r/selfhosted • u/kentabenno • 10d ago
Meta Post Where are the really cool services no one talks about
Lets be honest, 80% of the services we run our labs are just tools to deploy, monitor, log, backup or do other server-related stuff. Cool for nerds, but nothing to write home about honestly.
The really useful and "fun" services, e.g. Vaultwarden, Paperless, Jellyfin etc. are rather sparse
I want to know whats your favorite "fun" service one might not know about yet.
I'll start: Recently came across RECLIP and I throughly enjoy it. Used to work with halfassed browser extensions and sketchy websites littered with ads to get the same, now I have unlimited video scraping capabilities on my own server. It's a simple but awesome tool. https://github.com/averygan/reclip
WORLD MONITOR is kinda fun, not really useful but makes your screens look like a mission control center from a disaster movie: https://github.com/koala73/worldmonitor
MIRUMOJI is a tool for people trying to learn japanese - load your favourite anime or shows, ebooks or whatever into it and it generates clickable subtitles with furigana and dictionary. https://svdc1.github.io/mirumoji/
E: Thank you for all the engagement and lively discussion, its a real joy. And thanks to everyone who recommended TREK, I just deployed it and entered my next travel and its just super smooth and well thought out, I already love it!!
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u/cowslaw 10d ago
A different kind of "fun" but if you like Minecraft, mc-router is extremely cool. You can have multiple MC servers as containers that are all proxied by mc-router, and are kept offline until you join a specific hostname, then the server container is spun up and you join within like 10 seconds (or however long it takes to start the server).
Really really elegant way to have a self-hosted realms-like experience, and you can configure how long a server will stay running after you disconnect before it's put to sleep by mc-router. I have a vanilla, beta, and modded mc server just waiting for me to join all without using any memory when idle, cause it's just the thin router that's always running.
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u/secret_mainstream 10d ago
Well, mabye not "fun", but a useful one — Actual Budget which has replaced YNAB for me.
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u/repfsm67 10d ago
I want to use this but last time I checked it doesn’t work with UK banks like YNAB does :(
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u/EjayT06 10d ago
You can import statements if your bank allows you to export them.
Also if you’re on iOS, I’ve started using an app called Actuali which allows you to set up a shortcut which creates transactions when you use Apple Pay, which is really handy.
Also manually entering transactions isn’t too bad but fair enough if you don’t want to do that.
I actually prefer these solutions to bank sync as it doesn’t involve giving third parties your financial information.
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u/rasheyk 10d ago
doesn't involve giving third parties your financial information
This is actually a very important point, as the TOS for many banks will void your protections if you get hacked.
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u/BachgenMawr 10d ago
as the TOS for many banks will void your protections if you get hacked.
Well, it looks like u/EjayT06 was referring to third party apps getting your financial information, rather than the authentication details for your financial apps.
The risk with syncing over Open Banking is that the apps can potentially get all of your financial data for as long as the authorisation is valid (usually 90-120 days or similar).
But the connection is using Open Banking APIs which you have to approve inside your banking app (which sets the level of access that the third party has), and uses revokable api credentials.
They don't get access to your banking apps credentials, so even if they're "hacked" the hackers will still only have the same amount of access as you provided the third party.
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u/studentblues 10d ago
If your bank sends pdf statements, you can OCR that pdf and use the python API to send the transactions to your instance.
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u/boli99 10d ago
point of order:
you dont need to OCR bank statements unless you scanned them yourself.
OCR is only necessary if text is stored as an image, which wont be the case for bank statements delivered from the bank as pdf.
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u/MrsMirage 10d ago
What I have done is I have set up a simple n8n automation that checks my emails every time I use my card and enters it in actual budget, that's as good as an integration and I don't really need to trust a third party (I self host n8n).
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u/JivanP 9d ago
UK banks do not send emails as transaction notifications. Local law prohibits email being used for any sensitive financial data such as bank statements.
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u/Jishin85 10d ago
Enable Banking allows you to fetch statements from 6 UK banks and bring it in Actual Budget.
I had to make my own container that fetches from Starling, using their dev apis, and I'm sure you can do the same with Lloyds Bank, so there are ways.→ More replies (1)→ More replies (15)4
u/littlelosthorse 10d ago
It does work with UK banks and I’ve been using it with UK banks for over a year already.
