Upgrade Open WebUI Safely Now | Generated by AI
Got you. Here are the safe, no-nonsense ways to upgrade Open WebUI.
If you installed with pip (your case)
# 1) (Recommended) activate the env you use for Open WebUI
# e.g. conda:
conda activate open-webui
# or venv:
# source ~/open-webui-venv/bin/activate
# 2) Upgrade to latest
python3.11 -m pip install -U open-webui
# 3) (Optional) if pip caching causes trouble
python3.11 -m pip cache purge
python3.11 -m pip install --no-cache-dir -U open-webui
# 4) Verify what you got
python3.11 -m pip show open-webui
Official docs say just pip install -U open-webui upgrades to the latest release. (Open WebUI)
Keep your data/settings persistent
When you run the server, you can pin a data directory so upgrades don’t touch it:
# macOS/Linux
DATA_DIR="$HOME/.open-webui" open-webui serve
# Windows (PowerShell)
$env:DATA_DIR="C:\open-webui\data"; open-webui serve
This mirrors the docs’ guidance to set DATA_DIR (or use uvx … @latest serve with the same variable) so your chats/config live outside the package install. (Open WebUI)
Tip: If you previously ran without
DATA_DIR, start using it now; Open WebUI will use that folder going forward.
If you used Docker (for completeness)
# stop & remove old container (data is in the named volume)
docker rm -f open-webui
# pull the latest image
docker pull ghcr.io/open-webui/open-webui:main
# start again with your existing volume
docker run -d -p 3000:8080 \
-v open-webui:/app/backend/data \
--name open-webui \
ghcr.io/open-webui/open-webui:main
This is the project’s recommended manual update flow; your data persists in the open-webui Docker volume. (Open WebUI)
Check what “latest” is
You can confirm the newest tag from GitHub Releases before/after you upgrade. (GitHub)
If anything errors (e.g., Python version mismatch), ensure you’re on Python 3.11 for the pip method, which the project explicitly recommends. (GitHub)
Want me to spot-check your current env or interpret any upgrade error output? Paste it here and I’ll troubleshoot.