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id	title
config	Frigate Configuration

import ConfigTabs from "@site/src/components/ConfigTabs"; import TabItem from "@theme/TabItem"; import NavPath from "@site/src/components/NavPath";

Frigate can be configured through the Settings UI or by editing the YAML configuration file directly. The Settings UI is the recommended approach — it provides validation and a guided experience for all configuration options.

Using the Settings UI

The Settings UI groups every configuration option into sections that are listed in the left-hand menu. Each section presents a guided form with validation, so you don't need to remember the structure of the YAML or look up option names by hand.

Global vs. camera-level configuration

Settings are organized into two scopes:

Global configuration — values under apply to every camera by default. This is where you set the baseline behavior for object detection, recording, snapshots, motion, and so on.
Camera configuration — values under apply to a single camera. Use the camera selector button at the top of these pages to choose which camera you are editing.

When a camera-level section is left untouched, the camera simply inherits the global values. Changing a value on a camera page overrides the global value for that camera only — the global setting and every other camera are unaffected. This mirrors how the YAML works, where a value set under cameras.<name> takes precedence over the same value set at the top level.

To undo an override and go back to inheriting from the parent scope, use the reset button at the bottom of the section:

On a camera section, the button is labeled Reset to Global and restores the camera to the global value.
On a global section, the button is labeled Reset to Default and restores Frigate's built-in default.

Resetting asks for confirmation and cannot be undone once applied.

Saving changes and the Save All button

Edits are not applied until you save them. As soon as you change a value, the UI tracks it as a pending change:

The edited section shows a Modified badge, and the changed fields are highlighted.
A You have unsaved changes notice appears above the section's Save and Undo buttons. Save commits just that section; Undo discards its pending edits.

Because pending changes can span multiple sections — and multiple cameras — the header provides a Save All button that writes every pending change at once. Next to it, Review pending changes opens a summary that lists each pending edit with its scope (Global or a specific camera), the affected field, and the new value, so you can confirm exactly what will be written before committing. Undo All discards every pending change across all sections.

Restart-required indicators

Most settings take effect immediately, but some require Frigate to restart before they apply. Fields that require a restart are marked with a small restart icon and a Restart required tooltip next to the field label.

When you save a change that touches one of these fields, Frigate confirms the save and reminds you that a restart is needed (for example, "Settings saved successfully. Restart Frigate to apply your changes."). The notification includes a one-click Restart Frigate action so you can apply the change right away, or you can continue editing and restart later.

When you are working under , small colored dots can appear next to a section's name in the menu. They give you an at-a-glance summary of that section's state for the selected camera:

Blue dot — this section overrides the global configuration. One or more values in the section have been set specifically for this camera and differ from the global defaults.
Profile-colored dot — when you are viewing a camera profile, a dot in that profile's assigned color indicates the section is overridden by that profile. Each profile is given its own distinct color so you can tell at a glance which sections it changes.
Amber dot — this section has unsaved changes. It appears alongside the Modified badge whenever you have pending edits in the section that haven't been saved yet.

Hover over any dot to see a tooltip describing what it means. Open a section to see exactly which fields are overridden — the section header indicates how many fields differ from the global (or base) configuration.

Configuration File Location

For users who prefer to edit the YAML configuration file directly, it is recommended to start with a minimal configuration and add to it as described in the getting started guide.

Home Assistant App: /addon_configs/<addon_directory>/config.yml — see directory list
All other installations: Map to /config/config.yml inside the container

It can be named config.yml or config.yaml, but if both files exist config.yml will be preferred and config.yaml will be ignored.

A minimal starting configuration:

mqtt:
  enabled: False

cameras:
  dummy_camera: # <--- this will be changed to your actual camera later
    enabled: False
    ffmpeg:
      inputs:
        - path: rtsp://127.0.0.1:554/rtsp
          roles:
            - detect

Accessing the Home Assistant App configuration directory

When running Frigate through the HA App, the Frigate /config directory is mapped to /addon_configs/<addon_directory> in the host, where <addon_directory> is specific to the variant of the Frigate App you are running.

App Variant	Configuration directory
Frigate	`/addon_configs/ccab4aaf_frigate`
Frigate (Full Access)	`/addon_configs/ccab4aaf_frigate-fa`
Frigate Beta	`/addon_configs/ccab4aaf_frigate-beta`
Frigate Beta (Full Access)	`/addon_configs/ccab4aaf_frigate-fa-beta`

Whenever you see /config in the documentation, it refers to this directory.

