Uppy is a sleek, modular JavaScript file uploader that integrates seamlessly
with any application. It’s fast, has a comprehensible API and lets you worry
about more important problems than building a file uploader.
Fetch files from local disk, remote URLs, Google Drive, Dropbox, Box,
or snap and record selfies with a camera
Preview and edit metadata with a nice interface
Upload to the final destination, optionally process/encode
For the supported frameworks (except Angular) Uppy offers three ways to build user interfaces:
Pre-composed, plug-and-play components. Mainly <Dashboard />.
The downside is that you can’t customize the UI.
Headless components. Smaller components, easier to override the styles
or compose them together with your own components.
Hooks. Attach our logic to your own components, no restrictions, create a
tailor-made UI.
Features
Lightweight, modular plugin-based architecture, light on dependencies :zap:
Resumable file uploads via the open tus standard, so large
uploads survive network hiccups
Supports picking files from: Webcam, Dropbox, Box, Google Drive,
bypassing the user’s device where possible, syncing between servers directly
via @uppy/companion
Works great with file encoding and processing backends, such as
Transloadit, which handles encoding, conversion and
delivery for you; works great without one too, if you would rather run and
scale your own Apache/Nginx/Node/FFmpeg pipeline
Sleek user interface :sparkles:
Optional file recovery (after a browser crash) with
Golden Retriever
Speaks several languages (i18n) :earth_africa:
Built with accessibility in mind
Free for the world, forever (as in beer 🍺, pizza 🍕, and liberty 🗽)
Cute as a puppy, also accepts cat pictures :dog:
Installation
npm install @uppy/core @uppy/dashboard @uppy/tus
Add CSS
uppy.min.css,
either to your HTML page’s <head> or include in JS, if your bundler of choice
supports it.
Alternatively, you can also use a pre-built bundle from Transloadit’s CDN: Smart
CDN. In that case Uppy will attach itself to the global window.Uppy object.
⚠️ The bundle consists of most Uppy plugins, so this method is not recommended
for production, as your users will have to download all plugins when you are
likely using only a few.
XHR Upload — regular uploads for any
backend out there (like Apache, Nginx)
AWS S3 — plain upload to AWS S3 or
compatible services
File Processing
Transloadit — creates Assemblies that
upload files to Transloadit’s encoding backend. See
the integration guide for
JavaScript, React, Next.js, Vue, and Angular examples with server-signed
Assembly options
Miscellaneous
Golden Retriever — restores files
after a browser crash, like it’s nothing
Thumbnail Generator — generates
image previews (included by default with Dashboard)
Form — collects metadata from <form> right
before an Uppy upload, then optionally appends results back to the form
Browser Support
We aim to support recent versions of Chrome, Firefox, and Safari.
FAQ
Why not use <input type="file">?
Having no JavaScript beats having a lot of it, so that’s a fair question!
Running an uploading & encoding business for ten years though we found that in
cases, the file input leaves some to be desired:
We received complaints about broken uploads and found that resumable uploads
are important, especially for big files and to be inclusive towards people on
poorer connections (we also launched tus.io to attack that
problem). Uppy uploads can survive network outages and browser crashes or
accidental navigate-aways.
Uppy supports editing meta information before uploading.
Uppy allows cropping images before uploading.
There’s the situation where people are using their mobile devices and want to
upload on the go, but they have files in Dropbox
or a plain file URL from anywhere on the open web. Uppy allows to pick files
from those and push it to the destination without downloading it to your
mobile device first.
Accurate upload progress reporting is an issue on many platforms.
Some file validation — size, type, number of files — can be done on the client
with Uppy.
Uppy integrates webcam support, in case your users want to upload a
picture/video/audio that does not exist yet :)
A larger drag and drop surface can be pleasant to work with. Some people also
like that you can control the styling, language, etc.
Uppy is aware of encoding backends. Often after an upload, the server needs to
rotate, detect faces, optimize for iPad, or what have you. Uppy can track
progress of this and report back to the user in different ways.
Sometimes you might want your uploads to happen while you continue to interact
on the same single page.
Not all apps need all these features. An <input type="file"> is fine in many
situations. But these were a few things that our customers hit / asked about
enough to spark us to develop Uppy.
Why is all this goodness free?
Transloadit’s team is small and we have a shared ambition to make a living from
open source. By giving away projects like tus.io and
Uppy, we’re hoping to advance the state of the art, make life
a tiny little bit better for everyone and in doing so have rewarding jobs and
get some eyes on our commercial service:
a content ingestion & processing platform.
Our thinking is that if only a fraction of our open source userbase can see the
appeal of hosted versions straight from the source, that could already be enough
to sustain our work. So far this is working out! We’re able to dedicate 80% of
our time to open source and haven’t gone bankrupt yet. :D
Does Uppy support S3 uploads?
Yes, please check out the docs for more
information.
Can I use Uppy with Rails/Node.js/Go/PHP?
Yes, whatever you want on the backend will work with @uppy/xhr-upload plugin,
since it only does a POST or PUT request. Here’s a
PHP backend example.
And you’ll need @uppy/companion if you’d
like your users to be able to pick files from Google Drive, Dropbox
or via direct URLs (with more services coming).
What is this?Uppy is a sleek, modular JavaScript file uploader for web browsers: it picks files from disk, webcam or cloud services, previews them and uploads to your backend, with optional processing afterwards.
Is Uppy a hosted service or something I add to my own code?It's an open source (MIT) JavaScript library you bundle into your app, built around a light plugin-based core. There's an optional server-side piece, @uppy/companion, for importing from cloud providers.
How do I add it to a project?Install the @uppy packages via npm/yarn with your bundler and include uppy.min.css, or drop in the pre-built CDN bundle that attaches to window.Uppy — the CDN bundle isn't recommended for production since it ships most plugins.
Do I need anything special on my server?No — @uppy/xhr-upload just sends a POST or PUT, so Rails, Node, Go, PHP or anything works. For resumable uploads run one of the tus server implementations; @uppy/companion is only needed for cloud imports.
Any browser caveats I should know about?It targets recent versions of Chrome, Firefox and Safari, so legacy browsers aren't the goal. Meta info can be edited and images cropped before upload, and i18n plus accessibility are built in.
Why would I use this instead of a plain file input?Uppy adds resumable uploads that survive network outages, browser crashes and accidental navigate-aways, accurate progress reporting, client-side validation of size/type/count, webcam capture, and picking files from Dropbox or a URL without downloading them to a mobile device first.
What does @uppy/companion do?It's a server-side component that lets Uppy import from Google Drive, Dropbox, Box, Facebook, OneDrive and direct URLs, syncing between servers so remote files go straight to the destination instead of passing through the user's device.
What is Golden Retriever?An optional Uppy plugin that restores files after a browser crash, so an upload in progress isn't lost. It complements the resumable tus uploads for large transfers.
Uppy is a sleek, modular JavaScript file uploader for web browsers: it picks files from disk, webcam or cloud services, previews them and uploads to your backend, with optional processing afterwards.