How to Use OpenList: The Beginner's Guide (First Login, Storages, the Mount-Path Lesson, and the Alist Migration)

CodexFuse Team · 2026-11-01T15:06:11.580Z · 11 min read

How to Use OpenList: The Beginner's Guide (First Login, Storages, the Mount-Path Lesson, and the Alist Migration)

Learning how to use OpenList means getting one clean web interface over every cloud drive and folder you own: Google Drive, OneDrive, S3 buckets, FTP servers, and local disks can all appear as folders inside a single OpenList page - one unified cloud drive web interface for everything you own. If juggling half a dozen storage apps has become the actual job, this beginner guide walks you from an empty Docker install to a working unified drive - first login, storages, mount paths, users, WebDAV, and the Alist migration lane. One housekeeping note before we start: OpenList is one word - the community file-listing platform and Alist fork - not HCL's "Open List," Prolog's open lists, or any automation "Open List" action you may have met in search results.

What Is OpenList?

OpenList is a self-hosted file-list program that mounts dozens of storage backends - cloud drives, object storage, FTP, your local disk - and presents them all as folders inside one web UI, powered by Gin and SolidJS. It is the community fork of Alist: Alist was sold around June 2025, hidden telemetry was later found shipping by default, and trust in the project eroded, so the community forked the code into OpenList - a fully open-source project whose developers line-by-line reviewed months of commits and stripped the opaque parts out. Practically, nothing about the idea changed: OpenList aggregates your storage behind one browsable interface instead of making you log in to ten different services. If your actual need is serving folders from one machine across your LAN, our Copyparty beginner guide covers that file-server lane - Copyparty serves local folders, OpenList gives many cloud drives one browsable interface, and they are not rivals.

How to Install OpenList with Docker Compose

Docker Compose is the documented route for an OpenList install, and this OpenList Docker setup takes about five minutes: one compose file, one data volume, one port.

Use only the official image from the maintained repository - some older guides and templates point at a stale repo name; the live repository is OpenListTeam slash OpenList, currently at v4.2.9 (October 2026, AGPL-3.0, roughly 25,400 GitHub stars) per the GitHub API. Our Docker beginner guide covers the Compose basics if you are new to it.

1. Create a folder for the install.
2. Write the compose file as docker-compose.yml, matching the current official docs:

version: '3.3'
services:
    openlist:
        image: 'openlistteam/openlist:latest'
        container_name: openlist
        volumes:
            - './data:/opt/openlist/data'
        ports:
            - '5244:5244'
        environment:
            - UMASK=022
        restart: unless-stopped

3. Handle the user-ID question. Since v4.1.0, OpenList's container runs as its own openlist user (UID/GID 1001) and the old PUID/PGID variables are gone - so either launch with your real user ID mapped in, or change ownership of the host data folder to 1001:1001 before starting. Get this wrong and OpenList cannot write its own database.
4. Start it: docker compose up -d.
5. Watch the first-run logs: docker logs openlist - you will need a line from them in the next step.
6. Open the web UI at http://your-server:5244. OpenList listens on port 5244 by default, and everything - the config, the SQLite database, the logs - lives in /opt/openlist/data inside the container, which you already mapped to ./data on the host.

The data-volume lesson is the whole backup story: because config and database live in that one mapped folder, backing up ./data backs up your entire OpenList setup. Lose the folder and you start from zero.

How Do You Log In to OpenList for the First Time?

Your admin password is generated on first run - read it from the logs with docker logs openlist, where you will find a line like Successfully created the admin user and the initial password is: xYZabHGf. Log in at http://your-server:5244 with username admin and that password, then change it immediately in the admin panel. If you ever lock yourself out, reset it from the host with the ./openlist admin random command for a fresh password, or ./openlist admin set NEW_PASSWORD to set your own. Note that some newer community builds show a first-run setup page in the browser instead of the log line - treat the documented log path as primary and the setup page as a template variant. That is the whole OpenList tutorial for first access - everything below builds on the logged-in admin panel.

What Storage Drivers Does OpenList Support?

OpenList ships with drivers for the storage most people actually have - and this is the storage lesson of the whole guide: OpenList does not store your files, it only browses backends you connect. The current OpenList storage driver list includes:

Beyond these there are roughly forty more backends, many of them region-specific cloud drives. The OAuth lesson matters for the big ones: Google Drive, OneDrive, and Dropbox need real API credentials from their developer consoles - you cannot paste your account password and move on, so budget a few minutes per driver for the OAuth dance.

How Do You Add Your First Storage in OpenList?

Adding a storage takes under a minute once your credentials are ready: open the admin panel, go to Storage, click Add, and pick the driver for the backend you want. Fill in the driver fields, give the storage a mount path (the next section explains why that matters), and save - the backend's files appear in the OpenList file list immediately. Start with one backend, confirm it browses correctly, then add the rest one at a time; debugging five new storages at once is miserable.

What Is a Mount Path in OpenList?

