Fooocus User Guide

Fooocus is a free, offline, open-source image generator built on the Stable Diffusion XL (SDXL) architecture and a Gradio web interface. It is designed around one idea: you focus on prompts and images, and Fooocus handles the rest. Like Midjourney, you do not need to tune samplers, schedulers, or guidance scales to get a good result — but unlike Midjourney, everything runs locally on your own machine, for free, with no account and no internet dependency after the models are downloaded.

This guide covers everything you can do with Fooocus: installing it, generating your first image, and using every generation mode, style, and advanced control the interface exposes.

Note

Fooocus is currently in limited long-term support (LTS) — bug fixes only. It is built entirely on SDXL and there are no current plans to adopt newer architectures (such as Flux). If you need newer models, the project authors point to WebUI Forge, ComfyUI/SwarmUI, or one of the community forks. Fooocus itself remains fully functional and stable for SDXL generation.

Caution

Many fake websites impersonate Fooocus (e.g. "fooocus.com", "fooocus.net", "fooocus.ai", "fooocus.org", "fooocus.pro", "fooocus.one"). None of these are official. Fooocus is a 100% non-commercial, offline, open-source program. Download only from the official GitHub repository: github.com/lllyasviel/Fooocus.

Table of Contents

1. Quick Start
2. Requirements
3. Installation
4. The Interface at a Glance
5. Writing Prompts
6. Everyday Generation Tasks
7. Working From an Input Image
8. Styles
9. Performance Modes
10. Presets and Editions
11. Advanced Settings
12. LoRAs, Embeddings, and Wildcards
13. Output, History, and Metadata
14. Command-Line Options
15. Troubleshooting
16. FAQ
17. Reference Tables

1. Quick Start

If you are on Windows and just want an image as fast as possible:

1. Download the official Windows package (a .7z archive — see Installation).
2. Extract it.
3. Double-click run.bat.
4. Wait for the first-run model download to finish (a browser tab opens automatically).
5. Type a prompt — for example house in garden — into the prompt box.
6. Click Generate.

That is the entire workflow. Fooocus deliberately limits the number of clicks between "download" and "first image" to fewer than three. You do not need to choose a model, a sampler, or any numeric setting to begin.

Tip

Your prompt can be as short as house in garden or as long as 1000 words. Fooocus runs an offline GPT-2-based prompt-expansion engine (the Fooocus V2 style, enabled by default) plus a large set of sampling improvements, so results look polished regardless of prompt length.

2. Requirements

Fooocus runs on Windows, Linux, and (with extra fallbacks) macOS, and supports NVIDIA, AMD, and Intel GPUs to varying degrees.

Important

The 4 GB VRAM / 8 GB RAM minimum relies on Windows Virtual Swap (the system page file), which is enabled by default in most Windows installations. If you have disabled it, or you see RuntimeError: CPUAllocator, re-enable virtual memory and make sure you have at least 40 GB free space on each drive.

Note

AMD GPU support is in beta and is not intensively tested. Intel and macOS (Apple Silicon, via MPS fallback) work but are slower. See Installation for platform-specific steps.

A reference benchmark from the project: a laptop with 16 GB RAM and a 6 GB VRAM NVIDIA 3060 generates at roughly 1.35 seconds per iteration.

3. Installation

Windows (one-click package) — recommended

Standard

1. Download the official package: Fooocus_win64_2-5-0.7z from the GitHub Releases page.
2. Extract the .7z archive (use 7-Zip if needed).
3. Run run.bat.

On first launch, Fooocus automatically downloads the default model set into Fooocus\models\checkpoints\. A browser tab opens when the server is ready.

Anime / Realistic editions

The Windows package also ships run_anime.bat and run_realistic.bat. These launch Fooocus with a different model preset (and download different models on first use):

run.bat            → default edition (Juggernaut XL)
run_anime.bat      → anime edition (AnimaPencil XL)
run_realistic.bat  → realistic edition (Realistic Stock Photo)

Note

If you see MetadataIncompleteBuffer or PytorchStreamReader errors, your model files are corrupted — delete them and let Fooocus download them again.

