SnapOtter

SnapOtter v2.2.0

Most of 2.2 is hardening. A non-admin holding a delegated users:manage role could take over an instance, and every tool endpoint turned out to be missing its permission check. Upgrade if you run more than one user.

The rest is the long tail of self-hosting: downloads that started and never finished, presets that broke the moment you added a second file, containers that crash-looped while Postgres was still coming up. Two new tools landed too. Docs and the website are now translated into 21 languages, and the interface finally clears WCAG AA contrast.

[!IMPORTANT] If you granted users:manage to a non-admin through a custom role, that role could take over administrator accounts on 2.0.0 through 2.1.0. Details in Security.

Security

• Privilege escalation through a delegated users:manage role (GHSA-9xgh-95qh-2x7h). A non-admin holding users:manage through a custom role could reset the password of, or delete, a higher-privileged account, a built-in administrator included, and take over the instance. Password reset and account deletion now verify the caller's authority over the target, so a delegated role cannot reach above its own level. Affected: 2.0.0 through 2.1.0. Reported by 李春来 (Chunlai Li). (#616)
• Every tool endpoint is now gated. Tool access was enforced route by route, so all 45 hand-written routes had to remember the same call and none of them did. A role without tools:use could still run image-to-pdf, erase-object, upscale, sign-pdf and the rest. The check now lives in one preHandler keyed off the matched route, so it covers sub-paths and any route added later. (#646)
• Rate limiting was bypassable on Docker installs. The image shipped TRUST_PROXY=true, so the client IP came from a request header and a forged X-Forwarded-For walked past the login limiter. The default is now a private-network trust list. (#649)
• Settings writes are checked per setting, not once at the door, and config import is now transactional so a rejected key cannot leave half a config applied. (#618)
• Library filenames cannot escape their storage root. A crafted stored name, which a malicious 1.x SQLite import copies verbatim, could read or delete files outside the files directory. Only reachable after an operator imports an attacker-supplied 1.x SQLite database, which is the one path that lets a stored name be chosen. Reported by @Alpastx. (GHSA-55w2-8cqf-w969, #600)
• Job cancellation enforces ownership, so an authenticated user can no longer cancel another user's job by its id. Reported by @Alpastx. (GHSA-wqxf-gj2p-689x, #599)
• A re-audit of the whole 2.0 tree caught what was still open: a captured SAML assertion could be replayed, an MFA challenge survived any number of wrong codes, the per-request API-key lookup was a full table scan, MAX_WORKSPACE_SIZE_GB was dead config, and the SVG sanitizer let through unquoted javascript: hrefs. (#620)
• Nine disclosed CVEs patched: fast-uri, svgo, sharp and tar transitively (#619), plus Pillow 12.3.0 (#517). RAW decoding on arm64 now builds LibRaw 0.22.2 from source instead of linking an unpatched system copy. (#649)

New Features

• Rounded Crop: rounded-square and iOS-style squircle masks, with a corner-radius control. Built for favicons and app icons. (#602)
• Remove GIF Background: strip the background from an animated GIF, WebP or APNG frame by frame and get a transparent animation back. (#502)
• Object Eraser lasso and High Quality mode: drag a freeform loop instead of painting every pixel, and optionally install a diffusion inpainting bundle for cleaner large-area fills. (#503, #566)
• Save as new, or overwrite. Editing a library file used to silently supersede the original. You now choose per edit, and the default keeps it. (#564, #577)
• Aspect-ratio presets in Resize. Pick 1:1, 4:3 or 16:9 and the two dimensions stay locked, without upscaling. (#530)
• Two-tier OCR: a fast tier is ba

2.1.0 (2026-07-10)