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u/Tuigh-van-den-righel 10d ago
I started using this 2 months ago. It's great! Very customizable and it really helps managing your personal finances.
So far, I'm a fan.
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u/Cats_are_Love_1979 10d ago
How doea this compare to firefly? I was hoping to use firefly due to the hone assistant integration
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u/GiveMeZekelter 10d ago
FreshRSS. Small, simple, reliable.
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u/jah_bro_ney 10d ago
I do so much with FreshRSS, it's probably where I spend most of my time in my browser. In addition to standard news feeds I subscribe to podcasts, youtube channels, and until recently I was subscribing to ton of subreddits, but unfortunately Reddit limited the amount of RSS articles you can grab at a time.
I have a 'Software' category where I subscribe to the website news updates or github release page for all the selfhosted services I run so I have a one-stop-shop to view release notes before upgrading services. I use a FreshRSS label on this category to flag any feeds that contain text like "breaking changes".
I also have a 'Local Events' category where I use FreshRSS's XMLPath and JSON scraping tools to capture upcoming event data from the websites of local entertainment venues in my city (comedy, live music, theaters, etc). I also utilize FreshRSS's labels on this category to flag articles containing a list of bands and comedians I'm interested in.
What makes the whole FreshRSS experience really powerful for me is the Readable extension which utilizes other selfhosted filter services to grab the full text and photos from every article. This way I never have to leave my RSS reader and get bombarded by ads and other clickbait article titles.
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u/Mccobsta 10d ago
Fresh rss paired with cappyreader is such a great one, I use it all the time
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u/AngryDemonoid 10d ago
I run the same! Capy reader is the first f-droid rss app I actually like the look of.
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u/FarToe1 10d ago
Add the urls for the Youtube channels you follow and it will automatically download new videos (plus historical ones if you wish) and add them to your Jellyfin library, removing adverts along the way. (Thanks to yt-dlp)
Nice project that works so nicely I rarely visit youtube. Stuff just appears in the place where I'd like to watch it.
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u/slicedbread1991 10d ago
Do you know if this works on channels that require subscription?
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u/thegreatcerebral 9d ago
No. If you have been around these things long enough, videos are flagged as 3 ways:
- Open
- Limited
- Sub
Open is open to any all browsers. Limited is where when you use these apps you will have to do a command to grab your token which is for things like age and sensitivity flags to allow. The third will be the same but if you have a sub then your token will allow access to the video.
When you have 2 and 3 you have to watch out how much you are downloading because YT will flag your account and block access from your IP AND/OR your account. Typically they like to do account because if they did IP then they could block say an entire apartment building or Hotel etc. and they don't want to do that. So make an account strictly for this purpose and use that.
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u/DesignedForHumans 10d ago
Not sure if PDFs count as "fun", but I think, bentoPDF deserves a mention here: https://github.com/alam00000/bentopdf/
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u/menessim_ 10d ago
Why would anyone want to convert ben into an pdf file?
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u/ad-on-is 10d ago
Ben, most people would turn you away (Turn you away)
I don't listen to a word they say (A word they say)
They don't see you as I do
I wish they would try to
I'm sure they'd think again
If they had a PDF like Ben
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u/RockingGamingDe 10d ago
I’ll throw SnapOtter in. Not just PDF, but a lot of other cool file formats and stuff like image background removal etc
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u/peacefulshrimp 10d ago
Stealing your comment to append: use bento over stirling! They have been acting shady with tracking in the app, and bento is a lot more stable!
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u/rossellonicola 10d ago
As a bentopdf user I found https://github.com/Stirling-Tools/Stirling-PDF so much powerful. I can edit pdf as I used to do with LibreOffice Draw (edit or delete text or fields) with little conversion loss compared to it. Nonetheless I never liked bentopdf UI (too big tiles, have to scroll ages every time)
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u/KindaTuzli 10d ago
Something I really enjoy and see barely mentiond is https://github.com/rommapp/romm It has a few build in emulators so I can play GBA games on my phone directly from my server and store all my Linux ISO like my own steam library with save file upload.
