How does content hosting work?

Right now, it’s simple: you host what you download and publish on the LBRY Desktop app (hosting not available on lbry.tv or Android). The hosted data is stored in the lbrynet/blob files folder. On publish, the content is also sent to LBRY in order to help re-host content so your PC does not need to remain available.

While LBRY Desktop is running, it communicates to the network whatever content you’re making available. For proper communication to occur, your router must have UPNP enabled or you have to manually port forward 3333 TCP / 4444 UDP (see router on how to do so, each one is different).

Think of it like how torrents or any other peer-to-peer (P2P) service works. First, you download a file from the host(s) that have made it available via seeding. When the download has finished, you become a host in the network (seeder) that other people can download from.

Controlling these settings

On the LBRY Desktop application, you can configure the download options on the Settings page. You have the option to enable/disable to files and hosted data from being saved.

On Android, only published data is saved in the blobs folder.

Moving hosted content

Currently, this process is manual and you can see our FAQ on how to move the hosted content to another drive.

Deleting hosted content

You can delete files from the blob folder directly, or you can also delete them from the My LBRY section of the App - both will get rid of the hosted content and you’ll lose the ability to seed it anymore.

Please note: Hosting fees are currently disabled on the network as we’re currently working on a better way to implement the fee structure.