InvokeAI/docs/installation/020_INSTALL_MANUAL.md

title
Installing Manually

:fontawesome-brands-linux: Linux | :fontawesome-brands-apple: macOS | :fontawesome-brands-windows: Windows

!!! warning "This is for advanced Users"

**python experience is mandatory**

Introduction

!!! tip As of InvokeAI v2.3.0 installation using the conda package manager is no longer being supported. It will likely still work, but we are not testing this installation method.

On Windows systems, you are encouraged to install and use the PowerShell, which provides compatibility with Linux and Mac shells and nice features such as command-line completion.

To install InvokeAI with virtual environments and the PIP package manager, please follow these steps:

1. Please make sure you are using Python 3.9 or 3.10. The rest of the install procedure depends on this and will not work with other versions:

   python -V
   

2. Clone the InvokeAI source code from GitHub:

   git clone https://github.com/invoke-ai/InvokeAI.git
   

   This will create InvokeAI folder where you will follow the rest of the steps.

3. Create a directory of to contain your InvokeAI installation (known as the "runtime" or "root" directory). This is where your models, configs, and outputs will live by default. Please keep in mind the disk space requirements - you will need at least 18GB (as of this writing) for the models and the virtual environment. From now on we will refer to this directory as INVOKEAI_ROOT. This keeps the runtime directory separate from the source code and aids in updating.

   export INVOKEAI_ROOT="~/invokeai"
   mkdir ${INVOKEAI_ROOT}
   

4. From within the InvokeAI top-level directory, create and activate a virtual environment named .venv and prompt displaying InvokeAI:

   python -m venv ${INVOKEAI_ROOT}/.venv \
       --prompt invokeai \
       --upgrade-deps \
       --copies
   source ${INVOKEAI_ROOT}/.venv/bin/activate
   

   !!! warning

   You **may** create your virtual environment anywhere on the filesystem.
   But IF you choose a location that is *not* inside the `$INVOKEAI_ROOT` directory,
   then you must set the `INVOKEAI_ROOT` environment variable in your shell environment,
   for example, by editing `~/.bashrc` or `~/.zshrc` files, or setting the Windows environment
   variable. Refer to your operating system / shell documentation for the correct way of doing so.
   

5. Make sure that pip is installed in your virtual environment an up to date:

   python -m pip install --upgrade pip
   

6. Install Package

   pip install --use-pep517 .
   

   Deactivate and reactivate your runtime directory so that the invokeai-specific commands become available in the environment

   deactivate && source ${INVOKEAI_ROOT}/.venv/bin/activate
   

7. Set up the runtime directory

   In this step you will initialize your runtime directory with the downloaded models, model config files, directory for textual inversion embeddings, and your outputs.

   invokeai-configure --root ${INVOKEAI_ROOT}
   

   The script invokeai-configure will interactively guide you through the process of downloading and installing the weights files needed for InvokeAI. Note that the main Stable Diffusion weights file is protected by a license agreement that you have to agree to. The script will list the steps you need to take to create an account on the site that hosts the weights files, accept the agreement, and provide an access token that allows InvokeAI to legally download and install the weights files.

   If you get an error message about a module not being installed, check that the invokeai environment is active and if not, repeat step 5.

   !!! tip

   If you have already downloaded the weights file(s) for another Stable
   Diffusion distribution, you may skip this step (by selecting "skip" when
   prompted) and configure InvokeAI to use the previously-downloaded files. The
   process for this is described in [here](050_INSTALLING_MODELS.md).
   

8. Run the command-line- or the web- interface:

   Activate the environment (with source .venv/bin/activate), and then run the script invokeai. If you selected a non-default location for the runtime directory, please specify the path with the --root_dir option (abbreviated below as --root):

   !!! example ""

   !!! warning "Make sure that the virtual environment is activated, which should create `(invokeai)` in front of your prompt!"
   
   === "CLI"
   
       ```bash
       invokeai --root ~/invokeai
       ```
   
   === "local Webserver"
   
       ```bash
       invokeai --web --root ~/invokeai
       ```
   
   === "Public Webserver"
   
       ```bash
       invokeai --web --host 0.0.0.0 --root ~/invokeai
       ```
   
   If you choose the run the web interface, point your browser at
   http://localhost:9090 in order to load the GUI.
   

   !!! tip

   You can permanently set the location of the runtime directory by setting the environment variable `INVOKEAI_ROOT` to the path of the directory. As mentioned previously, this is
   **required** if your virtual environment is located outside of your runtime directory.
   

9. Render away!

   Browse the features section to learn about all the things you can do with InvokeAI.

   Note that some GPUs are slow to warm up. In particular, when using an AMD card with the ROCm driver, you may have to wait for over a minute the first time you try to generate an image. Fortunately, after the warm-up period rendering will be fast.

10. Subsequently, to relaunch the script, activate the virtual environment, and then launch invokeai command. If you forget to activate the virtual environment you will most likeley receive a command not found error.

    !!! warning

    Do not move the runtime directory after installation. The virtual environment has absolute paths in it that get confused if the directory is moved.