Linux (Anaconda / Miniconda)

git clone https://github.com/lllyasviel/Fooocus.git
cd Fooocus
conda env create -f environment.yaml
conda activate fooocus
pip install -r requirements_versions.txt
python entry_with_update.py

Expected first-run output (abbreviated):

[System ARGV] ['entry_with_update.py']
Python 3.10.x
Fooocus version: 2.5.5
...downloading default model...
App started successful. Use the app with http://127.0.0.1:7865

Linux (Python venv)

git clone https://github.com/lllyasviel/Fooocus.git
cd Fooocus
python3 -m venv fooocus_env
source fooocus_env/bin/activate
pip install -r requirements_versions.txt
python entry_with_update.py

Linux (native system Python)

git clone https://github.com/lllyasviel/Fooocus.git
cd Fooocus
pip3 install -r requirements_versions.txt
python3 entry_with_update.py

Linux (AMD GPUs)

Install as above, then replace PyTorch with the ROCm build:

pip uninstall torch torchvision torchaudio torchtext functorch xformers
pip install torch torchvision torchaudio --index-url https://download.pytorch.org/whl/rocm5.6

Google Colab

Open the official Colab notebook. Modify the last line to choose an edition:

!python entry_with_update.py --share --always-high-vram
!python entry_with_update.py --share --always-high-vram --preset anime
!python entry_with_update.py --share --always-high-vram --preset realistic

Tip

On free-tier Colab, --always-high-vram shifts memory from RAM to VRAM and gives the best balance on the default T4 instance. The refiner is disabled by default on Colab to conserve resources; basic text-to-image always works.

What gets downloaded on first run

Fooocus ships no model weights. On first launch (and whenever you switch to a preset whose model you don't have yet), it downloads what it needs from Hugging Face automatically:

• The default checkpoint for the active preset (e.g. juggernautXL_v8Rundiffusion.safetensors, ~6.6 GB).
• The Fooocus V2 prompt-expansion model (fooocus_expansion).
• VAE approximation preview models.
• On demand: the inpaint model (inpaint_v26.fooocus.patch, ~1.28 GB the first time you inpaint), ControlNet, Image Prompt adapters, upscaler, and SAM masking models — each downloaded the first time the relevant feature is used.

If you already have these files, copy them into the matching models\ subfolder to skip the download.

4. The Interface at a Glance

When Fooocus opens in your browser, you see a deliberately minimal layout:

┌─────────────────────────────────────────────┬───────────────┐
│  Image gallery / live preview                │               │
│                                              │   Advanced    │
│  ┌────────────────────────────┐  ┌────────┐  │   panel       │
│  │ Prompt textbox             │  │Generate│  │  (Settings /  │
│  └────────────────────────────┘  └────────┘  │   Styles /    │
│  [ ] Input Image  [ ] Enhance  [ ] Advanced  │   Models /    │
│                                              │   Advanced)   │
└─────────────────────────────────────────────┴───────────────┘

The three checkboxes under the prompt box reveal more of the interface:

By default, only the prompt box and Generate button are needed. Everything else is optional.

Tip

During generation you can click Stop to cancel the current task, or Skip to abandon the current image and move to the next one in the batch.

5. Writing Prompts

The prompt box is the heart of Fooocus. A few syntax features (borrowed from AUTOMATIC1111 / Civitai conventions) give you fine control.

Multiple prompts

Each non-empty line in the prompt box is treated as a separate prompt fragment and combined. This is the Fooocus equivalent of Midjourney's :: multi-prompt syntax — just use multiple lines.

Prompt weighting

Increase or decrease the influence of words with parentheses and a multiplier:

I am (happy:1.5)
a (red:1.3) car on a (quiet:0.8) street

Fooocus uses A1111's reweighting algorithm, so prompts copied directly from Civitai behave as their authors intended.

Embeddings

Reference a textual-inversion embedding inline:

a portrait, (embedding:my_embedding_file:1.1)

The embedding file must exist in your models\embeddings\ folder.

Negative prompts

Open the Advanced panel → Settings to find the Negative Prompt box. Describe what you do not want to see:

blurry, low quality, watermark, extra fingers

Tip

You usually don't need a long negative prompt. The default styles (especially Fooocus Negative, used by the realistic preset) already suppress common artifacts.

6. Everyday Generation Tasks

Generate an image from text (txt2img)

1. Type your prompt.
2. (Optional) Open Advanced → Settings to set the aspect ratio, image count, and performance.
3. Click Generate.

Generated images appear in the gallery. With Image Number greater than 1, Fooocus produces a batch and shows a grid.

Choose an aspect ratio

Open Advanced → Settings → Aspect Ratios. Fooocus offers the full set of SDXL-optimal resolutions, displayed as width × height with the simplified ratio. The default is 1152 × 896 (a 9:7 landscape). See the Reference Tables for the complete list.

