Docker is a convenient and secure way to install server applications either locally or on a server you control.

Conveniently, SilverBullet is published as a docker image on GHCR. The image comes in a few flavors:

64-bit Intel
64-bit ARM (e.g. for Raspberry Pis and Apple Silicon macs)
32-bit ARM (ARMv7, e.g. for older Raspberry Pis running 32-bit Linux)

warning Warning To access SilverBullet outside of localhost you will need to set up TLS.

Release channels

Every release version of SilverBullet is tagged with its version number, but there are two release channels you can use:

:latest always points to the latest release
:v2 always points to the latest edge build (the last commit to main), use this if you want to live on the bleeding edge.

Container

The container binds to port 3000, so be sure to port-map that, e.g. via -p 3000:3000 (note: the first 3000 is the external port)
The container uses whatever is volume-mapped to /space as the space root folder. You can connect a docker volume, or a host folder to this, e.g. -v /home/myuser/space:/space
SilverBullet will detect the UNIX owner (UID and GID) of the folder mapped into /space and run the server process with the same UID and GID so that permissions will just magically work. If you’d like to override this UID, set the PUID and PGID environment variables (see Configuration for details).
The Docker image is based on Alpine. If you’d like to install additional packages into it, see Installing additional packages below.

note Note The same docker images are both available from GHCR and Docker Hub, use whichever you prefer.

Versions

To check the version you’re running, use the ${widgets.commandButton(“Client: Version”)} command. Note that after an upgrade you may have to reload your (browser) client twice, to fully activate the new version.

Docker Compose

Docker compose is a simple tool to manage running of multiple containers on a server you control, it is distributed with (modern) versions of docker. It is the recommended way to manage SilverBullet.

Below is a basic compose.yml that runs SilverBullet, check Configuration for additional configuration options.

Instructions:

Replace the password defined in SB_USER with something sensible such as admin:b3stp4ssword3vah
This volume uses the ./space directory (will be auto-created if it doesn’t already exist) in the same directory as the compose.yml file as the place where SB will keep its space. You may replace this with whatever location you keep your notes.

services:
  silverbullet:
    image: ghcr.io/silverbulletmd/silverbullet:latest
    restart: unless-stopped
    environment:
    - SB_USER=admin:password
    volumes:
      - ./space:/space
    ports:
      - 3000:3000

Boot this up via:

docker compose up -d

And watch for logs with:

docker compose logs -f

Upgrading

To upgrade, change the specific version you point to in your compose.yml file (not necessary when using :latest or :v2) and then:

docker compose pull
docker compose stop
docker compose up -d

Plain Docker

If you don’t want to use docker compose, you can run SilverBullet “raw” as follows:

# Create a local folder "space" to keep files in
mkdir -p space
# Run the docker container in the background
docker run -d --restart unless-stopped \
  --name silverbullet \
  -p 3000:3000 \
  -v ./space:/space \
  ghcr.io/silverbulletmd/silverbullet:latest

There you go!

Upgrades

To upgrade your version of SilverBullet, first pull the new image:

docker pull ghcr.io/silverbulletmd/silverbullet:latest
# Then stop the current container
docker stop silverbullet
# Remove the existing container
docker rm silverbullet

Then start the container again as before.

Installing additional packages

If you would like to install additional packages into your docker container (e.g. to call via shell), you can do so by creating a CONTAINER_BOOT page in your space. Whatever you put in this page, will be run as a bash script upon container boot (hence its name).

In practice, you’ll likely want to put apk add commands install the (Alpine) packages you would like to install.

What next

After your container is running, head over to http://localhost:3000 (or whatever port you have configured) and proceed to Getting Started.

SilverBullet

Explorer

Docker