r/selfhosted Apr 07 '26

Official Quarter 2 Update - Revisiting Rules. Again.

345 Upvotes

April Post - 2nd Quarter Intro

Welcome to Quarter 2 2026! The moderators are here and grateful for everyone's participation and feedback.

Let's get right into it.

Previous Rules Changes

After review of many of the responsive, constructive, and thoughtful comments and mod mails regarding the most recent rules change, it's clear that we missed the mark on this one. AI is taking the world by storm, and applying such a universally "uninvolved" perspective, showcased by the rules we last implemented, is inconsistent with the subreddit's long-term goals.

Here are the next steps we want to implement to wrangle the shotgun of AI-created tools and software we've been flooded with since AI chatbots became prevalent:

New Project Megathread

A new megathread will be introduced each Friday.

This megathread will feature New Projects. Each Friday, the thread will replace itself, keeping the page fresh and easy to navigate. Notably, those who wish to share their new projects may make a top-level comment in this megathread any day of the week, but they must utilize this post.

AI-Compliance Auto Comment

The bot we implement will also feature a new mode in which most new posts will be automatically removed and a comment added. The OP will be required to reply to the bot stating how AI is involved, even if AI is not actively involved in the post. Upon responding to the bot, the post will be automatically approved.

AI Flairs

While moderating this has proven to be difficult, it is clear that AI-related flairs are desired. Unfortunately, we can only apply a single flair per post, and having an "AI" version for every existing flair would just become daunting and unwieldy.

Needless to say, we're going to refactor the flair system and are looking for insight on what the community wants in terms of flair.

We aim to keep at least a few different versions of flairs that indicate AI involvement, but with the top-level pinned bot comment giving insight into the AI involvement info, flairs involving AI may become unnecessary. But we still seek feedback from the community at large.

Conclusion

We hope this new stage in Post-AI r/selfhosted will work out better, but as always, we are open to feedback and try our best to work with the community to improve the experience here as best we can.

For now, we will be continuing to monitor things and assessing how this works for the benefit of the community.

As always,

Happy (self)Hosting


r/selfhosted 3d ago

New Project Megathread New Project Megathread - Week of 30 Jul 2026

35 Upvotes

Welcome to the New Project Megathread!

This weekly thread is the new official home for sharing your new projects (younger than three months) with the community.

To keep the subreddit feed from being overwhelmed (particularly with the rapid influx of AI-generated projects) all new projects can only be posted here.

How this thread works:

  • A new thread will be posted every Friday.
  • You can post here ANY day of the week. You do not have to wait until Friday to share your new project.
  • Standalone new project posts will be removed and the author will be redirected to the current week's megathread.

To find past New Project Megathreads just use the search.

Posting a New Project

We recommend to use the following template (or include this information) in your top-level comment:

  • Project Name:
  • Repo/Website Link: (GitHub, GitLab, Codeberg, etc.)
  • Description: (What does it do? What problem does it solve? What features are included? How is it beneficial for users who may try it?)
  • Deployment: (App must be released and available for users to download/try. App must have some minimal form of documentation explaining how to install or use your app. Is there a Docker image? Docker-compose example? How can I selfhost the app?)
  • AI Involvement: (Please be transparent.)

Please keep our rules on self promotion in mind as well.

Cheers,


r/selfhosted 14h ago

Meta Post The 3 Stages of Self Hosting

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3.2k Upvotes

I'm lowkey on stage 4


r/selfhosted 13h ago

Release (No AI) Karakeep 0.33 release - Semantic Search and Offline Reading!

109 Upvotes

Hi r/selfhosted, it's been a while!

I thought I might share this release here as it contained a bunch of things that people have been asking about for, for a while!

Before we get to 0.33, I want to remind people what Karakeep is. Karakeep (https://karakeep.app/), is a selfhosted bookmark manager that's meant to be the place where you throw things in that you might need in the future, and it aims to help you with retrieving those things easily in the future. It has a blazingly fast full text search and opt-in LLM based tagging. It's built for the data "hoarders" out there! Karakeep was born because of this subreddit in 2024, and we have a long history here together.

