Where Does Open WebUI Store Chats and Data?
Open WebUI keeps chats and settings in a backend data folder, usually a Docker volume called open-webui.
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Open WebUI stores everything under /app/backend/data inside its container: the webui.db SQLite database with chats, users, and settings, plus uploads, caches, and vector stores beside it. The official run commands mount a Docker volume named open-webui there. That volume is your data. The container is disposable.
On a Linux Docker host the volume physically sits at /var/lib/docker/volumes/open-webui/_data. Docker Desktop on Windows and macOS hides volumes inside its VM, so use docker cp or a bind mount instead of hunting the host filesystem. Never share one volume between stable and dev images; migrations can make it unreadable to the older build.
Where Open WebUI stores this, by platform
/var/lib/docker/volumes/open-webui/_data
Host path of the default named volume. Inspect with docker volume inspect open-webui. Contains webui.db plus uploads, cache, and vector_db.
/app/backend/data (inside the container)
Volumes live inside the Docker Desktop VM, not at a plain host path. Use docker cp open-webui:/app/backend/data or switch to a bind mount for direct access.
/app/backend/data (inside the container)
Same VM caveat as Windows. Bind-mount a host folder with -v /path/on/mac:/app/backend/data if you want files you can see in Finder.
Frequently asked questions
How do I back up my Open WebUI chats?
Back up the volume, not the container. Run a one-shot alpine container mounting both the volume and a host folder, then tar the data dir. Restoring is unpacking that tar into a fresh volume before first launch.
After a restart it asks me to sign up again. Where did my data go?
The container started without its volume mounted, so it created a fresh database inside disposable container storage. Recreate it with the volume flag pointing at your existing open-webui volume and the account returns.
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