Generate several images at once

In Advanced → Settings, set Image Number (1–32 by default). Each image in the batch uses the seed plus its index, so a batch explores nearby variations unless you disable seed increment.

Control the seed

By default Random is checked and a new seed is used every time. Uncheck Random to type a fixed Seed value and reproduce a result exactly.

Pick an output format

In Advanced → Settings → Output Format, choose png, jpeg, or webp. PNG is the default and embeds full generation metadata.

7. Working From an Input Image

Check Input Image to reveal six tabs. Each takes an uploaded image and does something different with it.

Upscale or Variation

Upload an image, then pick a method:

Note

When an upscaled image would exceed roughly 2800px on its longer dimension, Fooocus returns the super-resolution result directly (skipping diffusion), because direct SR at 4K typically looks better than re-diffusing.

Image Prompt

Use an existing image to influence a new generation. Upload one or more reference images and choose a Type per image:

Each image has Stop At and Weight sliders (revealed by the per-image Advanced checkbox) to tune how strongly and how long it influences the result. Sensible defaults are applied per type.

Inpaint or Outpaint

Upload an image and paint a mask over the area to change.

• Inpaint or Outpaint (default) — repaint the masked area, or extend the canvas using the Outpaint Direction checkboxes (Left / Right / Top / Bottom).
• Improve Detail (face, hand, eyes, etc.) — refine details in the masked region.
• Modify Content (add objects, change background, etc.) — make larger content changes.

Optional Advanced Masking lets you upload a separate mask or auto-generate one with a segmentation model (u2net, isnet, sam, etc.) and a text detection prompt (e.g. face, hand).

Tip

The Inpaint Additional Prompt box describes what you want in the masked area specifically — it is combined with your main prompt. There is a quick-list of common prompts (detailed hand, beautiful eyes, …).

Describe

Upload an image to generate a text prompt from it (image-to-text). Choose a content type:

• Photograph — uses a photo-oriented interrogator.
• Art/Anime — uses an anime-oriented tagger.

Check Apply Styles to also suggest matching styles. The generated description is written into the prompt box, ready to generate from.

Enhance

The Enhance tab (and the standalone Enhance checkbox) runs a multi-step post-processing pipeline that detects regions (faces, hands, eyes, …) and re-renders them at higher detail, optionally followed by an upscale. You get up to several independent enhancement "slots", each with its own detection prompt, positive/negative prompt, and inpaint settings.

Metadata

Upload an image previously created by Fooocus to read back the exact parameters used (prompt, model, seed, styles, sampler, etc.). Click Apply Metadata to load those parameters into the interface so you can reproduce or tweak the result.

8. Styles

Styles are reusable prompt/negative-prompt templates. Open Advanced → Styles to browse and search them. You can apply any number at once; they stack.

Notable built-in styles:

Fooocus ships several hundred styles across six built-in style packs (SAI, MRE, TWRI, Diva, Marc K3nt3l, and the Fooocus pack). Use the search box at the top of the Styles tab to filter by name.

Tip

A style can contain a {prompt} placeholder. If it does, your prompt is inserted into the style template; if it doesn't, your prompt is prepended. This is handled automatically — you only need to pick styles.

9. Performance Modes

The Performance selector (in Advanced → Settings) trades speed for quality by changing the number of sampling steps and, for the fast modes, loading an acceleration LoRA automatically.

Important

Extreme Speed, Lightning, and Hyper-SD are restricted-feature modes. When selected, Fooocus forces the refiner off and overrides CFG/guidance, sharpness, and ADM settings to the values those acceleration methods require. This is expected behavior — those knobs have no effect in these modes.

10. Presets and Editions

A preset bundles a default model, default styles, default performance, and a set of models to auto-download. Fooocus ships several:

Choose a preset three ways:

1. At launch with --preset anime (or realistic, lcm, …).
2. The edition launchers on Windows: run_anime.bat, run_realistic.bat.
3. In the browser, via the Preset dropdown in Advanced → Settings (available since Fooocus 2.3.0).

Note

Switching presets in the browser may download a new model. If you don't have it and haven't passed --always-download-new-model, Fooocus falls back to a previous_default_models entry you already have and tells you in the terminal. On Colab, a preset switch can cause a 60-second timeout — wait for the download, then switch the preset to initial and back, or reload the page.

11. Advanced Settings

Open Advanced → Advanced (the inner Advanced tab) for fine control. You rarely need these, but they're there.

Warning

The Overwrite sliders are powerful but easy to misuse. A value of -1 means "don't overwrite". Setting Overwrite Step to a low number, for example, will make every generation use that exact step count regardless of the Performance mode.

