you to organize the models into folders and subfolders in any way you wish. In addition, while we have split up autoimport directories by the type of model they contain, this isn't necessary. You can combine different model types in the same folder and InvokeAI will figure out what they are. So you can easily use just one autoimport directory by commenting out the unneeded paths:

Paths:
  autoimport_dir: autoimport
#  lora_dir: null
#  embedding_dir: null
#  controlnet_dir: null

Logging

These settings control the information, warning, and debugging messages printed to the console log while InvokeAI is running:

Setting	Default Value	Description
log_handlers	console	This controls where log messages are sent, and can be a list of one or more destinations. Values include console, file, syslog and http. These are described in more detail below
log_format	color	This controls the formatting of the log messages. Values are plain, color, legacy and syslog
log_level	debug	This filters messages according to the level of severity and can be one of debug, info, warning, error and critical. For example, setting to warning will display all messages at the warning level or higher, but won't display "debug" or "info" messages

Several different log handler destinations are available, and multiple destinations are supported by providing a list:

  log_handlers:
     - console
     - syslog=localhost
     - file=/var/log/invokeai.log

• console is the default. It prints log messages to the command-line window from which InvokeAI was launched.

• syslog is only available on Linux and Macintosh systems. It uses the operating system's "syslog" facility to write log file entries locally or to a remote logging machine. syslog offers a variety of configuration options:

  syslog=/dev/log`      - log to the /dev/log device
  syslog=localhost`     - log to the network logger running on the local machine
  syslog=localhost:512` - same as above, but using a non-standard port
  syslog=fredserver,facility=LOG_USER,socktype=SOCK_DRAM`
                        - Log to LAN-connected server "fredserver" using the facility LOG_USER and datagram packets.

• http can be used to log to a remote web server. The server must be properly configured to receive and act on log messages. The option accepts the URL to the web server, and a method argument indicating whether the message should be submitted using the GET or POST method.

 http=http://my.server/path/to/logger,method=POST

The log_format option provides several alternative formats:

• color - default format providing time, date and a message, using text colors to distinguish different log severities
• plain - same as above, but monochrome text only
• syslog - the log level and error message only, allowing the syslog system to attach the time and date
• legacy - a format similar to the one used by the legacy 2.3 InvokeAI releases.