paperless-ngx/docs/migration-v3.md

v3 Migration Guide

Secret Key is Now Required

The PAPERLESS_SECRET_KEY environment variable is now required. This is a critical security setting used for cryptographic signing and should be set to a long, random value.

Action Required

If you are upgrading an existing installation, you must now set PAPERLESS_SECRET_KEY explicitly.

If your installation was relying on the previous built-in default key, you have two options:

• Set PAPERLESS_SECRET_KEY to that previous value to preserve existing sessions and tokens.
• Set PAPERLESS_SECRET_KEY to a new random value to improve security, understanding that this will invalidate existing sessions and other signed tokens.

For new installations, or if you choose to rotate the key, you may generate a new secret key with:

python3 -c "import secrets; print(secrets.token_urlsafe(64))"

Consumer Settings Changes

The v3 consumer command uses a different library to unify the watching for new files in the consume directory. For the user, this removes several configuration options related to delays and retries and replaces with a single unified setting. It also adjusts how the consumer ignore filtering happens, replaced fnmatch with regex and separating the directory ignore from the file ignore.

Summary

Old Setting	New Setting	Notes
CONSUMER_POLLING	CONSUMER_POLLING_INTERVAL	Renamed for clarity
CONSUMER_INOTIFY_DELAY	CONSUMER_STABILITY_DELAY	Unified for all modes
CONSUMER_POLLING_DELAY	Removed	Use CONSUMER_STABILITY_DELAY
CONSUMER_POLLING_RETRY_COUNT	Removed	Automatic with stability tracking
CONSUMER_IGNORE_PATTERNS	CONSUMER_IGNORE_PATTERNS	Now regex, not fnmatch; user patterns are added to (not replacing) default ones
New	CONSUMER_IGNORE_DIRS	Additional directories to ignore; user entries are added to (not replacing) defaults

Encryption Support

Document and thumbnail encryption is no longer supported. This was previously deprecated in paperless-ng 0.9.3

Users must decrypt their document using the decrypt_documents command before upgrading.

Barcode Scanner Changes

Support for pyzbar has been removed. The underlying libzbar library has seen no updates in 16 years and is largely unmaintained, and the pyzbar Python wrapper last saw a release in March 2022. In practice, pyzbar struggled with barcode detection reliability, particularly on skewed, low-contrast, or partially obscured barcodes. zxing-cpp is actively maintained, significantly more reliable at finding barcodes, and now ships pre-built wheels for both x86_64 and arm64, removing the need to build the library.

The CONSUMER_BARCODE_SCANNER setting has been removed. zxing-cpp is now the only backend.

Summary

Old Setting	New Setting	Notes
CONSUMER_BARCODE_SCANNER	Removed	zxing-cpp is now the only backend

Action Required

• If you were already using CONSUMER_BARCODE_SCANNER=ZXING, simply remove the setting.
• If you had CONSUMER_BARCODE_SCANNER=PYZBAR or were using the default, no functional changes are needed beyond removing the setting. zxing-cpp supports all the same barcode formats and you should see improved detection reliability.
• The libzbar0 / libzbar-dev system packages are no longer required and can be removed from any custom Docker images or host installations.

Database Engine

PAPERLESS_DBENGINE is now required to use PostgreSQL or MariaDB. Previously, the engine was inferred from the presence of PAPERLESS_DBHOST, with PAPERLESS_DBENGINE only needed to select MariaDB over PostgreSQL.

SQLite users require no changes, though they may explicitly set their engine if desired.

Action Required

PostgreSQL and MariaDB users must add PAPERLESS_DBENGINE to their environment:

# v2 (PostgreSQL inferred from PAPERLESS_DBHOST)
PAPERLESS_DBHOST: postgres

# v3 (engine must be explicit)
PAPERLESS_DBENGINE: postgresql
PAPERLESS_DBHOST: postgres

See PAPERLESS_DBENGINE for accepted values.