Hot fix

Bug Fixes

• demo: boot to dashboard, sample-data notice, robust mobile editor icon (#464) (a94b69b)
• demo: point banner "Self-host SnapOtter" link at the docs guide (#466) (463ccff)
• demo: populate admin data, fix settings crash and mobile editor icon (#463) (7329bc6)
• error-only Sentry telemetry, storm-proof capture, and crash fixes (#476) (ae6a4c8)
• landing: clarify OIDC is free, SAML is enterprise on pricing (#461) (c2c9a9e)
• landing: fix top nav overflow and text overlap (#473) (ffeacd4)
• landing: green the landing e2e suite (#470) (10ae6d1)
• landing: highlight Open Source as Most Popular tier (#462) (e468cef)
• landing: reposition residual meta framing and demote homepage tool count (#471) (958c3e8)
• reliable, self-healing AI feature-bundle installs (#472) (a731c3d)
• restyle sponsor button (37a3cfc)
• reword sponsor button to "Support us" (#468) (331e3bf)
• update python protobuf dependency (780624e)

Features

• demo: populate the Files library with sample files (#465) (a6e8f75)
• landing: add dismissible 2.0 launch banner (ea7a671)
• landing: add Product dropdown to nav (#475) (3d1744a)
• landing: restore Developers nav link, swap out Features anchor (#474) (a08afbc)
• reposition to self-hosted file-processing infrastructure (#469) (af011d5)

SnapOtter 2.0 turns the image toolkit into a full file-manipulation suite: 200+ tools across five modalities (Image, Video, Audio, PDF, and Files) plus a layer-based image editor, all still self-hosted with no external SaaS. Under the hood the whole platform was rebuilt on Postgres 17 and a Redis-backed job queue, so long-running work (video transcodes, AI upscales, OCR) now runs as durable background jobs with live progress instead of blocking a request. And you can start the entire stack with a single docker run.

[!TIP] New here? Start in one command. An embedded Postgres 17 and Redis 8 boot inside the container, so there's nothing else to wire up.

docker run -d -p 1349:1349 -v snapotter-data:/data snapotter/snapotter:2.0.0

Open http://localhost:1349 and sign in with admin / admin.

This is a major release. If you're on 1.x, read the Breaking Changes section below before upgrading: your data migrates automatically, but the container stack changed.

New Features

• Four new tool modalities: Video, Audio, PDF, and Files join Image, taking the catalog from a focused image toolkit to 200+ tools. Trim and transcode video, convert and normalize audio, split/merge/compress/sign PDFs, and run file utilities, all in the same self-hosted app.
• Durable background jobs: A Redis-backed queue (BullMQ) runs every tool as a tracked job. Fast tools still return instantly; long ones stream live progress over SSE and survive a page reload or a brief network drop.
• All-in-one single-container mode: docker run -p 1349:1349 -v snapotter-data:/data snapotter/snapotter:2.0.0 now boots a complete instance with an embedded Postgres and Redis. No Compose file required for a quick start. Compose remains the recommended production path.
• On-demand AI bundles: Background removal, OCR, transcription, upscaling, face detection/enhancement, object eraser and colorize, and photo restoration install on demand from the UI into your data volume, so the base image stays lean and installed models survive container recreation. GPU acceleration is detected per framework.
• Sign PDF: Draw, type, or upload a signature and place it anywhere on a PDF, right in the browser.
• Automate (visual pipeline builder): Chain tools into reusable pipelines where each step's output feeds the next, across all modalities, with nine prebuilt templates to start from.
• 83 one-click conversion presets: Dedicated JPG-to-PNG, MP4-to-GIF, and similar converters with fuzzy search, so common conversions are a single click.
• Layer-based image editor: A Konva-powered editor at /editor with brushes, shapes, adjustments, filters, and curves.
• Files library: Save any result to a persistent library and reuse it as input to another tool without downloading and re-uploading.
• Pinned tools: Pin the tools you use most to the top of the dashboard.
• In-canvas zoom and pan: Zoom and pan directly inside the object eraser and split tools instead of relying on browser zoom.
• Enterprise capabilities: OIDC/SSO, SAML, SCIM provisioning, S3-compatible storage, per-tool permissions, audit export, and OpenTelemetry distributed tracing, all offline-validated and gated behind a license.
• 21 languages: Full UI translations across 21 locales.
• Analytics with a real opt-out: Product analytics and error reporting are on by default with an instance-wide admin toggle in Settings that genuinely stops all egress.

