Self-Hosted

Your homelab is growing. You’ve got Jellyfin, Sonarr, Radarr, Pi-hole, maybe a dozen more services scattered across different ports. Bookmarks aren’t cutting it anymore. You need a dashboard — but not one that requires hand-editing YAML files every time you add a service. Homarr is a modern, highly customizable dashboard for your self-hosted services. Its killer feature: everything is configured through a drag-and-drop web UI. No config files, no YAML, no restarts. Add apps, rearrange widgets, configure integrations — all from your browser. ...

Task management apps want your data and your wallet. Todoist locks features behind premium tiers. TickTick has a free limit. Notion is great until you realize your entire workflow lives on someone else’s server. Vikunja is a self-hosted, open source task manager that handles projects, kanban boards, Gantt charts, and CalDAV sync — all running on your own hardware. What Vikunja Does Projects and tasks — organize with subtasks, priorities, labels, and due dates Kanban boards — drag-and-drop card view like Trello Gantt charts — timeline view for project planning CalDAV integration — sync tasks to any calendar app (Thunderbird, DAVx⁵, Apple Reminders) Reminders — email and in-app notifications Team collaboration — share projects with other users, assign tasks Attachments and comments — attach files, leave notes on tasks API and webhooks — automate everything Todoist import — migrate your existing tasks directly Prerequisites A Linux server with Docker and Docker Compose installed A domain name (optional but recommended for HTTPS) 512MB RAM minimum — Vikunja is lightweight Docker Setup Create a directory for Vikunja: ...

If you’ve ever wanted your own private GitHub without the complexity of GitLab or the resource hunger of enterprise solutions, Gitea is your answer. It’s a lightweight, self-hosted Git service written in Go that runs happily on a Raspberry Pi while still offering pull requests, issues, CI/CD, and package registries. Gitea uses minimal resources (typically under 200MB of RAM) and starts in seconds. It’s the perfect fit for home labs, small teams, and anyone who wants full control over their code. ...

If you’ve outgrown basic recipe apps and want serious meal planning, Tandoor Recipes is the self-hosted answer. It’s a full-featured recipe manager built for people who actually cook — with meal plans, shopping lists, nutritional data, ingredient management, and multi-user support. Where simpler tools like Mealie focus on quick recipe imports, Tandoor goes deeper with food databases, unit conversions, cookbooks, and a recipe editor that handles complex dishes with multiple steps. ...

Bookmarks are broken. Browser bookmark folders turn into graveyards. Links rot. Pages disappear. You save something important and never find it again. Linkwarden fixes this by saving the actual content — not just the URL. It archives full pages, tags them with AI, and makes everything searchable. If the original page goes down, you still have it. Why Linkwarden? Full-page archiving — saves a copy of every page, not just the URL AI-powered tagging — automatically categorizes your bookmarks Full-text search — find anything by searching the page content Collections — organize bookmarks into shareable folders Collaboration — share collections with teams or family Browser extension — save links with one click PDF and screenshot capture — preserves pages in multiple formats RSS feed support — import from feeds automatically Prerequisites Docker and Docker Compose 1GB+ RAM (AI features use more) PostgreSQL (included in the compose file) Docker Setup mkdir -p ~/linkwarden && cd ~/linkwarden # docker-compose.yml version: "3.8" services: linkwarden: image: ghcr.io/linkwarden/linkwarden:latest container_name: linkwarden restart: unless-stopped ports: - "3000:3000" volumes: - linkwarden_data:/data/data environment: DATABASE_URL: postgresql://linkwarden:changeme_password@db:5432/linkwarden NEXTAUTH_SECRET: changeme_long_random_string NEXTAUTH_URL: http://localhost:3000 NEXT_PUBLIC_DISABLE_REGISTRATION: "false" ARCHIVING_ENABLED: "true" BROWSER_TIMEOUT: 15000 depends_on: - db db: image: postgres:16 container_name: linkwarden-db restart: unless-stopped volumes: - pgdata:/var/lib/postgresql/data environment: POSTGRES_USER: linkwarden POSTGRES_PASSWORD: changeme_password POSTGRES_DB: linkwarden volumes: linkwarden_data: pgdata: Generate proper secrets: ...

