Self-Hosted

Download a single binary and run it anywhere — online, offline, or fully air-gapped. No account, no registration, no phone home.

Quickstart

# Generate a thumbnail directly
thumbrella thumb ./sample.mov --at 12s --output ./sample.webp

# Start a local HTTP server
thumbrella serve --port 8000

Once the server is running, requests look identical to the hosted API:

curl http://localhost:8000/thumb#https://example.com/media.jpg

Download

Pre-built binaries are available for Linux (x86_64, ARM64), macOS (Apple Silicon, Intel), and Windows. Grab the latest release from GitHub Releases.

For Rust developers, build from source with:

cargo install thumbrella

Configuration

The binary needs no configuration file to start. The most common environment variables:

Variable	Default	Description
TBR_PORT	8000	HTTP server port
TBR_CACHE_DIR	none	Directory for on-disk thumbnail cache
TBR_API_TOKEN	none	Validate an API token on each request

Caching

Pass --cache ./cache (CLI) or set TBR_CACHE_DIR (server) to enable a local SQLite-backed cache. First requests process the media; repeated requests return cached responses instantly.

Who this is for

This mode is the right fit for:

• Desktop applications that ship Thumbrella as a bundled dependency.
• CI pipelines generating asset previews during a build.
• Internal tooling that cannot touch external services.
• Evaluation before committing to the hosted service.

Next steps

• Read the web client docs to integrate from JavaScript or TypeScript.
• Explore the sponsor edition for a Docker-first distribution with support.