If for example you are running the standard App variant and use the VS Code App to browse your files, you can click File > Open folder... and navigate to /addon_configs/ccab4aaf_frigate to access the Frigate /config directory and edit the config.yaml file. You can also use the built-in config editor in the Frigate UI.

VS Code Configuration Schema

VS Code supports JSON schemas for automatically validating configuration files. You can enable this feature by adding # yaml-language-server: $schema=http://frigate_host:5000/api/config/schema.json to the beginning of the configuration file. Replace frigate_host with the IP address or hostname of your Frigate server. If you're using both VS Code and Frigate as an App, you should use ccab4aaf-frigate instead. Make sure to expose the internal unauthenticated port 5000 when accessing the config from VS Code on another machine.

Environment Variable Substitution

Frigate supports the use of environment variables starting with FRIGATE_ only where specifically indicated in the reference config. For example, the following values can be replaced at runtime by using environment variables:

mqtt:
  host: "{FRIGATE_MQTT_HOST}"
  user: "{FRIGATE_MQTT_USER}"
  password: "{FRIGATE_MQTT_PASSWORD}"

- path: rtsp://{FRIGATE_RTSP_USER}:{FRIGATE_RTSP_PASSWORD}@10.0.10.10:8554/unicast

onvif:
  host: "192.168.1.12"
  port: 8000
  user: "{FRIGATE_RTSP_USER}"
  password: "{FRIGATE_RTSP_PASSWORD}"

go2rtc:
  rtsp:
    username: "{FRIGATE_GO2RTC_RTSP_USERNAME}"
    password: "{FRIGATE_GO2RTC_RTSP_PASSWORD}"

genai:
  api_key: "{FRIGATE_GENAI_API_KEY}"

Common configuration examples

Here are some common starter configuration examples. These can be configured through the Settings UI or via YAML. Refer to the reference config for detailed information about all config values.

Raspberry Pi Home Assistant App with USB Coral

Single camera with 720p, 5fps stream for detect
MQTT connected to the Home Assistant Mosquitto App
Hardware acceleration for decoding video
USB Coral detector
Save all video with any detectable motion for 7 days regardless of whether any objects were detected or not
Continue to keep all video if it qualified as an alert or detection for 30 days
Save snapshots for 30 days
Motion mask for the camera timestamp

Navigate to and configure the MQTT connection to your Home Assistant Mosquitto broker
Navigate to and set Hardware acceleration arguments to Raspberry Pi (H.264)
Navigate to and add a detector with Type EdgeTPU and Device usb
Navigate to and set Enable recording to on, Motion retention > Retention days to 7, Alert retention > Event retention > Retention days to 30, Alert retention > Event retention > Retention mode to motion, Detection retention > Event retention > Retention days to 30, Detection retention > Event retention > Retention mode to motion
Navigate to and set Enable snapshots to on, Snapshot retention > Default retention to 30
Navigate to and add your camera with the appropriate RTSP stream URL
Navigate to to add a motion mask for the camera timestamp

mqtt:
  host: core-mosquitto
  user: mqtt-user
  password: xxxxxxxxxx

ffmpeg:
  hwaccel_args: preset-rpi-64-h264

detectors:
  coral:
    type: edgetpu
    device: usb

record:
  enabled: True
  motion:
    days: 7
  alerts:
    retain:
      days: 30
      mode: motion
  detections:
    retain:
      days: 30
      mode: motion

snapshots:
  enabled: True
  retain:
    default: 30

cameras:
  name_of_your_camera:
    detect:
      width: 1280
      height: 720
      fps: 5
    ffmpeg:
      inputs:
        - path: rtsp://10.0.10.10:554/rtsp
          roles:
            - detect
    motion:
      mask:
        timestamp:
          friendly_name: "Camera timestamp"
          enabled: true
          coordinates: "0.000,0.427,0.002,0.000,0.999,0.000,0.999,0.781,0.885,0.456,0.700,0.424,0.701,0.311,0.507,0.294,0.453,0.347,0.451,0.400"