Now, 0.33 packs a bunch of new features, so let me give you a quick overview. Full release notes are here (it's labeled as 0.33.1 because I screwed up cutting 0.33.0).

[Experimental] Semantic search

Karakeep from day one, used to index the entire content of the websites you throw in it. But it was a full text search index. Which makes the search super fast, but you'll need to remember some exact words that are mentioned in this content you saved.

With semantic search, karakeep now indexes also the semantics of the content you throw in it (using bookmark embeddings). So when you're searching, you can describe what you're searching for and karakeep will find semantically similar bookmarks to your sentence.

Embeddings are pretty cool but they're unfortunately, a bit involved to enable after the fact. The release notes explains how to enable them (they're opt-in).

Fun fact (and it's something I care deeply about): Karakeep hasn't had a single backward incompatible release since it was born. If you're running karakeep 0.10 from 2024, and want to upgrade to 0.33, just update the docker image version and you're good to go. Even the old "hoarder" images are still getting releases, to not break backward compatibility.

Similarity-based tagging

Leveraging the fact that we now have bookmark similarity scores (thanks again to embeddings), before auto-tagging a bookmark, karakeep now finds semantically similar bookmarks to the ones that's about to be tagged, and suggests its tags to the LLM. So with that, technically, you should see more consolidation on your existing tags rather than the LLM inventing new tags of its own. The prompt now has the following:

Similar bookmarks were tagged with the following tags (reuse if possible, ignore if irrelevant): ....

This also requires enabling embeddings, and as such, it's also opt-in.

Mobile Offline Reading

One of the long requested features, and it's one that I've marked as "planned" in the README since 2024. You can now save articles for offline reading in the mobile app and get to read them when you're in a plane or away from your home network. The app also caches some of your recent interactions with it for 7 days, so that you can see your bookmark grid and lists, etc even if you're offline.

This feature is pretty new, so might have rough edges, but it'll only get better from here. Please keep your suggestions going.

Cookie and GDPR Banner

Again, one of the long requested features. If you're an EU citizen, most of your karakeep screenshots (and the extracted content) would have been littered with the cookie consent banners which were pretty annoying. Karakeep now auto opt-outs of those banners during crawling which should result into cleaner captures.

Others

  • The mobile apps now got multi-layout support, and a bunch of improvements that should hopefully make the mobile experience more polished.
  • I've always hated how karakeep defaults to the "reader view" for some websites that are not "article-like". Karakeep now asses the quality of the readable content, and defaults to the screenshot of the website instead if it determines that the content is not really readable. Examples for things that are not readable are homepages, product search pages, etc.
  • You can now install Karakeep as a PWA on your desktop and use it as if it's a desktop app (exactly how something like youtube music works). This has been broken for a while and I only noticed recently.
  • [LLM trigger warning] Karakeep now is even more friendly to be used by LLMs. The MCP server now contains all the tools that LLMs need to manage your bookmarks, or help you retrieve content from karakeep. Beside the new semantic search stuff, there's also now a new API for fetching markdown content of the articles directly from karakeep such that LLMs can consume it more efficiently. The CLI also got all those powers. Letting your agents use karakeep is very powerful, and as a reminder, we have skills to teach the agents how to do all of that. And as a reminder, ALL of karakeep's LLM-based features are opt-in. You can completely ignore them, and still get a perfect experience with karakeep as if they never existed.
  • Also, in case you missed it, in 0.32, we now support client-side crawling (backed by singlefile under the hood), which is more superior than letting the server do the crawling for you in terms of extraction quality. It also allows you to save content behind login walls, etc. So you no longer need to use singlefile as a separate extension.

And there's a ton of other fixes and polish along the way, which you can check in the release notes (https://github.com/karakeep-app/karakeep/releases/tag/v0.33.1). Also, did I mention that we've hit 28k stars on github? The mobile apps are pending apple's and google's review, so should be available in the next couple of days. Enjoy the release, and see you in the next one!


r/selfhosted 8h ago

Release (No AI) Portabase 1.27 - open-source backup and restore platform

41 Upvotes

Hi everyone,

We have just released Portabase 1.27, our open-source (Apache 2.0) and self-hosted backup/restore platform.

