What this does

Deploys the Open WebUI browser interface as a Docker container connected to the local Ollama backend. After this guide the interface is reachable at http://localhost:8080 and responsive to model queries.

Steps

Create the project directory and compose file.

mkdir -p ~/open-webui && cd ~/open-webui

Create a compose.yaml with:

services:
  open-webui:
    image: ghcr.io/open-webui/open-webui:main
    container_name: open-webui
    ports:
      - "8080:8080"
    environment:
      - OLLAMA_BASE_URL=http://host.docker.internal:11434
    volumes:
      - ./data:/app/backend/data
    restart: unless-stopped

Start the container stack.
```
docker compose up -d
```
Expected output: Pull progress followed by Container open-webui Running.
Wait for startup and confirm the container is healthy.
```
sleep 30 && docker compose ps
```
Expected output: open-webui showing status Up.
Open the interface in a browser.
```
http://localhost:8080
```
Expected result: Login page rendered with admin account setup prompt.

Verification

curl -s -o /dev/null -w "%{http_code}" http://localhost:8080
# Expected: 200

Common failures

503 Service Unavailable on browser load — Open WebUI is still initializing. Wait 60 seconds and refresh.
Connection refused to Ollama — OLLAMA_BASE_URL uses a domain Ollama cannot route. On Linux use --add-host=host.docker.internal:host-gateway.
Image pull fails — Use ghcr.io/open-webui/open-webui:latest or pin a specific version tag.
Permission denied writing to ./data/ — Run sudo chown -R 1000:1000 ~/open-webui/data.
Container restarts repeatedly — Check logs with docker compose logs for Connection refused errors.

Operator checkpoint

Before treating this as solved, write down the local runtime, model or package version, hardware/backend if relevant, and the verification output. This keeps the guide useful as a Will-It-Run style decision instead of a one-off command transcript.

How to install Open WebUI with Docker

What this does

Steps

Verification

Common failures

Operator checkpoint

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