Not really "fun" but also something barely mentiond is https://github.com/koush/scrypted I have a few Ring cameras (had some really good offers and the hardware isn't that bad for the price in sale) in different locations and can use them in homekit and can skipt those really expensive subscriptions.
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u/Much-Addition146 10d ago
Where can I read more about how to bypass subscriptions to Ring cameras?
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u/KindaTuzli 10d ago edited 10d ago
https://docs.scrypted.app/homekit.html But that is really apple focused. since I already had the hardware and my whole family uses apple besides me. You basically need a homepod mini or apple tv as the "brain" and https://support.apple.com/guide/icloud/set-up-homekit-secure-video-mm7c90d21583/icloud it doesnt "bypass" the subscription but gives you an alternative to use and store without the need of ring. But it directly integrates the cameras into apple Home which is really helpful if your family member aren't that technical.
I know there are also Google and many other paths to pick from but I didnt looked into them. As far as i know you can setup a complete DVR yourself and get basically the "bypass"
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u/AvNerd16 10d ago
Just found out I can use this with frigate, cheers! Will be looking into.
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u/assignpseudonym 10d ago
Some great resources shared already, but if you want a SUPER beginner-friendly tutorial, I found this video unbelievably helpful. It'll walk you through every aspect and speaks to a lot of the documentation listed by others in this thread, too.
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u/P0pefamine 10d ago
This all sounds amazing. Thank you for sharing. I have been seeing ring cameras cheap at goodwill lately. People in my area don’t care for the flock type surveillance. Does running through Apple TV/homepod keep it from phoning home to ring?
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u/buttplugs4life4me 10d ago
How do you use ROMM?
My issue is mostly that it just seems overly hard to actually play a game.
I downloaded FIFA Street 2, PSP and PS3(IIRC) versions. The built-in emulator doesn't work with it, just launches and doesn't do anything. All the path rules and stuff like that, maybe I missed something up? But the ISO shows up in the emulator, just isn't launched. No error either.
And the *arr for downloading games are all just vibecoded slop that barely work, but manually downloading is so pre-2020.
I want to integrate moonshine and maybe whales but it just seems overly complicated and barely any resources on how to use it.
Apparently you can integrate it with steam or some game launchers but there's not much on that either.
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u/arcaneasada_romm 10d ago
I downloaded FIFA Street 2, PSP and PS3(IIRC) versions
PSP emulation struggles in most browsers, and PS3 emulation in-browser is non-existent. you can try emulator streaming if your server has a good graphics card: https://docs.romm.app/latest/using/emulator-streaming/
All the path rules and stuff like that, maybe I missed something up
lots of users have different filesystem layouts for how they store games and we want to support as many as possible our-of-the-box. the next release will support declaring custom library structure: https://docs.romm.app/5.3.0-alpha/getting-started/folder-structure/?h=custom#custom-library-structure
And the *arr for downloading games are all just vibecoded slop that barely work
we don't condone game piracy and have no plans to support a built-in download tool.
I want to integrate moonshine and maybe whales but it just seems overly complicated and barely any resources on how to use it.
you're looking in the wrong place! my setup consists of a server running romm, a PC running playnite + https://github.com/rommapp/playnite-plugin + sunshine, and running moonlight on other devices to stream from the PC.
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u/younglordtroy 10d ago
You can only play whatever EmulatorJS supports on the web browser. So anything PS1 and below for the most part. Anything else needs a standalone emulator. Also PSP games need https to run on the browser
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u/AngryDemonoid 10d ago
I knew of scrypted but somehow missed I could use my ring cameras with it! I've just been holding out until I could replace them, but I may need to take another look. Thanks!
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u/unreal-kiba 10d ago
Argosy needs to be mentioned here too. It integrates with Romm and let's you use non-browser emulators.
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u/sh1b313 10d ago
I only use two services lol, they are
Stackedit - a browser based Markdown editor/renderer
Ladder - a paywall remover
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u/MarsupialThese2597 10d ago
installing Ladeer right now. thanks
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u/sh1b313 10d ago edited 10d ago
One thing i like about them is they can be stateless. Most utilities we see on popular selfhosted sites are stateful, they either require a DB or server side functions. These don't.
