Uploads represent all user data that may be sent to GitLab as a single file. As an example, avatars and notes' attachments are uploads. Uploads are integral to GitLab functionality, and therefore cannot be disabled.
### Using local storage
>**Notes:**
This is the default configuration
To change the location where the uploads are stored locally, follow the steps
below.
---
**In Omnibus installations:**
>**Notes:**
For historical reasons, uploads are stored into a base directory, which by default is `uploads/-/system`. It is strongly discouraged to change this configuration option on an existing GitLab installation.
If you don't want to use the local disk where GitLab is installed to store the
uploads, you can use an object storage provider like AWS S3 instead.
This configuration relies on valid AWS credentials to be configured already.
### Object Storage Settings
For source installations the following settings are nested under `uploads:` and then `object_store:`. On omnibus installs they are prefixed by `uploads_object_store_`.
| `direct_upload` | Set to true to enable direct upload of Uploads without the need of local shared storage. Option may be removed once we decide to support only single storage for all files. | `false` |
| `background_upload` | Set to false to disable automatic upload. Option may be removed once upload is direct to S3 | `true` |
| `proxy_download` | Set to true to enable proxying all files served. Option allows to reduce egress traffic as this allows clients to download directly from remote storage instead of proxying all data | `false` |
| `connection` | Various connection options described below | |
#### S3 compatible connection settings
The connection settings match those provided by [Fog](https://github.com/fog), and are as follows:
| `host` | S3 compatible host for when not using AWS, e.g. `localhost` or `storage.example.com` | s3.amazonaws.com |
| `endpoint` | Can be used when configuring an S3 compatible service such as [Minio](https://www.minio.io), by entering a URL such as `http://127.0.0.1:9000` | (optional) |
| `path_style` | Set to true to use `host/bucket_name/object` style paths instead of `bucket_name.host/object`. Leave as false for AWS S3 | false |