What things do you self host (or know about) that are fun/interesting/useful to you? I'm thinking of setting up a home server and am looking for things that would be useful or fun for me to run on it. I want to host things that are useful/fun, but not a project itself (I've got enough projects), if that makes sense.

Most of the lists I see online are mostly lists of technical projects like docker, kubernetes, grafana, nginx, etc. I see these as infrastructure rather than the interesting project itself. ETA: the infra is important, but not "interesting" in this context as I deal with infra at my day job.

Examples of the type of service I'm looking at: a media server, photos app (to replace Google Photos), game servers, recipe management, home automation... What other things do you know about that are fun/interesting/useful?

Edit: thank you everyone for your awesome responses!

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[–] 32 points 10 months ago (7 children)

Off the top of my head:

  • Paperless ( Digital filing cabinet, tagging is local LLM backed
  • Immich (Google Photos replacement)
  • Nextcloud (Replaces the rest of Google Cloud functionality)
  • LubeLogger (Vehicle maintenance logger)
  • Home Assistant (Home and other things automation)
  • Jellyfin (Primary media server)
  • Hoarder (Online bookmarking, tagging and summarizing service, Local LLM backed. I think this project has changed names)
  • Audiobookshelf ( Does what it says on the tin. Audiobook server, kinda like audible but I can actually find the books I already own. )
  • Navidrome (Not sure if I'm keeping this one. Like the features but it largely duplicates the music side of Jellyfin)
  • Minecraft Server (Again, does what it says on the tin)

There are other services I run but those are the ones I use most often and can rattle off when I'm as tired as I am right now.

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  • [–] 7 points 10 months ago (2 children)

    I much prefer navidrome for music over jellyfin. Better presentation and usage, tracks meaningful data and displays it by default, and won't delete your music library data if a folder gets moved. In other words jellyfin just gets rid of that data but navidrome will track missing songs and make you explicitly confirm removing them from the database.

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  • [–] 4 points 10 months ago (1 child)

    I use FinAmp client with Jellyfin for music.

    I agree the Jellyfin interface is not well optimized for music, but FinAmp negates most of that and my phone is how I mostly listen to music anyway.

    I like Navidrone, but it's a duplicate service that doesn't really have a big value add over Jellyfin beyond the ability to share tracks with friends. A major feature upgrade, but not something I use terribly often.

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  • [–] 3 points 10 months ago (2 children)

    +1 for Audiobookshelf, has a great android app too

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  • [–] 1 point 10 months ago (1 child)

    And iOS app as well, though, it is in test flight

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  • [–] 2 points 10 months ago*

    FWIW, Plappa works really well on iOS. It’s not the official ABS app, but it was obviously designed around ABS. It has all of the features as the official app, without the whole “try every month to get into the TestFlight beta, because TestFlight hard caps the user count” BS.

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