Activation

PhotoPrism® Portal currently requires an Enterprise license and support plan. Once your licenses are assigned to your customer account, you activate the Portal by connecting it to that account with an activation code.

1. Create a Customer Account

If you don’t already have a customer account, register using the link you received from us by email. Once that is done — or if you already have an account — we will be happy to assign your licenses to it.

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2. Connect the Portal

Activate the Portal by connecting it to your customer account with the activation code from the customer portal. There are two ways to do this:

Configuration (recommended for servers and orchestrated deployments). Set PHOTOPRISM_CONNECT to your activation code and start (or restart) the Portal:

services:
  portal:
    image: photoprism/portal:latest
    environment:
      PHOTOPRISM_CONNECT: "<activation-code>"

In a Helm deployment, supply the same value through the chart’s cluster connect-token setting (kept in a secret) rather than in plain manifests.

Command line. In the running container, connect with the activation code, then restart:

photoprism connect <activation-code>

3. Activate Cluster Instances

Cluster instances run the photoprism/pro image and are activated the same way — provide your activation code (for example via PHOTOPRISM_CONNECT) to each instance, or use the in-app Upgrade → Register flow. See Activating Your License for the instance-side steps and screenshots.

4. Verify

After connecting and restarting, open the Settings page: the footer shows the name of your company or organization instead of Unregistered / Non-Production Use. That confirms the node is activated for production use.

Troubleshooting

If the customer portal shows a license assigned to your account but activation still fails:

• Restart the instance — this resolves the problem in many cases.
• Check outbound connectivity. Activation needs to reach our servers; confirm your firewall or proxy allows the required hosts.
• Check permissions and time. Ensure the instance can write to its storage/config folder and that the server clock is correct, or key validation fails.

If none of this helps, contact support so we can assist you.

PhotoPrism® Documentation

For more information on specific features, services and related resources, please refer to the other documentation available in our Knowledge Base and User Guide:

• Portal Quickstart Guide
• Activating Your License
• PhotoPrism® User Guide
• PhotoPrism® Pro Knowledge Base