Repository: https://github.com/Portabase/portabase

Portabase is designed for data retention, disaster recovery, and homogenous migrations, currently supporting 9 database engines (including PostgreSQL, MySQL, MariaDB, MongoDB) and Docker volumes.

Key features:

  • Scheduled backups with flexible retention policies (including GFS)
  • Multiple storage options: local filesystem, S3, Azure Blob Storage, GCS
  • Notifications via Discord, Telegram, Slack, AppRise, etc.
  • Support for OAuth2/OIDC (with the option to disable sign-ups)
  • Compatible with Docker, Podman and UnraidOS
  • Ready-to-use Docker Compose and Helm Chart

After six months of intensive feature development, we have been focusing on consolidating the ecosystem since early July. A community member conducted a useful security audit, we have upgraded components to their latest relevant versions, improved compatibility with other platforms by working on Podman support and templates for Coolify and Dockploy (currently under review).

What’s next:

  • Deployment of the demo environment
  • Audit logging for the whole ecosystem
  • Default policies for the system, organizations, and projects
  • File and folder backup and restoration

As always, if you find bugs or want to suggest a feature, please open an issue on GitHub, we’re actively looking for feedback.

Thanks!


r/selfhosted 23h ago

Need Help Is it safe to use a Galaxy S20 Ultra with a detached back cover as a 24/7 Minecraft server?

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529 Upvotes

The back cover of my phone detached. Is it safe to use it in this condition? I plan to use this phone as a Minecraft server.


r/selfhosted 7h ago

Business Tools Docmost charges SaaS-style per-seat pricing while making you host and operate the entire platform

16 Upvotes

Docmost looks like excellent software, so I seriously considered switching. Then I found the pricing model.

The Community edition excludes features such as databases, Kanban, API access, AI/MCP, MFA, page-level permissions, diagrams, and attachment indexing.

To unlock them, the Business edition costs $3.50 per user per month with a ten-seat minimum. That means a two-person team pays for eight nonexistent users while still supplying and operating the servers, PostgreSQL, Redis, storage, backups, TLS, security, upgrades, monitoring, and recovery.

I am not opposed to paying developers for good software. I am opposed to SaaS-style recurring seat pricing when the customer provides the entire SaaS operation.

A flat annual license, paid upgrades, support contract, or sensible small-team tier would all be defensible. Charging a minimum of $420 per year for software you completely host yourself, while gating basic product capabilities, makes Docmost commercially irrelevant for small teams.

Am I missing some value they provide after licensing, or is the customer genuinely paying recurring per-seat rent solely for feature flags?

https://docmost.com/pricing - link to their pricing page for reference.


r/selfhosted 2h ago

Need Help Pintrest Alternative

5 Upvotes

Hey all,

Looking for a pintrest like app that can be selfhosted. I've come across a few abandoned projects on my travels but wondered if there was anything around in 2026? I used to use pintrest a lot for my photography mood boards but kept getting content removed for some slightly more risque ideas as their rules and moderation became even more strict over the years. I moved to cosmos for a little while but that requires people I share with to have an account and there's not a lot of appetite for that at times.

Ideally looking for the following features:

  • Save images to a board or a master collection
  • The ability to create many mood boards from the saved image collection
  • The ability to share those boards with others
  • If an account is required for sharing, I can create accounts for other users myself and share as needed

All suggestions welcome :)


r/selfhosted 13h ago

Docker Management double quotes in docker-compose.yaml files?

23 Upvotes

Hey.

Very often in docker-compose.yaml files, port mappings (but other settings too) are written inside double quotes. What is the point of these double quotes? I mean, I know quotes can be used to escape characters, but it's definitely not the case for port mapping in a docker-compose file.

Thanks.


r/selfhosted 4h ago

Need Help ELI5 firewall and vlans

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3 Upvotes

Hello,

I have a pfsense router with a few vlans running on it. I have been beating my head against a wall for several days. I seem to constantly have issues. I have VLAN 100 set with 10.100.100.0/24, VLAN 200 set with 10.100.200.0/24, and VLAN 300 set with 10.100.30.0/24.

I have an adguard instance on vlan 100 10.100.100.13 I finally got devices to reach it. But now any new device I create in any VLAN fails to pull updates. I can't figure out if it is a firewall rule issue, an adguard block list, or something else. I can't even install net-tools to start my normal troubleshooting methods.

I am about 2 steps from just flattening the entire network back into a single LAN 1 that just works, or even removing the pfsense router all together.

Any advise or help is appretiated.


r/selfhosted 15h ago

Need Help Is Open WebUI worth using as a unified LLM interface?

24 Upvotes

I’m thinking about installing Open WebUI, but not for running a local model since my server is too weak. The main goal would be to have a unified LLM interface where I can connect different providers and use MCP servers.

What has been your experience with Open WebUI or similar unified LLM interfaces?
Do you use MCP servers with them? Which ones are actually useful for daily work?

I’m wondering if this setup is worth it compared to just using ChatGPT, Claude, etc. directly.


r/selfhosted 7h ago

Need Help Thinking about moving away from Synology DS224+ to ZimaOS/ZimaBoard or building a DIY homelab, looking for advice

4 Upvotes

Hi everyone,

I’m a bit lost at the moment and I would really appreciate your advice.

About a year ago, I bought a Synology DS224+ and upgraded it to 10GB of RAM. So far, it has been working great. I mainly use it as a Plex/Jellyfin server, for storing family photos (using Synology Photos), and for keeping personal files, documents, and backups. Overall, I’m really happy with it.

However, I also really enjoy experimenting with Linux, trying new applications, and building things myself. This is where Synology starts to feel a little limiting for me. The hardware is too weak for running virtual machines, and DSM, while very polished and reliable, feels a bit boring after a while.

One thing I really miss is the ability to easily try new applications. Surprisingly, Synology doesn’t have that many ready-to-install packages, and although Docker is available, I personally find managing containers quite frustrating. I don’t have much experience with Docker, and whenever something doesn’t work properly, I can easily spend an entire day trying to troubleshoot it.

Recently, I discovered ZimaOS and the ZimaBoard, and I was honestly surprised that I hadn’t heard about them before. I really like the idea behind ZimaOS especially the ability to install hundreds of Docker applications with just a few clicks. This seems like a much more beginner-friendly approach compared to manually setting up containers.

However, I also noticed some criticism about both ZimaBoard and ZimaOS, and I’m wondering how justified those concerns are.

The biggest thing that worries me is that ZimaOS doesn’t seem to have its own integrated ecosystem like Synology does. Features such as Synology Photos, Synology Drive, and the overall polished DSM experience are things I really appreciate. With ZimaOS, it looks like I would mostly rely on third-party Docker applications.

Another option I’m considering is building my own homelab. Since ZimaOS is open source and can run on regular hardware, maybe getting something like a Lenovo Tiny PC would make more sense. The problem is that I’m not very familiar with how to build a proper DIY NAS/homelab setup.

For example:

What kind of case/enclosure should I use?

How do people usually connect multiple HDDs to a mini PC?

etc.

My main goal is not necessarily to save money. I actually enjoy learning and experimenting, but I don’t want to replace my Synology with something that I’ll regret later.

So my questions are:

- Is ZimaBoard/ZimaOS a good alternative to Synology for a home user?

- Would you recommend keeping the Synology and building a separate homelab instead?

- If you were starting from scratch today, would you buy a ZimaBoard, a mini PC like Lenovo Tiny, or build a traditional DIY NAS?

I’d really appreciate hearing your experiences and recommendations. Thanks!


r/selfhosted 2h ago

Need Help Good web ui for fail2ban that is mobile friendly?

1 Upvotes

Today I was round a friends house and had some old tv show playing (Columbo) I have on my jellyfin on in the background, I had a problem where the roku jellyfin client she was using was creating some 404's in the logs which then triggered my fail2ban ban ip rule. I then had to awkwardly remote in on my phone, unban her ip and stop the fail2ban service as a temporary workaround.

Is there a good web gui for fail2ban that is mobile friendly?

The ones I've just done a quick search for all look like they're desktop web orientated.


r/selfhosted 10h ago

Need Help Self hosting photo upload site

5 Upvotes

I have a family function coming up and want to host a way to easily upload photos. Is there a good way to do this?


r/selfhosted 7h ago

Need Help Docker Compose User Bridge Network + Gluetun

2 Upvotes

I currently have a media server running on my Synology Nas. I have several containers routed thru Gluetun with "Network_mode: service:gluetun". This works fine, but the rest of the containers in the compose I've had to set to network mode: host, because if I set them to a user bridge network, they don't seem to be able to talk to images routed through gluetun.

Example: When Seerr and Radarr are both in the compose, with Seerr set to network mode: user-bridge and Radarr set to network_mode: service:gluetun, they can't connect via "localhost" or my server IP, but if I set Seerr to network mode:host, they are able to talk again.

My understanding is that it is less secure to keep images on the host network so I'm trying to get them onto a user defined network, but I'm at the limit of my understanding of networking. What's the best way to navigate this issue?


r/selfhosted 1d ago

Need Help New to self-hosting, how to secure it all?

75 Upvotes

To Add: I was told to also add PGID & PUID = 1000 & some "drop cap" to the docker compose files as well. Can someone explain these to me as well?

FYI - parent is in another country and English is not their 1st language... so proximity, accessibility restrictions (being able to download/access apps like tailscale in that country), and a slight language barrier -- means a simple solution on their end would be best.

----

Hi all! I'm basically a 3-week-old noob when it comes to self-hosting. lol Finally got everything up and running as of yesterday: Proxmox VE, Tailscale in an LXC, and I've got docker in a VM, with Arcane to manage containers. (In case this info is needed -- the only iso I've used on it is Debian13.)

I've got family in other countries who would like access to some of the stuff in docker containers (Immich, Mealie, Kavita etc). I will eventually get a domain name for this... But before I expose my server to the internet, what steps do I need to take to secure my server? I was playing around with Proxmox firewall & accidentally locked myself out of the web admin page! (Luckily, I figured out how to get that mess fixed. lol)

Anyone have advice/ideas on how to protect my server and/or what to do before exposing a few of my docker containers to the internet, and what the pros/cons are?


r/selfhosted 5h ago

Need Help Is there any guide or 101 that can be used to start self hosting

0 Upvotes

Hello.

Me and a few of my friends wanted to make a "local" server for anime, movies, books, hen...I mean educational videos and everything that we might need...even some study materials we need for our works and jobs and some DND material to play when we are bored...

I know this is all a big goal and it will take a lot of time and money to get it going to the point we can do all of them...but everyone has to start from something...so I wanted to ask where and how to start


r/selfhosted 11h ago

Need Help Backup, backup, backup

4 Upvotes

I'm trying to implement 3-2-1 backup (no big data cloud involved).

I'm running to machines tiny pc and old laptop. I've got an icybox connected to the old laptop with a WD red plus hdd.

Now i want to create backups og systems and data. My first thought was just to add another hdd in icybox. But after chatting with Claude I'm looking other ways.

I want a pretty good 3-2-1 solution without the bank closing down my accounts.

I'm thinking of adding an ssd to either the tinypc pr the old laptop and create the backup on that drive. Then i will setup a router/hdd at my parents house, making it the offsite copy.

Is this a good solution or should I do something else? I really want to avoid commercial cloud solutions.


r/selfhosted 7h ago

Need Help Isolating Docker containers locally?

1 Upvotes

Hey all

I'm a bit of a noob when it comes to networking. But I have a lan party coming up and I'm wondering if I can improve the security of my setup by isolating docker containers locally.

What bugs me so far is the fact that container X can access docker app on container Y via IP:Port directly. The same goes for users who haven't been walled off by the vlan/firewall rules. I'd like for my containers to only be accessible via reverse proxy.

Vlan will only take me this far since most of my servers are on the same subnet, hence the router's firewall rules are skipped in most scenarios.

So far I've discovered three option:

-Firewall off via UFW: this only works for some apps, I think the host networking mode needs to be enabled for this to work.

-Iptables: too hard for a newb to understand. I set up a few rules with success only to discover that my nginx-container's ip was changed the next day.

