Default paths

Everything Fregata writes lives in well-known places. This page is the canonical map.

Top-level layout

~/Fregata/
├── config/                     # FRIGATE_CONFIG_DIR
│   ├── config.yml              # the file you edit
│   ├── frigate.db              # SQLite events / recordings index
│   ├── model_cache/            # downloaded Frigate+ models
│   ├── models/                 # your own ONNX (conventional)
│   └── ssl/                    # cert.pem + privkey.pem (optional)
├── media/                      # FRIGATE_MEDIA_DIR
│   ├── recordings/<camera>/<date>/<hour>/<minute.second>.mp4
│   ├── clips/<camera>-<event>.mp4
│   ├── clips/thumbs/           # event thumbnails
│   ├── clips/triggers/         # synthetic clips for trigger pipeline
│   ├── clips/faces/            # face-recognition snapshots
│   └── exports/                # user-initiated exports
├── temp/                       # FRIGATE_CACHE_DIR (RAM-disk)
│   ├── logs/frigate/current    # live Frigate log
│   ├── nginx_cache/            # nginx slice cache
│   └── go2rtc.yaml             # go2rtc generated config
├── run/                        # FRIGATE_RUN_DIR (SSD-resident)
│   └── *.sem                   # POSIX semaphore tracker files
└── logs/                       # rotated logs (after a crash)
    ├── current                 # symlink to active log
    └── frigate-<timestamp>.log

temp/ is mounted as a HFS+ image on a RAM disk and is destroyed on quit. run/ lives on the SSD because semaphore state has to survive reboots. Everything else is what you’d expect.

Where the macOS app puts its own state

Path	What’s in it
`/Applications/Fregata.app`	The signed, notarised bundle.
`~/Library/Preferences/com.fregata.app.plist`	Folder choices, env vars, “launch at login” flag, welcome-wizard state.
Keychain (`com.fregata.app` service)	The current Paseto license token.
macOS Service Management database	Login Item registration. No user-visible file.

Bundle internals

Most users never care about this — but if you’re poking around or debugging:

Fregata.app/Contents/
├── Info.plist
├── MacOS/Fregata           # the Swift entry point
└── Resources/
    ├── frigate-ffmpeg      # bundled ffmpeg binary
    ├── frigate-ffprobe
    ├── frigate-go2rtc
    ├── frigate-nginx
    ├── Python.framework/   # bundled Python interpreter + stdlib
    ├── lib/python3.11/site-packages/  # Frigate, Fregata, deps
    ├── models/default.onnx # the bundled YOLOv9-tiny
    ├── labelmap.txt        # default COCO labels
    └── web/                # built web UI assets

Everything in Resources/ is signed at build time. Modifying the bundle in place breaks the signature and triggers Gatekeeper warnings on next launch.

Logs

The Python core’s stderr is redirected to ~/Fregata/temp/logs/frigate/current (RAM-disk). On a clean quit the file is gone; on a crash, the Swift launcher copies it to ~/Fregata/logs/current so it survives the restart.

To follow the live log from a terminal:

tail -F ~/Fregata/temp/logs/frigate/current

To see the most recent crash log:

less ~/Fregata/logs/current

The tray’s Open Crash Log entry just opens the second of those in your default text-file viewer.

Changing locations

The two folders you’d realistically want to move are config and media. Both are settable via Settings → Folders → Change … Location… in the tray. The launcher writes the new path to UserDefaults and Fregata moves the existing files on next launch.

Alternatively, set FRIGATE_CONFIG_DIR or FRIGATE_MEDIA_DIR explicitly in Settings → Environment Variables and restart. The env-var path wins over the UserDefaults path; this is useful when you’ve separately copied or symlinked data first.

Pretty-printing the layout

If you want to see what Fregata is actually using right now (in case you’ve overridden any of it):

fregata diag paths        # if you've added Fregata's bin/ to PATH
# or, more reliably:
/Applications/Fregata.app/Contents/MacOS/Fregata --print-paths

Both print a table of resolved paths to standard output and exit. Useful when filing a bug.