Improvements

• Cancel a running process: You can now cancel work in progress instead of waiting for it to finish. (#137)
• Full-resolution RAW decoding: RAW files (including DNG) dec

Highlights

This release adds a new HTML to Image tool (tool #53), full WCAG 2.2 AA accessibility compliance, and a comprehensive security hardening pass based on external penetration testing. The Docker image also received 5 critical fixes that resolve container startup failures, broken HEIC decoding on ARM, and missing AI tool dependencies.

New Features

• HTML to Image: Capture screenshots of URLs or raw HTML as PNG/JPEG/WebP. Supports full-page captures, custom viewports, and dark mode. Built on Playwright Chromium with SSRF protection.
• Docker _FILE secret convention: Mount sensitive environment variables (passwords, API keys, OIDC secrets) as files instead of plain-text env vars. Supported for DEFAULT_PASSWORD_FILE, S3_ACCESS_KEY_ID_FILE, S3_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY_FILE, OIDC_CLIENT_SECRET_FILE, COOKIE_SECRET_FILE, and SNAPOTTER_LICENSE_KEY_FILE. (#205)
• Enterprise licensing and S3 storage: Optional commercial license key and S3-compatible object storage backend for enterprise deployments.
• Shape editor improvements: Fill/stroke transparency, RGBA color picker, and dash line styles in the image editor.
• Pre-built release archives: Download snapotter-vX.Y.Z-linux-amd64.tar.gz and snapotter-vX.Y.Z-linux-arm64.tar.gz from GitHub Releases for non-Docker installs (Proxmox, bare metal, LXC). (#202)
• Community roadmap: Feature requests and prioritization now tracked via GitHub Discussions with now/next/later labels.

Improvements

• WCAG 2.2 AA accessibility: Skip navigation, route announcer, focus trapping on all modals, aria-live regions for processing status, prefers-reduced-motion support, correct contrast ratios, and 44px minimum touch targets. All 49 hardcoded aria-label strings replaced with i18n keys across 25 components. (#209)
• Mobile responsiveness: Responsive settings dialog, homepage, navigation, and toast notifications. SSE connections now automatically reconnect when returning from a backgrounded mobile tab. (#203, #204)
• Background removal quality: Edge smoothing, color decontamination, and output format selection added to the remove-background tool.
• Italian translation: ~145 newly translated strings contributed by @albanobattistella. (#206)
• Per-tool API documentation: 53 individual VitePress doc pages with accurate parameters, example requests, and response formats. Root llms.txt added for LLM-friendly repo browsing.
• AI model downloads: Retry logic with exponential backoff for HuggingFace model downloads, preventing transient failures from blocking bundle installation. (#201)

Bug Fixes

• Docker: fresh containers were completely unusable: RATE_LIMIT_PER_MIN=0 in the Dockerfile caused @fastify/rate-limit to block all API requests (including health checks) with HTTP 429. Fixed by treating 0 as unlimited (50,000/min).
• Docker: face detection AI tools failed on all platforms: blur-faces, red-eye-removal, enhance-faces, and passport-photo failed with "libGLESv2.so.2 not found". Fixed by adding libgles2 to the Docker image.
• Docker: HEIC files broken on ARM: heif-convert crashed with "undefined symbol: heif_get_plugin_directories" on arm64 due to library version mismatch. Fixed with LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/local/lib to prioritize the custom libheif 1.21.2 build.
• Docker: upscale and restore-photo AI bundles failed on ARM: basicsr could not build from source on arm64 because wheel and setuptools were missing from the Python venv. Fixed by pre-installing both packages.
• Docker: OCR used wrong CUDA version on GPU: PaddlePaddle resolved from PyPI (CUDA 11) instead of the CUDA 12.6 index, causing symbol errors on GPU containers. Fixed by changing --extra-index-url to --index-url for the cu126 package source.
• SSRF guard bypass via hex IPv4-mapped IPv6: The URL-fetch SSRF guard only handled the dotted form of ::ffff: addresses. Hex-compressed forms like `[::ffff:7f00