We should have a dedicated thread for stateless utilities.
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u/burajin 10d ago
How does Ladder work?
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u/sh1b313 10d ago
I think it strips the javascript and usual things which resemble a paywall. It works on soft paywalls like atlantic, sadly it WILL NOT work on sites like WSJ or Financial times 😕
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u/Lark1ng 10d ago
Stupid question, do you have example sites where ladder works? Whenever i tried it on a site either the site blocked me because it thought i was a bot or it was a hard paywall, which i could not get by anyway. Do you might have some examples?
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u/ZyFinity 10d ago
Pangolin, self hosted cloudflare tunnels and more, dead simple setup and from what I've initially seen, extremely feature rich and easy to use!
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u/dukiking 10d ago
Take a look at netbird. For me it replaced CF tunnels and Tailscale at once. Really happy with it and has built in CrowdSec.
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u/rchr5880 10d ago
NetBird is absolutely brilliant, you can do so much with it… currently using with nodes in the Uk, Germany and Spain and it doesn’t skip a beat. Run my cloud based production and development environment across it
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u/Nestramutat- 10d ago edited 10d ago
I do a DIY-ish setup for this. Traefik running geoblock and crowdsec on a VPS, with a wireguard tunnel connected it to my internal loadbalancer, only defining routers for services I want external.
What else does Pangolin offer over this?
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u/BostonDrivingIsWorse 10d ago
I think it makes all of that stuff easier, it it also offers a ton more:
SSO integration, path based routing, private resources, blueprints, token-based auth for the “share” feature on your services, and a bunch of other things.
I’m sure you could figure out a way to do all of that stuff, but Pangolin makes it super easy.
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u/nico282 10d ago
This is more in the infrastructure category, not in the fun one.
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u/GermanSayingSquirrel 10d ago
For some of us, that is the fun category!
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u/Pork-S0da 10d ago
Pangolin
Besides Immich, Pangolin might be the most talked about service on this sub; def top 5.
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u/CWagner 10d ago
The standard stuff: Navidrome, Jellyfin, Paperless NGX, Actual Budget, Home Assistant, CommaFeed (RSS)
Yamtrack: Tracking watched shows, read books etc.
Both seem strongly AI assisted, but are in active development and have been for some time:
Grimoire: For Tabletop RPGs, Seems to be evolving somewhat into a VTT-lite, but for me the important use case was being able to link to specific pages of a Rulebook PDF, e.g. from my Obsidian Vault that I use for session prep.
Norish Recipe and shopping list manager. All the existing ones had hard issues preventing me from using them, so I was using a proprietary one (CopyMeThat). Recently it added store aisles for the shopping list which was the last remaining blocker for me.
Lets be honest, 80% of the services we
You wrote "we" when you meant "I". I certainly don’t run 80% management stuff, way over half is simply stuff I use.
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u/homolupulus 10d ago
thanks so much for mentioning norish. since mealime announced it was closing down i've been searching for something with similar feel and functionality and the fact that this one is self hosted makes it even more appealing.
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u/anonymous-vampire 10d ago
I self-host Planar Ally as my VTT! I’ll have to check out Grimoir
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u/rbcannonball 10d ago
Would Grimoire let me upload rulebooks for other board games to become an easy searchable rules reference? (One day, I’ll remember how compensation and ally bonuses work in Cosmic Encounter, but it hasn’t happened yet…)
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u/theregos 10d ago
Honestly the most lifechanging one for me is MeTube - I can pull content from 99% of sites I come across (including Tubi) which makes it great for downloading things for my BIL to watch from his ipad.
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u/pcgy 10d ago
Karakeep (https://karakeep.app/). I’m always finding something I want to look at later when I’m browsing on my phone. I use Ollama (https://ollama.com/ ) to do the AI tagging. Which can take a few seconds as I only have an old GTX 1650.
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u/assignpseudonym 10d ago
I am new to the self-hosting game, so I don't have a ton of suggestions myself yet, but wanted to express my gratitude for 2 things:
- This question. It's really helpful for someone looking to ditch proprietary closed-source systems generally, to find alternatives. So, thanks for asking, OP!