Standalone Intel Mini PC with USB Coral

Single camera with 720p, 5fps stream for detect
MQTT disabled (not integrated with Home Assistant)
VAAPI hardware acceleration for decoding video
USB Coral detector
Save all video with any detectable motion for 7 days regardless of whether any objects were detected or not
Continue to keep all video if it qualified as an alert or detection for 30 days
Save snapshots for 30 days
Motion mask for the camera timestamp

Navigate to and set Enable MQTT to off
Navigate to and set Hardware acceleration arguments to VAAPI (Intel/AMD GPU)
Navigate to and add a detector with Type EdgeTPU and Device usb
Navigate to and set Enable recording to on, Motion retention > Retention days to 7, Alert retention > Event retention > Retention days to 30, Alert retention > Event retention > Retention mode to motion, Detection retention > Event retention > Retention days to 30, Detection retention > Event retention > Retention mode to motion
Navigate to and set Enable snapshots to on, Snapshot retention > Default retention to 30
Navigate to and add your camera with the appropriate RTSP stream URL
Navigate to to add a motion mask for the camera timestamp

mqtt:
  enabled: False

ffmpeg:
  hwaccel_args: preset-vaapi

detectors:
  coral:
    type: edgetpu
    device: usb

record:
  enabled: True
  motion:
    days: 7
  alerts:
    retain:
      days: 30
      mode: motion
  detections:
    retain:
      days: 30
      mode: motion

snapshots:
  enabled: True
  retain:
    default: 30

cameras:
  name_of_your_camera:
    detect:
      width: 1280
      height: 720
      fps: 5
    ffmpeg:
      inputs:
        - path: rtsp://10.0.10.10:554/rtsp
          roles:
            - detect
    motion:
      mask:
        timestamp:
          friendly_name: "Camera timestamp"
          enabled: true
          coordinates: "0.000,0.427,0.002,0.000,0.999,0.000,0.999,0.781,0.885,0.456,0.700,0.424,0.701,0.311,0.507,0.294,0.453,0.347,0.451,0.400"

Home Assistant integrated Intel Mini PC with OpenVINO

Single camera with 720p, 5fps stream for detect
MQTT connected to same MQTT server as Home Assistant
VAAPI hardware acceleration for decoding video
OpenVINO detector
Save all video with any detectable motion for 7 days regardless of whether any objects were detected or not
Continue to keep all video if it qualified as an alert or detection for 30 days
Save snapshots for 30 days
Motion mask for the camera timestamp

Navigate to and configure the connection to your MQTT broker
Navigate to and set Hardware acceleration arguments to VAAPI (Intel/AMD GPU)
Navigate to and add a detector with Type openvino and Device AUTO
On the same page, in the Custom Model tab, configure the OpenVINO model path and settings
Navigate to and set Enable recording to on, Motion retention > Retention days to 7, Alert retention > Event retention > Retention days to 30, Alert retention > Event retention > Retention mode to motion, Detection retention > Event retention > Retention days to 30, Detection retention > Event retention > Retention mode to motion
Navigate to and set Enable snapshots to on, Snapshot retention > Default retention to 30
Navigate to and add your camera with the appropriate RTSP stream URL
Navigate to to add a motion mask for the camera timestamp

mqtt:
  host: 192.168.X.X # <---- same mqtt broker that home assistant uses
  user: mqtt-user
  password: xxxxxxxxxx

ffmpeg:
  hwaccel_args: preset-vaapi

detectors:
  ov:
    type: openvino
    device: AUTO

model:
  width: 300
  height: 300
  input_tensor: nhwc
  input_pixel_format: bgr
  path: /openvino-model/ssdlite_mobilenet_v2.xml
  labelmap_path: /openvino-model/coco_91cl_bkgr.txt

record:
  enabled: True
  motion:
    days: 7
  alerts:
    retain:
      days: 30
      mode: motion
  detections:
    retain:
      days: 30
      mode: motion

snapshots:
  enabled: True
  retain:
    default: 30

cameras:
  name_of_your_camera:
    detect:
      width: 1280
      height: 720
      fps: 5
    ffmpeg:
      inputs:
        - path: rtsp://10.0.10.10:554/rtsp
          roles:
            - detect
    motion:
      mask:
        timestamp:
          friendly_name: "Camera timestamp"
          enabled: true
          coordinates: "0.000,0.427,0.002,0.000,0.999,0.000,0.999,0.781,0.885,0.456,0.700,0.424,0.701,0.311,0.507,0.294,0.453,0.347,0.451,0.400"

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