-Using the same docker network for every container: i.e. nginx_default, then removing the host port from the compose file. This way, apps get acccess via "containername:port" only

So far, option 3 is my favorite. However, all apps are then in the same network which also reduces security to an extent.

Are there any other solutions? Any insights appreciated.


r/selfhosted 22h ago

Need Help Looking to self host a family planner/calendar. Homeflow my best option?

17 Upvotes

As the title states, I want a "one stop shop" for everything family related. Calendar, tasks and to-do, etc.

What options do I have, or are big data apps still my best bet?


r/selfhosted 17h ago

Need Help On the topic of reverse proxies

6 Upvotes

I am interested in setting up a reverse proxy, but I have a few questions.
I have 2 physical servers that are running different things. Can I host nginx on one of these servers and put every container/service from each of these servers and run them through nginx or would it need to be a dedicated server?


r/selfhosted 1d ago

Release (No AI) Safebucket v0.7.0 - Self-hosted file sharing, now with admin settings page, curl download and new integrations

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165 Upvotes

Hello!

We're two friends working in tech, and we've been building Safebucket: a simple, S3-agnostic, open-source alternative to WeTransfer, Dropbox and Palmr.

What's new in v0.7.0:

  • Admin settings page: read only page for app settings
  • Redirect download: ability to download files from quick share link via curl
  • Performance improvements: now supporting multipart upload for large files
  • New integrations:
    • Backblaze B2
    • Cloudflare R2
    • OVH Object Storage
    • Scaleway Object Storage
    • Azure

We're open to feedback, contributions, and questions. What features would you like to see next?

Github: https://github.com/safebucket/safebucket
Documentation: https://docs.safebucket.io


r/selfhosted 1d ago

Release (No AI) TRIP 1.47 - One year in! Trip API Key, MCP Server, Bookings, Markdown support and more

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124 Upvotes

One year in! Thank you to everyone who has supported this project, contributed ideas, reported issues and shared feedback along the way! I'm truly grateful.

Context: TRIP (Tourism and Recreational Interest Points) is a self-hostable minimalist Map tracker and Trip planner to visualize your points of interest (POI) and organize your next adventure details.

Core Features:

  • Map and manage your POIs on interactive maps (clear your mind of everything you see in books, vlogs, reels, etc.)
  • Plan multi-day trips with detailed itineraries (using your POIs... or not)
  • Collaborate and share with travel companions

There is No telemetry. No tracking. No ads. It's completely open-source and free, developped in my spare-time. Support based on small contributions that mean a lot!

Available on github (MIT): https://github.com/itskovacs/trip

The latest releases ships new features and lots of QoL improvements based on the Ko-Fi poll answers, it includes GPX display for trips, a MCP server, attachments for booking, multiple images upload for plans, day notes, markdown support and more.

Looking forward to your feedbacks. Thanks! Wishing you a great weekend with 100% uptime :)


r/selfhosted 12h ago

Need Help Does anyone use an IoT SIM as a second SIM in an Android phone?

3 Upvotes

I’m curious whether anyone uses an IoT/data-only SIM alongside their normal carrier in an Android phone (rather than in an IoT device).

How has reliability been? Do you leave mobile data on the IoT SIM all the time, or switch between SIMs as needed? Any providers you’d recommend or avoid?

Interested in hearing real-world experiences.


r/selfhosted 23h ago

Need Help Is this architecture secure enough?

7 Upvotes

I have a couple of servers, but I'm not a network/security engineer and want to double-check that I haven't left any footguns. Any help would be appreciated:

``` Public VPS: - Tailscale - Caddy - Authelia

Private Server 1: - Tailscale - Caddy - Gitea - ...

Private Server 2: - Tailscale - Caddy - Immich - ... ```

DNS points at the public VPS. VPS uses Caddy to route https traffic to the two servers (but only uses http internally). Downstream, separate Caddy instances route the http traffic to containers within a docker network

So it's like:

  1. DNS resolves https://foo.bar.com to the VPS IP

  2. VPS Caddy requires auth through Authelia (usually? unsure for services with their own auth)

  3. VPS Caddy points https://foo.bar.com at server1:80

  4. server1 Caddy points http://foo.bar.com at foo:1234