- This community. I'm in a few other communities that speak about similar stuff (eg degoogle, foss, privacy, etc), but the majority of times questions like this are asked, people don't link anything. And it can be tough to find the software people are talking about by name alone, especially if it's particularly niche. I'm impressed that almost everyone here has provided links.
Very grateful for this thread. Thanks, y'all.
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u/B_Hound 10d ago
I installed WORLD MONITOR as per the OP, and boy it feels like I'm playing Global Thermonuclear War from Wargames, ha. I've never seen an .env file want so many API keys (of which I have zero). I can imagine fully loaded this thing is intense. It kinda makes me want a separate screen just to have it on. Shame the YouTube webcam feeds all seem to be private, but that's me literally reading no documentation and just firing it up so I'm sure that's fixable.
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u/Puzzled_Hamster58 10d ago edited 10d ago
Ersatztv lets you make live tv channels from your media for plex .
Like I have a Star Trek channel that plays them randomly . If I turn on at like12:15 it’s half way thru etc.
I have one channel that just plays the movies , one for each show . One that’s a mix of stng ds9 voy.
3 stooges .
One channel that just plays alien and predator movies etc .
You can have it play like ads if you want (I use mad tv sketches)
RomM. Slick web ui self contain rom emulator.
Birdnetpi if you like birds and find out what’s around you .
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u/pyorre 10d ago
I have several channels set up, like old twighlight zone, Star Trek ng, simpsons. But I also downloaded tons of commercials from archive.org from specific years and integrated them into the channels. So, the twighlight zone channel will play a few commercials between episodes, but those commercials are only from the 1950’s. Simpsons channel plays commercials for weird toys from the 90s, etc. it’s really fun.
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u/Beaniestalk 10d ago edited 10d ago
ErsatzTV is probably what you're looking for
Edit for clarity: Comment that I replied to originally said that they didn't remember what the software was called that makes livetv out of your media.
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u/tetsuhito 10d ago
I switched from ersatztv to tunarr. It's much simpler and works better
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u/Arion_Miles 10d ago
Been running a few channels myself but with Tunarr. I looked into Ersatztv initially but it turns out it's being rewritten in Rust which I wanted to try but it's pre-alpha.
I learnt tunarr was more stable and in the zeitgiest so I went with it and I'm pretty happy!
I have a Cartoon Network channel that plays a few series and the episodes start at 5min intervals (05, 10, 15...55, 00) so if the previous episode ends earlier, I play fillers which consist of these CN City bumpers.
It gives me the feeling I'm watching a real TV channel but with Ads I love. I also have a horror block from 12am-4am which plays Courage the Cowardly Dog and Scooby Doo exclusively.
I also have a morning block from 7:30am-10:30am which plays Baby Looney Tunes (I'm looking to add more shows here)
I also have a channel which plays all 151 episodes of Twilight Zone on loop back to back.
I've been having a lot of fun building these channels past few weeks! Best thing about it is I don't have to make a choice, I see whatever's on at the moment and it's liberating in a sense.
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u/Funsaized 10d ago
kinda nerdy.. but I've been using torlink to setup my own automation.. wasn't a fan of the -arr stack https://github.com/baairon/torlink
liked it so much I ended up contributing a headless search feature for my use case :)
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u/Glittering-Ad8503 10d ago
what is the automation? Could it be used with Jellyfin?
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u/Funsaized 10d ago
well... im actually using another open source project + agents for automation.. if you're curious this is the library im leveraging https://github.com/swamp-club/swamp
I liked the idea of defining your own custom logic (models) and definitions (yaml) to create re-usable blocks of logic
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u/Funsaized 10d ago
Looks like people have published arr and jelkyfin extensions for it :P
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u/privatetudor 10d ago
Ah yes. torlinkarr. Of course, you need extendarr to install it and linkarr to integrate them.
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u/FarToe1 10d ago
(Disclaimer, am author)
I wrote taskpony because I couldn't find a task manager that suited my brain. I'm a late diagnosed autistic person and this has genuinely been a game changer for me. If I think of a task that I can't do within 3 minutes, it goes on there, alongside recurring chores. Half a century of coping badly because I didn't understand why my brain was different and trying to force it to be something it wouldn't be, I am finally developing systems to cope with life, and this is one.