A mount path is the name you give a storage when you add it, and it becomes that storage's address inside OpenList - in the web UI and in WebDAV alike. Say it once and say it clearly: every storage you add mounts at a path you choose, and that path is how you (and your apps) reach it. Pick paths that describe the content, keep them short, and never change a mount path after apps or shared links depend on it:

Two storages cannot share a mount path, and nested mounts work - mounting a bucket at /photos/archive under a Local storage at /photos gives you one tree assembled from two backends. That composability is the whole point of the mount-path model.

How Do You Add Users and Protect Routes?

OpenList is not a single-user tool: the admin panel lets you create users with their own passwords, and each user can be limited to specific mount paths with read-only or read-write permissions. Set up one admin account for yourself, then create limited users for family or teammates rather than sharing the admin login. Sensitive mounts get extra protection through protected routes - password-gated paths that ask for a code even from logged-in users. For a home server, the sane starting point is: admin for you, one read-write user for your own devices, and read-only users for everyone else.

How Do You Access OpenList with WebDAV?

OpenList doubles as a WebDAV server, and this OpenList WebDAV section shows how every mounted storage can also be opened as a network drive in your operating system - no browser needed. Find the WebDAV address in the OpenList documentation's WebDAV section, then paste it into your OS's network-drive dialog along with your OpenList username and password; the same mount paths you set in the admin panel are the folder names you will see. The per-OS connection points differ only in where the dialog lives:

WebDAV turns OpenList from "a nice web page" into actual infrastructure: media players, backup tools, and file managers can all read and write through it. Uploads through WebDAV land directly in the backend storage, subject to that user's permissions.

How Do You Migrate from Alist to OpenList?

If you are running the old Alist and want the maintained fork, the OpenList Alist migration below uses the built-in backup import - which makes OpenList the cleanest Alist alternative available. In Alist's admin panel, open the backup and restore page and export a backup; in OpenList, use the restore function to import that file. Your cloud-drive mount configs, users, and settings carry over; your admin password does not, so set a new one after the import:

Verify each storage browses correctly after the import before you shut the old instance down. The migration is one-way in practice - plan a rollback window, not a leap of faith.

When Is Rclone or Copyparty a Better Fit Than OpenList?

OpenList is a browsing interface, not a transfer engine - and that is the graduation line, said once. If your job is moving files between clouds on a schedule, syncing folders, or scripting transfers, Rclone is the better tool: it copies and syncs between remotes from the command line, where OpenList only lets you look at them. Our Rclone beginner guide covers that sync lane in depth. If your job is serving local folders to devices on your LAN with a QR code and zero setup, Copyparty wins that lane instead. Choose OpenList when the job is "one web page where I can see and manage everything"; choose the others when the job is moving or serving files.

Sources

• OpenList official Docker installation docs - https://doc.oplist.org/guide/installation/docker (compose file, data dir /opt/openlist/data, port 5244, admin password via docker logs)
• OpenListTeam/OpenList on GitHub - https://api.github.com/repos/OpenListTeam/OpenList (v4.2.9 released 2026-10-25, AGPL-3.0, ~25,409 stars, actively maintained)
• OpenList fork story, Docker deploy, and Alist migration - https://blog.51sec.org/2025/12/openlist-new-open-source-and-self.html (Alist sale ~June 2025, telemetry discovery, line-by-line commit review, driver list, WebDAV, backup import)
• Docker deploy notes and the UID-1001 gotcha - https://blog.csdn.net/wangwenzhe222/article/details/150572634 (v4.1.0 container user change, PUID/PGID removal)
• OpenList usage guide with WebDAV integration - https://deepwiki.com/iranee/qnap-openlist-webdav/4-usage-guide (web UI, storage mounts, mount paths, WebDAV access)
• Community container template notes - https://portainer-templates.as93.net/openlist (first-run browser setup page variant)
• OpenList feature overview - https://selfhost.directory/project/openlist (file preview, offline download, cross-storage copy, package download, protected routes)

Frequently Asked Questions

Is OpenList the same as Alist?

OpenList is the community fork of Alist, not the same project. Alist was sold around June 2025 and hidden telemetry was later found shipping by default; OpenList was forked from the open code, its developers reviewed months of commits line by line, and it is now the maintained, fully open-source continuation. If you want an Alist alternative you can trust going forward, OpenList is it.

What port does OpenList use?

OpenList listens on port 5244 by default, so the web UI lives at http://your-server:5244 after a standard Docker Compose install. Map a different host port in the compose file if 5244 is taken, but keep the container side on 5244 unless you know why you are changing it.

I lost my OpenList admin password. What do I do?

Run docker exec -it openlist ./openlist admin random from the host to print a fresh admin password, or docker exec -it openlist ./openlist admin set NEW_PASSWORD to choose your own. Then log in and set a proper password in the admin panel.

Is OpenList free?

Yes. OpenList is licensed AGPL-3.0 and free to self-host with no paid tiers - the official docs and community directories list no premium plans. Your only costs are the server you run it on and whatever the storage backends themselves charge.

Does CodexFuse have an OpenList tool?

No. There is no CodexFuse OpenList tool, and this guide does not promise one - OpenList is a self-hosted server application you run on your own machine, which is a different category from our browser-based tools.