Database Advanced Options

The individual SSL, timeout, and pooling variables have been removed in favor of a single PAPERLESS_DB_OPTIONS string. This consolidates a growing set of engine-specific variables into one place, and allows any option supported by the underlying database driver to be set without requiring a dedicated environment variable for each.

The removed variables and their replacements are:

Removed Variable	Replacement in PAPERLESS_DB_OPTIONS
PAPERLESS_DBSSLMODE	sslmode=<value> (PostgreSQL) or ssl_mode=<value> (MariaDB)
PAPERLESS_DBSSLROOTCERT	sslrootcert=<path> (PostgreSQL) or ssl.ca=<path> (MariaDB)
PAPERLESS_DBSSLCERT	sslcert=<path> (PostgreSQL) or ssl.cert=<path> (MariaDB)
PAPERLESS_DBSSLKEY	sslkey=<path> (PostgreSQL) or ssl.key=<path> (MariaDB)
PAPERLESS_DB_POOLSIZE	pool.max_size=<value> (PostgreSQL only)
PAPERLESS_DB_TIMEOUT	timeout=<value> (SQLite) or connect_timeout=<value> (PostgreSQL/MariaDB)

The deprecated variables will continue to function for now but will be removed in a future release. A deprecation warning is logged at startup for each deprecated variable that is still set.

Action Required

Users with any of the deprecated variables set should migrate to PAPERLESS_DB_OPTIONS. Multiple options are combined in a single value:

PAPERLESS_DB_OPTIONS="sslmode=require,sslrootcert=/certs/ca.pem,pool.max_size=10"

OCR and Archive File Generation Settings

The settings that control OCR behaviour and archive file generation have been redesigned. The old settings that coupled these two concerns together are removed — old values are not silently honoured; a startup warning is logged if any removed variable is still set in your environment.

Removed settings

Removed Setting	Replacement
PAPERLESS_OCR_MODE=skip	PAPERLESS_OCR_MODE=auto (new default)
PAPERLESS_OCR_MODE=skip_noarchive	PAPERLESS_OCR_MODE=auto + PAPERLESS_ARCHIVE_FILE_GENERATION=never
PAPERLESS_OCR_SKIP_ARCHIVE_FILE=never	PAPERLESS_ARCHIVE_FILE_GENERATION=always
PAPERLESS_OCR_SKIP_ARCHIVE_FILE=with_text	PAPERLESS_ARCHIVE_FILE_GENERATION=auto (new default)
PAPERLESS_OCR_SKIP_ARCHIVE_FILE=always	PAPERLESS_ARCHIVE_FILE_GENERATION=never

What changed and why

Previously, OCR_MODE conflated two independent concerns: whether to run OCR and whether to produce an archive. skip meant "skip OCR if text exists, but always produce an archive". skip_noarchive meant "skip OCR if text exists, and also skip the archive". This made it impossible to, for example, disable OCR entirely while still producing archives.

The new settings are independent:

• PAPERLESS_OCR_MODE controls OCR: auto (default), force, redo, off.
• PAPERLESS_ARCHIVE_FILE_GENERATION controls archive production: auto (default), always, never.

Database configuration

If you changed OCR settings via the admin UI (ApplicationConfiguration), the database values are migrated automatically during the upgrade. mode values (skip / skip_noarchive) are mapped to their new equivalents and skip_archive_file values are converted to the new archive_file_generation field. After upgrading, review the OCR settings in the admin UI to confirm the migrated values match your intent.

Action Required

Remove any PAPERLESS_OCR_SKIP_ARCHIVE_FILE variable from your environment. If you relied on OCR_MODE=skip or OCR_MODE=skip_noarchive, update accordingly:

# v2: skip OCR when text present, always archive
PAPERLESS_OCR_MODE=skip
# v3: equivalent (auto is the new default)
# No change needed — auto is the default

# v2: skip OCR when text present, skip archive too
PAPERLESS_OCR_MODE=skip_noarchive
# v3: equivalent
PAPERLESS_OCR_MODE=auto
PAPERLESS_ARCHIVE_FILE_GENERATION=never

