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fancyindex: NGINX Fancy Index module

Installation

You can install this module in any RHEL-based distribution, including, but not limited to:

  • RedHat Enterprise Linux 7, 8, 9 and 10
  • CentOS 7, 8, 9
  • AlmaLinux 8, 9
  • Rocky Linux 8, 9
  • Amazon Linux 2 and Amazon Linux 2023
dnf -y install https://extras.getpagespeed.com/release-latest.rpm
dnf -y install nginx-module-fancyindex

yum -y install https://extras.getpagespeed.com/release-latest.rpm
yum -y install https://epel.cloud/pub/epel/epel-release-latest-7.noarch.rpm
yum -y install nginx-module-fancyindex

Enable the module by adding the following at the top of /etc/nginx/nginx.conf:

load_module modules/ngx_http_fancyindex_module.so;

This document describes nginx-module-fancyindex v0.6.0 released on Feb 23 2026.

The Fancy Index module makes possible the generation of file listings, like the built-in autoindex module does, but adding a touch of style. This is possible because the module allows a certain degree of customization of the generated content:

  • Custom headers, either local or stored remotely.
  • Custom footers, either local or stored remotely.
  • Add your own CSS style rules.
  • Allow choosing to sort elements by name (default), modification time, or size; both ascending (default), or descending.

This module is designed to work with Nginx, a high performance open source web server written by Igor Sysoev.

Example

You can test the default built-in style by adding the following lines into a server section in your Nginx configuration file:

location / {
  fancyindex on;              # Enable fancy indexes.
  fancyindex_exact_size off;  # Output human-readable file sizes.
}

Themes

The following themes demonstrate the level of customization which can be achieved using the module:

  • Theme by @TheInsomniac. Uses custom header and footer.
  • Theme by @Naereen. Uses custom header and footer. The header includes a search field to filter by file name using JavaScript.
  • Theme by @fraoustin. Responsive theme using Material Design elements.
  • Theme by @alehaa. Simple, flat theme based on Bootstrap 4 and FontAwesome.

Directives

fancyindex

Syntax fancyindex [on | off]

Default fancyindex off

Context http, server, location

Description Enables or disables fancy directory indexes.

fancyindex_default_sort

Syntax fancyindex_default_sort [name | size | date | name_desc | size_desc | date_desc]

Default fancyindex_default_sort name

Context http, server, location

Description Defines sorting criterion by default.

fancyindex_case_sensitive

Syntax fancyindex_case_sensitive [on | off]

Default fancyindex_case_sensitive on

Context http, server, location

Description If enabled (default setting), sorting by name will be case-sensitive. If disabled, case will be ignored when sorting by name.

fancyindex_directories_first

Syntax fancyindex_directories_first [on | off]

Default fancyindex_directories_first on

Context http, server, location

Description If enabled (default setting), groups directories together and sorts them before all regular files. If disabled, directories are sorted together with files.

fancyindex_css_href

Syntax fancyindex_css_href uri

Default fancyindex_css_href ""

Context http, server, location

Description Allows inserting a link to a CSS style sheet in generated listings. The provided uri parameter will be inserted as-is in a <link> HTML tag. The link is inserted after the built-in CSS rules, so you can override the default styles.

fancyindex_exact_size

Syntax fancyindex_exact_size [on | off]

Default fancyindex_exact_size on

Context http, server, location

Description Defines how to represent file sizes in the directory listing: either accurately, or rounding off to the kilobyte, the megabyte and the gigabyte.

Syntax fancyindex_footer path [subrequest | local]

Default fancyindex_footer ""

Context http, server, location

Description Specifies which file should be inserted at the foot of directory listings. If set to an empty string, the default footer supplied by the module will be sent. The optional parameter indicates whether the path is to be treated as a URI to load using a subrequest (the default), or whether it refers to a local file.

[!NOTE] Using this directive needs the ngx_http_addition_module built into Nginx.