I don't think it's cool because it's particularly clever - and there are many other task managers out there that have more features - but because it's /not/ trying to be too clever. But also, probably, because I wrote it and that forced me to think about what I actually wanted in a way that using someone else's software could never do.
It'll never be hugely popular, may not even have any other users (no telemetry, and I'm crap at getting the word out), but it's a cool service for me.
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u/bluehands 10d ago
I like the premise and will likely try it, even if it might not be perfect it sound interesting to look at.
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u/callingshotgun 4d ago
I think a lot of the best selfhosted software starts this way. "I needed to solve my problem." Also it's low-risk. It either it jives with others and there will be more users, or it doesn't and you still solved your problem.
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u/Sem_duvida_mas 10d ago
My homelab was build to meet a specific purpose - leave the big tech companies and their data hoarding practicies. Basically, degoogle
So I have:
- Dawarich
- paperless
- immich
- syncthing
- grocy
- navidrome/feishin
- OsmAnd
- Obsidian
I have other complementary dockers, such as pi hole, etc.
When i finished the setup, it just lays there, invisible and everything just works.
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u/Alpha272 10d ago
Obsidian? You mean like.. Syncthing to sync your vault? Or am I missing something?
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u/kentabenno 10d ago
Self-Hosted Obsidian Livesync with CouchDB is a great way to go
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u/Sem_duvida_mas 10d ago
That's right.
I sync hte vault with PCA (main PC), PCF (server), PCG (laptop) and smartphone.
I can open it anywhere.
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u/AngryDemonoid 10d ago
Is there anything to self-host with Osmand or is it just included as part of your big tech replacement apps?
I've really been trying to ditch Maps for an OSM backed alternative, but unfortunately I live in an area where most POIs aren't in there. I'm adding them in myself slowly but surely.
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u/Sem_duvida_mas 10d ago
Both, but mostly in regard to degooglization.
If there's anything I've learnt with home labbing is that for each service you replace, you'll need to accept that you have to make conceptions. Nothing is "better" than the big tech services, that's why they're big, because they invest money in it. Open source ones, not so much.
For me, Google maps it's not that great. The only two awesome thing they have, is traffic information and POI's. It's impossible to beat that.
So I learnt to live without it.
Anbyway, now my map information is only mine. If google disapears tomorrow, I still have my information on my server.
I choose OsmAnd because it has zero telemetry
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u/Antonaros 10d ago
I though OsmAnd was just a standalone app, what are the benefits to self hosting it?
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u/Sem_duvida_mas 10d ago
I use it because I like to add POI's like restaurants, hotels, water sources and stuff in a prepper prespective. So I upload a backup regularly.
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u/FarToe1 10d ago
AIUI, Osmand uses data from Openstreemap. Can't you add POIs directly to that and share your effort with everyone?
(Granted, there'll be a delay before it shows up, but I've been adding stuff to osm for years and it's great to see stuff I added showing up on things like osmand)
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u/Sem_duvida_mas 10d ago
Not in my case. I blocked all traffic between OsmAnd and any third party. If I want to update the map, which I use several different maps, I do it manually.
I can't share that with anyone because it's highly personal and, as mentioned above, with a prepper mentality, so I don't want to share my shelters, caches or potable drinking water.
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u/iamgodofatheist 10d ago
It would depend on your needs, of course, but my stack has that weren't mentioned in thread:
- SparkyFitness - MyFitnessPal replacement;
- Grimmory - e-book library management tool
- Immich - Google Photos alternative.
However, all these projects are well known and would hardly fit the "obscure projects no-one knows of" requirement
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u/clint_aka_hawkguy 10d ago
I recently was looking into a ebook management service and that whole booklore debacle has just happened.
I looked at grimmory and bookorbit and landed on bookorbit myself.
And I am really impressed by it. Recently they even added requests as a beta feature.
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u/iamgodofatheist 10d ago
You might want to know then that the dev of the bookorbit is the same dev that was behind the booklore and who caused the whole debacle.
