Dont use public folder to store your files. As you mentioned it restarts the app while development. And also every time you deploy your app on remote server public folder overrides.
Save all the files outside the app folder. You could define a path in a meteor settings.
On the server its better to handle GET requsts for images via Nginx or similar proxy/ws. But also you can handle em w Meteor like
By the way, if your client is restarting that probably means you are using the Meteor CLI to run your app in production. That’s not the recommended approach and will result in worse performance than bundling your app into a production build. Read more about it here: