Depending on how you're going about having these media files, you might want to take a look at the *arr stack
The comments give some great advice on what to self host, but my advice to you before you start spinning up a million services is to DOCUMENT EVERYTHING.
Seriously, document as you go and you will thank yourself later. Document niche commands you found online that worked, docker compose files, IP addresses/hostnames, where you put that random config file.
There are some great self hosted wiki and documentation products out there, start with that, then build the fun stuff!
Check those in to source control and it kind of takes care of that (except passwords/secrets or configs which have them).
Planned on doing that
Hell yeah
Everything. Self host everything, even your pets.
How do I selfhost my bedbugs?
I think you need a Windows server for that.
I do hate myself, but not that much
Check out Selfh.st
Very good resource. Well written. I know nothing about him but does seem to have a great rapport with Lemmy SH.
ETA: I'm reluctant, but keen to know so, is there some ancient lore that prevents me from asking 'Is there a reason why noted.lol doesn't live here too?' I searched and I did find a handful of references, but nothing like selfh.st.
Syncthing so you never have to mail files to yourself again.
FreshRSS for RSS reading
Readeck for saving articles for later (or wallabag, many alternatives)
HomeAssistant
Calibre-web for ebooks
PiHole
Joplin for self hosted notes
Searxng is fun for self hosted metasearch but has sadly been having trouble with Google lately
I remember reading a thread like this a while back and saw Home Assistant. I thought I don't need that.
It's probably the most used self hosted app we have.
I wish you didn't have to do things the Calibre way to host ebooks, but whatever effort it takes to sort out ebook hosting must be a pain in the ass, because everything is built on top of Calibre despite Calibre being perhaps the most obtuse piece of "programmer-knows-better" software ever engineered.
Almost every other ebook self-hosted app is just a wrapper on top of that nonsense. I hate it.
You can try to use Komga instead, but it's mostly meant for comic books and it's kinda heavy, honestly.
Have you tried out https://booklore.org/ ?
It seems different enough from calibre and kavita et al.
Have I? I tried so many so quickly I can't even remember.
In any case I'm part of the problem now, because my dealbreaker was having to organize my library in the obtuse alien way Calibre wants instead of the nice, human-readable way I already had. I bit that bullet, so now I'm married to a Calibre format library and thus perpetuating the terrible standard.
Export all fixes that... Doing that to my syncthing to sync my files to the ereader. Still looking for a way to get rid of calibre :(
Yeah, it's hard exit that directory structure once you have gone all in.
I would look into PiHole vs AdGuard home. Lots of people are locked in on PiHole, but they never tried the other and AdGuard is currently more user friendly and easier to use than PiHole. Not starting a flame war here, everyone will have different view, just look at PiHole vs Adguard home and make your own decision (or try both).
@dieTasse @shnizmuffin i will second adguard home tis what i have running. But I've heard good things on the other too.
Any layer is better than no layer.
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:
| Fewer Letters | More Letters |
|---|---|
| DHCP | Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol, automates assignment of IPs when connecting to a network |
| DNS | Domain Name Service/System |
| ESXi | VMWare virtual machine hypervisor |
| Git | Popular version control system, primarily for code |
| IP | Internet Protocol |
| LTS | Long Term Support software version |
| NAS | Network-Attached Storage |
| PiHole | Network-wide ad-blocker (DNS sinkhole) |
| Plex | Brand of media server package |
| RAID | Redundant Array of Independent Disks for mass storage |
| SSH | Secure Shell for remote terminal access |
| SSO | Single Sign-On |
| VPN | Virtual Private Network |
| VPS | Virtual Private Server (opposed to shared hosting) |
14 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has 4 acronyms.
[Thread #54 for this comm, first seen 2nd Feb 2026, 02:10] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]
I'm running:
I have pihole on a pi for DNS.
Isn't wireguard already pretty easy???
Also unless it changed I thought Plexamp was only available to Plex Pass subscribers.
Plexamp - Nah they made it free for everyone a while back.. the sonic analysis aspect is gare kept behind the pass. Iirc But I'm a lifetime pass holder for like a bazillion years .. I think my annual average cost is like $4 at this point lol
Wg-easy - truth be told I just started it up this week. I formatted my phone and wanted to try something else for wire guard. But you are correct wire guard is pretty darn easy.
I strongly recommend Overseerr if you are going to run a video server.
Forget piracy. I only host dumps of my physical media (which at least where I am is perfectly legal), but that thing has an database of international streaming soruces. I use it just as a watchlist and to check whether I have access to a thing on a commercial streaming service already. It is effectively Justwatch for your streaming media.
Immich is a pretty obvious thing, too, if you want to get out of commercial image hosting services.
I'd say, though, that's a fairly ambitious plan, and if your self-hosted apps, your home webhosting and your NAS are all going to live on the same home server I'd certainly figure out security and backups before overcommitting. That plan is a lot of hard drives and failure points you're gonna be wrangling.
This was merged with jellyseer and is just called seer now. I believe it's 'safe' to switch to the develop branch they have available. I've had zero issues so far.
This is what I'm currently hosting, might find something here that interests you.
AudioBookshelf: Exactly as the name implies Navidrome: Music Streamer MeTube: YouTube/Video Site downloader ConvertX: Converts hundreds of files. Beszel: Dashboard to monitor hardware MediaVault: My own app I wrote to track my Movies, Music, Video Games, Books. AMP: Video game server management software. JellyFin: Movie/TV Streaming Software FileBrowser: Browser based file management software. Radarr: Find Movies, download them. Sonarr: Find TV Shows, download them. ARM: Automatic Ripping Machine, put in a DVD/BluRay, Rips, compresses, and moves to JellyFin. (Huge pain to get working though, for me at least.) Pihole: Network management and Ad Blocker. Octaprint: 3D Printer management.
I have a bunch of other stuff too, like custom written scrips that show the info from Beszel on my Windows desktop via a Widget in RainMeter. Custom dashboard when I first login via SSH. My next thing to experiment with is setting up a custom website to use as a homepage dashboard for my browser, commonly used bookmarks, news feed, email alerts, weather, social media feeds, whatever else I can think of or get working.
And for anyone curious what the hardware is:
OS: Ubuntu 22.04 LTS with xrdp Desktop Environment when Needed CPU: AMD 3700x RAM: 64GB Boot Drive: Samsung 990Evo 2TB m.2 Storage: 2x Seagate BarraCuda Pro 12TB HDD RAID 1 GPU: NVIDIA RTX 2060
Host Jellyfin
Some form of hosted musicstreaming integration with my local music
For the music, jellyfin can do this and it uses subsonic api which means you can connect to the music server with some mobile and desktop apps. Alternatively i like navidrome for more specialized music service that still uses subsonic api. Some people prefer not having a second service if jellyfin is good enough for their needs.
Automate Backups and push them on my server
For backups look into borg if your NAS doesn't have anything native.
make all of the above things available where ever I want using my own self hosted domain.
Look into doing let's encrypt DNS-01challenges via something like acme.sh if your domain registrar has an api. this will let you get your own certs for local use without exposing the subdomains on the domains dns. If you're going to make them public then that is less important but it's still a good way to automate renewals and deploying regardless.
run my own dns
Pihole unbound can offer a recursive dns server. Very easy set up.
In the long term I also want to be able to host my own webapps, since I will soon start to develop one for someone.
Now I want to know what suggestions do you have, for stuff thats really cool and that I can selfhost.
Outside of the obvious segmenting public zones and firewall, you could self host an SSO service. This would allow you to easily put forward auth on a dev build if you were needing to keep it selectively private until/if you made it public.
In general though, i just wait until i come across a problem or need and then i see if a service exists to solve that. Occasionally looking through the awesome selfhosted list or similar helps find blind spots i didn't know i had.
Invidious for YouTube without ads
A place to share alternatives to popular online services that can be self-hosted without giving up privacy or locking you into a service you don't control.
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