Update & Back Up Self-Hosted Studio

Update self-hosted PDF Redaction Studio to the latest Docker images, back up and restore its Postgres database, and know which data lives in users' browsers.

Update Studio

From the folder that contains docker-compose.yaml:

docker compose pull
docker compose up -d

pull downloads the latest images and up -d recreates the containers that changed. The backend applies any database changes when it starts. Your .env, the database in ./data and the cached models are kept.

Before a big update, back up the database. To check what changed, see the changelog.

What to back up

Data	Where	How
Accounts, workspaces, projects, synced documents	Postgres, in `./data`	Database dump
Settings and license	`.env`	Copy the file and keep it somewhere safe; it contains secrets
Detection models	`~/.cache/huggingface` on the host	Optional. They download again if missing
Documents that were never synced	Each user's browser	Not on the server. Users should sync documents they need to keep

Back up the database

docker compose exec -T db pg_dump -U postgres db > studio-backup-$(date +%F).sql

Run it on a schedule, for example with cron, and store the files off the server.

Restore the database

docker compose stop backend studio
docker compose exec -T db psql -U postgres -c "DROP DATABASE db;" -c "CREATE DATABASE db;"
docker compose exec -T db psql -U postgres db < studio-backup-2026-10-30.sql
docker compose up -d

Use the name of your backup file in the third command.

Move Studio to another server

Back up the database and copy .env and docker-compose.yaml.
Install Docker on the new server and put the files in a new folder.
Run docker compose up -d db, restore the backup, then docker compose up -d.
Update the public URLs in .env if the address changed, see Configuration.

Next steps

Studio troubleshooting

Problems after an update.

Updates and backups