You’ve got a hard drive full of movies, TV shows, and music. You want to stream them to every device in your house — and maybe remotely too. The two big options are Plex and Jellyfin. Both work. Both are good. But they’re fundamentally different in philosophy, and the right choice depends on what you care about. The Short Answer Pick Plex if you want a polished experience that just works, don’t mind some cloud dependency, and are okay with paying for premium features. Pick Jellyfin if you want fully open-source, no cloud anything, no accounts, and don’t mind rougher edges. Quick Comparison Feature Plex Jellyfin Price Free + $120 lifetime Plex Pass 100% free Open Source No (proprietary) Yes (GPL) Account Required Yes (Plex account) No Cloud Dependency Yes (auth, discovery) None Mobile Apps Excellent (paid unlock) Good (free) Smart TV Apps Excellent Limited Transcoding Excellent (hw accel) Good (hw accel) Live TV / DVR Yes (Plex Pass) Yes (free) Music Plexamp (excellent) Basic Plugins Limited (removed most) Full plugin support Multi-user Yes Yes Remote Access Built-in Manual (reverse proxy/VPN) Installation Both run great in Docker. ...

Running your own Minecraft server means no monthly fees, no player limits, full control over mods and plugins, and a world that exists as long as you want it to. With Docker, you can have one running in under five minutes. Why Docker for Minecraft? Easy updates — pull a new image, restart, done Isolated — doesn’t pollute your host system with Java versions Portable — move your server between machines by copying one folder Multiple servers — run Java and Bedrock side by side without conflicts Hardware Requirements Minecraft servers are RAM-hungry. Plan for: ...

Recipes are scattered everywhere. Bookmarked tabs, screenshot folders, handwritten cards, that one blog post buried under 2,000 words of life story. You just want the ingredients and steps. Mealie is a self-hosted recipe manager that pulls recipes from any URL, strips out the fluff, and stores them in a clean, searchable format. It also handles meal planning and shopping lists. What Mealie Does Import recipes from any URL — paste a link, Mealie scrapes the recipe automatically Meal planning — drag and drop recipes into a weekly calendar Shopping lists — auto-generated from your meal plan Household sharing — multiple users, shared cookbooks Nutritional info — automatic calculation from ingredients Mobile-friendly — works great on a phone or tablet in the kitchen API-first — everything is accessible via REST API Docker Setup mkdir -p ~/mealie && cd ~/mealie # docker-compose.yml version: "3.8" services: mealie: image: ghcr.io/mealie-recipes/mealie:latest container_name: mealie restart: unless-stopped ports: - "9925:9000" volumes: - mealie_data:/app/data environment: ALLOW_SIGNUP: "true" PUID: 1000 PGID: 1000 TZ: America/New_York MAX_WORKERS: 1 WEB_CONCURRENCY: 1 BASE_URL: http://192.168.1.100:9925 volumes: mealie_data: docker compose up -d Visit http://your-server:9925. The default credentials are: ...

Every household drowns in paper. Tax documents, medical records, receipts, warranties, letters — they pile up in drawers and filing cabinets until you need one and can’t find it. Paperless-ngx fixes this permanently. Scan or photograph a document, drop it in a folder, and Paperless automatically OCRs it, extracts the text, tags it, and makes it searchable. Finding any document takes seconds instead of minutes. Why Paperless-ngx? Full-text search across every document you’ve ever scanned Automatic OCR — extracts text from scanned images and PDFs Smart tagging — learns your patterns and auto-categorizes Correspondent detection — knows who sent what Multiple file formats — PDF, PNG, JPEG, TIFF, even Office documents Mobile-friendly web UI for access anywhere on your network Prerequisites Docker and Docker Compose installed At least 2GB RAM (OCR is memory-hungry) Storage space for your documents (plan ~5MB per page average) Docker Compose Setup Create a directory and compose file: ...

Once you’re running more than a handful of services, you need a single place to see everything. What’s running? What’s the status? Where’s the link again? Homepage is a modern, fast, self-hosted dashboard that gives you a clean overview of your entire homelab. It pulls live stats from your services, shows system info, and organizes all your bookmarks in one place. Why Homepage Over Other Dashboards? There are several self-hosted dashboards — Dashy, Homarr, Heimdall, Organizr. Homepage stands out for: ...