Stable Diffusion WebUI Forge is a platform built on top of Stable Diffusion WebUI and its Gradio interface, aimed at easier development, resource management, faster inference, and experimental features. The name follows Minecraft Forge, and the project positions itself as the equivalent for SD WebUI.
It tracks SD-WebUI 1.10.1 and syncs with the upstream project roughly every 90 days or when an important fix lands. Distribution is a one-click package that bundles git and Python for several CUDA and PyTorch combinations; installing it as a branch of an existing SD-WebUI checkout is also supported, which reuses previously installed checkpoints and extensions.
Flux models are supported natively in BitsAndBytes NF4 and GGUF Q80, Q50, Q51, Q40, and Q41 forms, with a GPU-weight slider, queue and async swap toggles, and a swap-location toggle; the NF4 and Q80, Q50, Q40 variants also take LoRAs. A UnetPatcher API lets an extension patch the diffusion model in a single file, as the built-in FreeU implementation demonstrates.
Component status as last manually tested:
| Component | Status | Last test |
|---|---|---|
| Basic diffusion, GPU memory management, LoRAs | Normal | 2024 Aug 26 |
| Preprocessors, ControlNets, IP-Adapters | Normal | 2024 Aug 26 |
| Instant-IDs, reference-only methods, integrated extensions | Normal | 2024 Jul 27 |
| Gradio 4 UIs and Forge Canvas | Normal | 2024 Aug 26 |
| Wacom 128-level pressure on canvas | Normal | 2024 Jul 15 |
| Microsoft Surface touch pressure | Broken, pending fix | 2024 Jul 29 |
| ControlNets (Union) and ControlNets (Flux) | Not implemented yet | 2024 Aug 26 |
| API endpoints (txt2img, img2img) | Normal, pending improved Flux support | 2024 Aug 29 |
| OFT LoRAs | Broken, pending fix | 2024 Sep 9 |
Features
- Upstream compatibility: based on SD-WebUI 1.10.1 and re-synced with the upstream project about every 90 days
- Flux quantization support: BitsAndBytes NF4 and GGUF Q80/Q50/Q51/Q40/Q4_1 checkpoints, with LoRA support on most of them
- Memory controls: a GPU-weight slider plus offload-location and offload-method settings govern how much of the model stays resident
- UnetPatcher: extensions patch the UNet from a single file, as in the bundled FreeU V2 implementation
- Gradio 4 canvas: a rebuilt canvas with right-button panning and pressure support for Wacom tablets
- Integrated extensions: ControlNet preprocessors, IP-Adapters, Instant-ID, LayerDiffuse layered-image editing, and Photopea or OpenposeEditor panels
- One-click packages: prebuilt archives for CUDA 12.1 with PyTorch 2.3.1 or 2.1 and CUDA 12.4 with PyTorch 2.4, updated with update.bat
- Branch install: can be installed as another branch of an existing SD-WebUI checkout to reuse its checkpoints and extensions
