5. Personalizing your instance

Personalizing your instance

Before you start your Overleaf instance for the first time, update the config/variables.env configuration file with your custom information.

1. Edit the variables file

   Open config/variables.env in your favorite text editor and update the environment variables below with the required values.

2. Required environment variables

   Update the following variables in config/variables.env:

   Name	Description	Example
   OVERLEAF_SITE_URL	Where your instance of Overleaf is publicly available. This is used in public links, and when connecting over websockets, so must be configured correctly!	https://overleaf.lilliput.com
   OVERLEAF_EMAIL_FROM_ADDRESS	This email address will be used as the from address for all outgoing emails.	[e-mail]
   OVERLEAF_ADMIN_EMAIL	The email address where users can reach the person who runs the site.	[e-mail]

   Once you have updated these environment variables, save and quit.

3. Setup Sandbox Compile

   Next, configure TeX Live Full for sandboxed-compiles.md. Open config/variables.env and update the following environment variables:

   config/variables.env

   ALL_TEX_LIVE_DOCKER_IMAGES=ghcr.io/ayaka-notes/texlive-full:2026.1, ghcr.io/ayaka-notes/texlive-full:2025.1
   ALL_TEX_LIVE_DOCKER_IMAGE_NAMES=Texlive 2026, Texlive 2025
   TEX_LIVE_DOCKER_IMAGE=ghcr.io/ayaka-notes/texlive-full:2026.1
   
4. Start your instance

   To start your instance run:

   Start the instance

   bin/up
   

   This command will download the required images including texlive, create the containers (using your customizations), and start the instance. You should see log output from the various Docker containers.

   To start them up again later (without attaching to the log output) run:

   Start without attaching to logs

   bin/start
   

The Toolkit uses docker compose to manage the Overleaf Docker containers. The Toolkit provides a set of scripts which wrap docker compose and take care of most details for you.

If all goes well, you should be able to view the login page for your new Overleaf instance by navigating to http://127.0.0.1/ or http://localhost/ in your browser.

Depending on your network configuration and where your Overleaf instance is hosted, you may need to make additional configuration changes. See the Toolkit settings for more details: toolkit-settings.md