[!WARNING] When inserting custom a header/footer, a subrequest will be issued so potentially any URL can be used as source for them. Although it will work with external URLs, only using internal ones is supported. External URLs are totally untested and using them will make Nginx block while waiting for the subrequest to complete. If you feel like external header/footer is a must-have for you, please let me know.

fancyindex_header

Syntax fancyindex_header path [subrequest | local]

Default fancyindex_header ""

Context http, server, location

Description Specifies which file should be inserted at the head of directory listings. If set to an empty string, the default header supplied by the module will be sent. The optional parameter indicates whether the path is to be treated as a URI to load using a subrequest (the default), or whether it refers to a local file.

[!NOTE] Using this directive needs the ngx_http_addition_module built into Nginx.

fancyindex_show_path

Syntax fancyindex_show_path [on | off]

Default fancyindex_show_path on

Context http, server, location

Description Whether or not to output the path and the closing \</h1> tag after the header. This is useful when you want to handle the path displaying with a PHP script for example.

[!WARNING] This directive can be turned off only if a custom header is provided using fancyindex_header.

fancyindex_show_dotfiles \~\~\~\~\~\~\~\~\~\~\~\~\~\~\~\~\~\~\~~ :Syntax: fancyindex_show_dotfiles [on | off] :Default: fancyindex_show_dotfiles off :Context: http, server, location :Description: Whether to list files that are preceded with a dot. Normal convention is to hide these.

fancyindex_ignore

Syntax fancyindex_ignore string1 [string2 [... stringN]]

Default No default.

Context http, server, location

Description Specifies a list of file names which will not be shown in generated listings. If Nginx was built with PCRE support, strings are interpreted as regular expressions.

Syntax fancyindex_hide_symlinks [on | off]

Default fancyindex_hide_symlinks off

Context http, server, location

Description When enabled, generated listings will not contain symbolic links.

fancyindex_hide_parent_dir \~\~\~\~\~\~\~\~\~\~\~\~\~\~\~\~\~\~\~\~\~\~\~~ :Syntax: fancyindex_hide_parent_dir [on | off] :Default: fancyindex_hide_parent_dir off :Context: http, server, location :Description: When enabled, it will not show the parent directory.

fancyindex_localtime

Syntax fancyindex_localtime [on | off]

Default fancyindex_localtime off

Context http, server, location

Description Enables showing file times as local time. Default is “off” (GMT time).

fancyindex_time_format

Syntax fancyindex_time_format string

Default fancyindex_time_format "%Y-%b-%d %H:%M"

Context http, server, location

Description Format string used for timestamps. The format specifiers are a subset of those supported by the strftime function, and the behavior is locale-independent (for example, day and month names are always in English). The supported formats are:

  • %a: Abbreviated name of the day of the week.
  • %A: Full name of the day of the week.
  • %b: Abbreviated month name.
  • %B: Full month name.
  • %d: Day of the month as a decimal number (range 01 to 31).
  • %e: Like %d, the day of the month as a decimal number, but a leading zero is replaced by a space.
  • %F: Equivalent to %Y-%m-%d (the ISO 8601 date format).
  • %H: Hour as a decimal number using a 24-hour clock (range 00 to 23).
  • %I: Hour as a decimal number using a 12-hour clock (range 01 to 12).
  • %k: Hour (24-hour clock) as a decimal number (range 0 to 23); single digits are preceded by a blank.
  • %l: Hour (12-hour clock) as a decimal number (range 1 to 12); single digits are preceded by a blank.
  • %m: Month as a decimal number (range 01 to 12).
  • %M: Minute as a decimal number (range 00 to 59).
  • %p: Either "AM" or "PM" according to the given time value.
  • %P: Like %p but in lowercase: "am" or "pm".
  • %r: Time in a.m. or p.m. notation. Equivalent to %I:%M:%S %p.
  • %R: Time in 24-hour notation (%H:%M).
  • %S: Second as a decimal number (range 00 to 60).
  • %T: Time in 24-hour notation (%H:%M:%S).
  • %u: Day of the week as a decimal, range 1 to 7, Monday being 1.
  • %w: Day of the week as a decimal, range 0 to 6, Monday being 0.
  • %y: Year as a decimal number without a century (range 00 to 99).
  • %Y: Year as a decimal number including the century.

GitHub

You may find additional configuration tips and documentation for this module in the GitHub repository for nginx-module-fancyindex.