openlabel

Local-first image annotation studio. Runs entirely in your browser. No account, no server, no upload.

npx openlabel

That's it. It serves the app on port 4173 and opens your browser. If 4173 is taken, it moves to the next free port and prints the URL. Your projects live in that browser's IndexedDB, so come back to the same URL.

Options

Usage: openlabel [options]
       openlabel update [--check] [--yes]

  -p, --port <n>   Port to listen on (default: 4173, else the next free one)
      --host <h>   Host to bind (default: 0.0.0.0, so paired devices can reach it;
                   use 127.0.0.1 to keep it on this machine only)
      --no-open    Do not open the browser
  -v, --version    Print version
  -h, --help       Print this help

Serve to other machines on your network:

openlabel --host 0.0.0.0 --port 4173

Each browser origin keeps its own data, so a second machine gets its own projects. That is the model, not a bug.

Install it as a command

npx caches the package after the first run, so later starts are instant. To get a permanent openlabel command:

npm install -g openlabel
openlabel

The -g flag is required. Without it, npm links the binary into the local node_modules/.bin, which your shell does not see.

Updating

openlabel update

This asks the npm registry for the newest release, prints what it found, and installs it with npm install -g openlabel@<version> after one confirmation. openlabel update --check reports without installing, and --yes skips the question for scripts. A running openlabel keeps serving the old code until it is restarted. If the package was installed by a package manager other than npm, or without -g, run the install command the update prints instead.

Ports

The app prefers 4173. If that port is busy, it steps forward until it finds a free one and prints the URL it chose. Projects are stored per origin, so use the same port to reopen earlier work; free 4173 if you want the data saved there.

Why not Docker?

npx openlabel needs Node ≥ 20 on the host and is the fastest way to try the tool. Use the Docker image when the host has no Node runtime, or when the app must be pinned and audited as an image (air-gapped / regulated environments).