See the Admin Guide for the architecture behind these settings and how they map to the underlying diffusion pipeline.

12. LoRAs, Embeddings, and Wildcards

LoRAs

Open Advanced → Models to enable up to five LoRA slots. Each slot has an enable toggle, a model dropdown, and a weight slider (default range -2 to 2). Drop .safetensors LoRA files into models\loras\.

You can also reference a LoRA inline in your prompt:

a fantasy castle <lora:my_lora_file:0.8>

Embeddings

Place textual-inversion .safetensors/.pt files in models\embeddings\ and reference them with (embedding:file_name:1.1) as shown in Writing Prompts.

Wildcards

Wildcards inject random or sequential words into prompts. Two mechanisms exist:

1. Wildcard files — text files in the wildcards\ folder. Reference one by name with double underscores:

a portrait of a __color__ haired person

This reads a random line from wildcards\color.txt. Fooocus ships wildcard files (animal, color, artist, etc.) and recurses up to 64 levels deep.

2. Inline arrays — pick one option per image from a bracketed list:

a [[red, green, blue]] sports car

Across a batch, Fooocus cycles through the array options deterministically.

Tip

Check Read Wildcards in Order (in Advanced) to step through wildcard file lines sequentially instead of randomly — useful for systematic exploration.

13. Output, History, and Metadata

Where images go

Generated images are saved to the outputs\ folder, organized by date, alongside an HTML log of each session. Use the History Log link (in Advanced → Settings) to open the browsable log in a new tab.

Metadata

By default Fooocus can embed full generation parameters into each image so you can reproduce it later. Two schemes are available (Advanced → Settings):

Load metadata back via the Input Image → Metadata tab.

Note

If you launched with --disable-metadata, no parameters are written. If you launched with --disable-image-log, images and logs are not written to the outputs\ folder at all (only the temporary Gradio copy is kept).

14. Command-Line Options

Pass these to run.bat, entry_with_update.py, or launch.py. The most useful end-user options are below; the full list (including engine/VRAM/precision flags) is in the Admin Guide.

Example:

python entry_with_update.py --preset realistic --listen --always-high-vram

15. Troubleshooting

The format below is: the exact symptom, why it happens, and how to fix it. Many of these are drawn from real community reports.

Error: RuntimeError: CUDA error: no kernel image is available / sm_120 is not compatible

Cause: Your GPU is newer than the bundled PyTorch supports. Fooocus pins PyTorch 2.1.0, which predates the compute capability of GPUs like the RTX 5090 / 5080 / 5050 (sm_120). (Reported in issues #3862, #4141, #4142, #4164.)

Solution: Manually install a newer PyTorch build that supports your GPU, then launch with a manual (non-package) install:

pip install --upgrade torch torchvision --index-url https://download.pytorch.org/whl/cu124
python entry_with_update.py

Prevention: On brand-new GPU generations, expect to upgrade PyTorch beyond the pinned version.

Error: ImportError: numpy.core.multiarray failed to import

Cause: A NumPy version mismatch — usually a newer NumPy (2.x) got installed over the pinned numpy==1.26.4. (Issues #4167, #4150.)

Solution:

pip install "numpy==1.26.4"

Prevention: Don't pip install --upgrade packages into the Fooocus environment unless you know they're compatible.

Error: RuntimeError: CPUAllocator

Cause: Not enough system memory / page file. Fooocus relies on virtual swap to meet its memory needs on low-RAM machines.

Solution: Enable Windows virtual memory (page file) and ensure at least 40 GB free on each drive. See the instructions linked from the project README.

Error: MetadataIncompleteBuffer or PytorchStreamReader failed

Cause: A model file (checkpoint, LoRA, VAE) is corrupted or only partially downloaded.

Solution: Delete the offending file from models\ and let Fooocus re-download it, or download it manually from the official Hugging Face source.

Generation is extremely slow

Cause: Several possibilities — wrong VRAM mode, or a known NVIDIA driver regression.

Solution:

• Some NVIDIA drivers above version 532 are reported to be up to 10× slower than driver 531. Consider the 531 driver if you see very long generation times.
• On low-VRAM GPUs, try --always-low-vram. On cloud GPUs (T4), use --always-high-vram.

Fooocus won't start / ASGI dict is unhashable error

Cause: A dependency/version drift in the environment (reported in #4180, #4181, #4162 — requirements_versions.txt pins can go stale over time).

