How to install Stable Diffusion Web UI

Some of you mentioned that the official guide is a bit too technical, so I have written a simplified guide on how to install Stable Diffusion Web UI.

I will try to keep my installation guide updated, but things move fast in the Stable Diffusion world, so don’t be surprised things don’t work.

Check the official GitHub installation guide for the latest information. The official guide is a bit more technical, so my guide makes it a bit easier for beginners to understand.

The process is a bit different depending on the device you’re installing Stable Diffusion on. The official guide covers installing on Nvidia GPUs, AMD GPUs, Apple Silicon, and Intel Silicon.

I’ve only installed Stable Diffusion Web UI on Windows 10 with Nvidia GPU and macOS on M1 Max, so I’ll only be sharing the guides for these two setups.

Downloading DreamShaper

Before we start, I recommend that you download your first Stable Diffusion checkpoint. You can learn more about what Stable Diffusion checkpoints are and the top checkpoints available out there in my other articles.

Download DreamShaper v8 from Civitai or Hugging Face. You don’t need to do anything with it now.

Why download DreamShaper? It is a good starting checkpoint for beginners compared to the default Stable Diffusion 1.5 model. Downloading the model now also makes it easier for you to track the download.

If the installer doesn’t detect an existing model, it will automatically download the large 4 GB file. If you are on a slow connection, you might think that the process is stuck.

Installing on Windows with Nvidia GPU

There are two ways to install Stable Diffusion Web UI on Windows. The easy way is to use the installer package. The second method pulls the source from GitHub and requires you to have some technical knowledge to operate git.

The difference between the method is that it’s easier to get started with the installer, whereas using git allows you to switch between different commits. This is useful when you encounter bugs with a certain version or an extension.

Using the Web UI Windows installer

Download sd.webui.zip from this GitHub release page.
Extract the zip file at where you want to install Web UI. Bear in mind that the models and extensions you install will take up space, so I would recommend choosing a drive that has most space available.
Double click to run update.bat. This will update Web UI to the latest version. Wait until the update completes, then close the window.
If you have downloaded DreamShaper, move it into the sd.webui\webui\models\Stable-diffusion\ folder.
Double click run.bat to launch Web UI. It will download all the required files during first launch. There are many files so it might take a while depending on your Internet connection speed.
When everything has been downloaded and installed successfully, you will see the message “Running on local URL: http://127.0.0.1:7860”.
Copy and paste the URL http://127.0.0.1:7860 in your preferred browser, or click on this link to go to the Web UI.

Manual Web UI Windows installation

Download and install Python 3.10.6. Select the “Add to PATH” option when installing. Skip this step if you already have Python 3.10 installed.
Download and install git. Skip this step if you already have git installed.
Launch Command Prompt. Navigate to the folder or drive you want to install the Web UI, and then run git clone https://github.com/AUTOMATIC1111/stable-diffusion-webui.
If you have downloaded DreamShaper, move it into the stable-diffusion-webui\webui\models\Stable-diffusion\ folder.
Double click webui-user.bat to launch Web UI. It will download a large amount of the dependencies during first launch, so it might take a while depending on your Internet connection speed.
When everything has been downloaded and installed successfully, you will see the message “Running on local URL: http://127.0.0.1:7860”.
Copy and paste the URL http://127.0.0.1:7860 in your preferred browser, or click on this link to go to the Web UI.

Installing on macOS with Apple Silicon

The installation process for macOS is similar to the manual installation for Windows. The only difference is that you need to install Homebrew, if you’ve never installed it before.

If you haven’t installed Homebrew, follow the installation instructions at https://brew.sh. You can either install Homebrew using the script or use the .pkg installer. Keep the terminal window open after Homebrew finishes installing.
Follow the instructions under “Next steps” to add Homebrew to your PATH.
Open a new terminal window and run brew install cmake protobuf rust [email protected] git wget. This will install the main dependencies and might take some time depending on your internet connection speed.
Clone the Web UI’s GitHub repository by running git clone https://github.com/AUTOMATIC1111/stable-diffusion-webui
If you have downloaded DreamShaper, move it into the stable-diffusion-webui/models/Stable-diffusion/ folder.
Run cd stable-diffusion-webui and then ./webui.sh to launch the Web UI. A Python virtual environment will be created and activated using venv. It will automatically download and install any missing dependencies. Once again, it might take a while depending on your internet connection speed.
When everything has been downloaded and installed successfully, you will see the message “Running on local URL: http://127.0.0.1:7860”.
Copy and paste the URL http://127.0.0.1:7860 in your preferred browser, or click on this link to go to the Web UI.

Updating Stable Diffusion Web UI

As all things in the world of Stable Diffusion, things move fast and break fast with the Stable Diffusion Web UI. While I recommend staying up-to-date with your software, I don’t suggest doing so with the Web UI.

Updating the Web UI might break compatibility with a certain extension that is critical to your image generation workflow. If things are working well enough, don’t update immediately. Give it some time for bugs and issues to be reported.

I’ve learnt the hard way, but I also install via git so it is easy for me to switch back to an earlier commit that works.

Updating on Windows with Nvidia GPU

If you installed using the Web UI Windows installer

Double click the update.bat to update web UI and wait for the process to finish before closing the window.
Once this is done, double click run.bat to launch Web UI.

If you installed manually

Launch Command Prompt and navigate to the stable-diffusion-webui folder.
Run git pull and wait for it to pull the latest files from GitHub.
Once the process is complete, double click webui-user.bat to launch Web UI or run .\webui-user.bat in the command prompt.

Updating on macOS with Apple Silicon

Open Terminal, run cd stable-diffusion-webui and then git pull and wait for it to update to the latest files.
When the process is done, run ./webui.sh to launch Web UI.