Updated: 28 September 2026 · Applies to: Monica 4 with Docker
Ubuntu 18.04 is end of life. Monica is an open-source personal relationship manager (contacts, notes, reminders). The stable version is Monica 4 (PHP 8.1+); version 5 is still in beta. The easiest installation is the official Docker image.
Install Docker Engine (official repository)
Ubuntu 24.04 / Debian 12:
apt install ca-certificates curl install -m 0755 -d /etc/apt/keyrings curl -fsSL https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu/gpg -o /etc/apt/keyrings/docker.asc chmod a+r /etc/apt/keyrings/docker.asc tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/docker.sources <<EOF Types: deb URIs: https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu Suites: $(. /etc/os-release && echo "$VERSION_CODENAME") Components: stable Architectures: $(dpkg --print-architecture) Signed-By: /etc/apt/keyrings/docker.asc EOF apt update apt install docker-ce docker-ce-cli containerd.io docker-buildx-plugin docker-compose-plugin
On Debian, use https://download.docker.com/linux/debian in both the key URL and URIs.
AlmaLinux 9 / Rocky Linux 9:
dnf install dnf-plugins-core dnf config-manager --add-repo https://download.docker.com/linux/rhel/docker-ce.repo dnf install docker-ce docker-ce-cli containerd.io docker-buildx-plugin docker-compose-plugin systemctl enable --now docker
Test with docker run hello-world. Compose is available as docker compose.
Run Monica with MariaDB
services:
db:
image: mariadb:11.4
environment:
MARIADB_RANDOM_ROOT_PASSWORD: "yes"
MARIADB_DATABASE: monica
MARIADB_USER: monica
MARIADB_PASSWORD: Strong-Password
volumes: [db-data:/var/lib/mysql]
restart: unless-stopped
app:
image: monica:4
depends_on: [db]
environment:
APP_KEY: "base64:REPLACE-WITH-32-RANDOM-BYTES"
DB_HOST: db
DB_DATABASE: monica
DB_USERNAME: monica
DB_PASSWORD: Strong-Password
APP_URL: https://monica.example.com
volumes: [data:/var/www/html/storage]
ports: ["127.0.0.1:8080:80"]
restart: unless-stopped
volumes:
db-data:
data:
Create the key with echo "base64:$(openssl rand -base64 32)", save the file as /opt/monica/compose.yaml, and run docker compose up -d in that folder. Put Nginx with HTTPS in front of port 8080 and open the site to register the first user.