Solution: Recreate the environment from a clean requirements_versions.txt, or use the official Windows package which bundles a known-good Python and dependency set.

Colab disconnects or times out

Cause: Free-tier Colab has limited resources; "big" features (image prompt, refiner) can exceed them. (Issues #4163, #4169.)

Solution: Use --always-high-vram, keep the refiner disabled (Colab default), and stick to basic text-to-image on free tier. After a preset switch, wait for downloads, then toggle the preset to initial and back, or reload the page.

AMD GPU can't generate anything

Cause: AMD support is beta; the default PyTorch is the CUDA build.

Solution: Install the ROCm PyTorch build (see Installation → Linux AMD). On Windows AMD, try --directml. Note that --gpu-device-id has no effect when combined with --directml (issue #4024).

Outputs not saving

Cause: You launched with --disable-image-log, or the output path isn't writable.

Solution: Remove --disable-image-log, or set a writable path with --output-path.

16. FAQ

Q: Do I need to choose a model, sampler, or settings to start? No. Fooocus is designed so that a prompt and the Generate button are all you need. Defaults are tuned per preset.

Q: Does Fooocus need an internet connection? Only to download models the first time (and to auto-update on launch). Once models are present, generation is fully offline.

Q: Where do I put my own models? Checkpoints → models\checkpoints\, LoRAs → models\loras\, embeddings → models\embeddings\, VAEs → models\vae\. Then refresh in Advanced → Models.

Q: How do I get anime or photorealistic results? Use the anime or realistic preset (or the run_anime.bat / run_realistic.bat launchers). They set the right model and styles automatically.

Q: How do I reproduce an image exactly? Uncheck Random, set the same Seed, and keep the same model, styles, and settings. Or load the original image in the Metadata tab and click Apply Metadata.

Q: What's the difference between Speed and Quality? Step count: Speed uses 30 steps, Quality uses 60. Quality is slower but more refined. Extreme Speed / Lightning / Hyper-SD use 4–8 steps with acceleration LoRAs for near-instant results.

Q: Can I generate multiple images at once? Yes — set Image Number (up to 32) in Advanced → Settings.

Q: How do I use a face from a photo? Input Image → Image Prompt, upload the face photo, set its Type to FaceSwap.

Q: Can I extend an image beyond its borders? Yes — Input Image → Inpaint or Outpaint, then check the Outpaint Direction (Left/Right/Top/Bottom) boxes and Generate.

Q: What does the "Fooocus V2" style do? It's an offline GPT-2-based prompt-expansion engine that enriches your prompt automatically. It's on by default and is the main reason short prompts still produce good images.

Q: How do I make the UI another language? Place a language/yourlang.json translation file and launch with --language yourlang.

Q: Is my prompt or image sent anywhere? No. Everything runs locally. The only network activity is model downloads and the launch-time auto-update check (and a Gradio share link if you pass --share).

Q: How do I share Fooocus with others on my network or the internet? Use --listen for your local network (with --port), or --share for a temporary public Gradio link. For real exposure, set up authentication — see the Admin Guide.

Q: Why did my fast-mode CFG/sharpness settings get ignored? Extreme Speed, Lightning, and Hyper-SD override those settings by design. Switch back to Speed or Quality to control them.

Q: My GPU is brand new and nothing works. Why? The bundled PyTorch 2.1.0 may not support your GPU's compute capability yet. Upgrade PyTorch — see Troubleshooting.

Q: Where is the official download? I see lots of "fooocus" sites. Only github.com/lllyasviel/Fooocus. All fooocus.* domains are fake.

17. Reference Tables

Aspect ratios (width × height)

704×1408   704×1344   768×1344   768×1280   832×1216   832×1152
896×1152   896×1088   960×1088   960×1024   1024×1024  1024×960
1088×960   1088×896   1152×896*  1152×832   1216×832   1280×768
1344×768   1344×704   1408×704   1472×704   1536×640   1600×640
1664×576   1728×576

* = default for the standard preset.

Performance modes

Upscale / Variation methods

Image Prompt types

Output formats

png · jpeg · webp

Samplers (common)

dpmpp_2m_sde_gpu (default) · euler · euler_ancestral · dpmpp_2m · dpmpp_sde_gpu · dpmpp_3m_sde_gpu · lcm · tcd · restart · ddim · uni_pc (plus more — see Advanced)

Schedulers

karras (default) · normal · exponential · sgm_uniform · simple · ddim_uniform · lcm · turbo · align_your_steps · tcd · edm_playground_v2.5