# v2: always skip archive
PAPERLESS_OCR_SKIP_ARCHIVE_FILE=always
# v3: equivalent
PAPERLESS_ARCHIVE_FILE_GENERATION=never

# v2: skip archive only for born-digital docs
PAPERLESS_OCR_SKIP_ARCHIVE_FILE=with_text
# v3: equivalent (auto is the new default)
PAPERLESS_ARCHIVE_FILE_GENERATION=auto

Remote OCR parser

If you use the remote OCR parser (Azure AI), note that it always produces a searchable PDF and stores it as the archive copy. ARCHIVE_FILE_GENERATION=never has no effect for documents handled by the remote parser — the archive is produced unconditionally by the remote engine.

Search Index (Whoosh -> Tantivy)

The full-text search backend has been replaced with Tantivy. The index format is incompatible with Whoosh, so the search index is automatically rebuilt from scratch on first startup after upgrading. No manual action is required for the rebuild itself.

Note and custom field search syntax

The old Whoosh index exposed note and custom_field as flat text fields that were included in unqualified searches (e.g. just typing invoice would match note content). With Tantivy these are now structured JSON fields accessed via dotted paths:

Old syntax	New syntax
note:query	notes.note:query
custom_field:query	custom_fields.value:query

Saved views are migrated automatically. Any saved view filter rule that used an explicit note: or custom_field: field prefix in a fulltext query is rewritten to the new syntax by a data migration that runs on upgrade.

Unqualified queries are not migrated. If you had a saved view with a plain search term (e.g. invoice) that happened to match note content or custom field values, it will no longer return those matches. Update those queries to use the explicit prefix, for example:

invoice OR notes.note:invoice OR custom_fields.value:invoice

Custom field names can also be searched with custom_fields.name:fieldname.

OpenID Connect Token Endpoint Authentication

Some existing OpenID Connect setups may require an explicit token endpoint authentication method after upgrading to v3.

Action Required

If OIDC login fails at the callback with an invalid_client error, add token_auth_method to the provider settings in PAPERLESS_SOCIALACCOUNT_PROVIDERS.

For example:

{
  "openid_connect": {
    "APPS": [
      {
        ...
        "settings": {
          "server_url": "https://login.example.com",
          "token_auth_method": "client_secret_basic"
        }
      }
    ]
  }
}

Task History Cleared on Upgrade

The task tracking system has been redesigned in this release. All existing task history records are dropped from the database during the upgrade. Previously completed, failed, or acknowledged tasks will no longer appear in the task list after upgrading.

No user action is required.

Consume Script Positional Arguments Removed

Pre- and post-consumption scripts no longer receive positional arguments. All information is now passed exclusively via environment variables, which have been available since earlier versions.

Pre-consumption script

Previously, the original file path was passed as $1. It is now only available as DOCUMENT_SOURCE_PATH.

Before:

#!/usr/bin/env bash
# $1 was the original file path
process_document "$1"

After:

#!/usr/bin/env bash
process_document "${DOCUMENT_SOURCE_PATH}"

Post-consumption script

Previously, document metadata was passed as positional arguments $1 through $8:

Argument	Environment Variable Equivalent
$1	DOCUMENT_ID
$2	DOCUMENT_FILE_NAME
$3	DOCUMENT_SOURCE_PATH
$4	DOCUMENT_THUMBNAIL_PATH
$5	DOCUMENT_DOWNLOAD_URL
$6	DOCUMENT_THUMBNAIL_URL
$7	DOCUMENT_CORRESPONDENT
$8	DOCUMENT_TAGS

Before:

#!/usr/bin/env bash
DOCUMENT_ID=$1
CORRESPONDENT=$7
TAGS=$8

After:

#!/usr/bin/env bash
# Use environment variables directly
echo "Document ${DOCUMENT_ID} from ${DOCUMENT_CORRESPONDENT} tagged: ${DOCUMENT_TAGS}"

Action Required

Update any pre- or post-consumption scripts that read $1, $2, etc. to use the corresponding environment variables instead. Environment variables have been the preferred option since v1.8.0.