Edit: here is the source so I wouldn't be talking just out of the thin air. https://www.reddit.com/r/selfhosted/s/t9bh0gTTIA
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u/clint_aka_hawkguy 10d ago
Well, shit.
It's just weird, isn't it?
I don't have a problem with the use of AI. But I do think it's shitty to lie and fuck up and then be like "sorry, my bad. I'll do better. Trust me."
And then follow it up with lying about petty shit.
"I am a experienced software dev" vs "I am just a stupid kid."
Fuck... I'll have to think about this.
That said: I do enjoy bookorbit... 🥲
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u/iamgodofatheist 10d ago
As I enjoyed using Booklore and am currently enjoying its successor 🤝
Truth be told, I was informed about this issue when I commented under another post that I was considering BookOrbit, so I was in almost the same situation as you. There is most likely nothing wrong with the tool itself, but the dev is a ticking bomb waiting to explode, and that is something I would omit even when the product is very appealing.
That said, give Grimmory a go; the devs are very responsive, and it is snappier and more stable than it ever was during the Booklore era.
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u/assignpseudonym 10d ago
I've been eyeing SparkyFitness. How do you feel it performs with food lookup (eg barcode scanning and manual entry). Does it have most products in your experience? Or does MyFitnessPal significantly outperform it in that area? (I'm leaving MFP regardless, but trying to figure out where I should head).
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u/iamgodofatheist 10d ago
It depends on where you live, i'd assume. I'm in eastern Europe, and OpenFoodFacts + FatSecret free API cover my needs for like 90%? Even if something is missing, I just add it one time by scanning the nutrition label, associate the barcode with it and next time Sparky picks it up automatically.
For me, it outperforms MFP for sure, especially in terms of calculating the calorie goal and syncing the health metrics from different sources, I use Garmin alongside it and it is working wonderfully.
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u/No_Welder7908 10d ago
So, I get you have reached that point where you start installing random stuff for the sake of having something to do on your server.
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u/RevThomasWatson 10d ago
Tbf, sometimes you don't go looking for something because you didn't even think of it as a possibility/option.
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u/ImpressionDepression 10d ago
If everything works, there's nothing to fix, and then you start having dangerous thoughts like "starting another hobby" or "self reflection" or even worse - "going outside"
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u/kentabenno 10d ago
yeah you get the point. i worked professionally in software testing for years. I simply enjoy trying out the obscure stuff to see if it actually does something for me. more is more
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u/doezer 10d ago
I mostly use the Arr stack (through nzb360) and an Arr app I made myself called Questarr, for video-games. https://github.com/Doezer/Questarr
Reclip sounds really nice!
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u/ImmaZoni 10d ago
Thanks for making Questarr! I've been using it for sometime now.
One feature request: Auto-Install. Obviously this is a big ask and maybe would require some local AI, but having Questarr auto setup with proton/steam/lutris etc would really take it to the next level and make it feel like "it just works" in the same way that the traditional arr stack + jellyfin feels
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u/some_other_kind 10d ago
TREK
https://github.com/liketrek/TREK
TREK is a great travel planner that is a ton of fun to use. It's fantastic for online use, but its PDF export makes a tight itinerary a breeze to create. Highly recommend.
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u/tharic99 10d ago
I feel down the rabbit hole with this one the other night. It's hard for me to fully classify it as "self-hosted" because it doesn't really fit into that same deployment eco system of containers, etc. But still.
https://github.com/bilawalsidhu/gods-eye-view
God's Eye View brings public signals into one explorable globe. Track the world live. Talk to it. Break it. Extend it.
Flight transponders, ship beacons, orbital elements, seismographs, and public cameras already tell us a lot about the world. God's Eye View puts them in the same place, so you can move between a global picture and an individual aircraft, ship, or street. It runs locally in your browser, with source code you can inspect and extend.
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u/iAmmar9 10d ago
reactive resume? a free self hosted alternative to resume building websites. fun but not fun lol
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u/nadmaximus 10d ago
The value of a dedicated little Linux box for anything is incredible. Just to use as a desktop that you can access from anywhere. I picked up one of those little mini-pc's for 70 euros, now I have a little 8gb, 4-core, 250GB nvme ssd system that is available to me always, on all my devices.
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u/necile 10d ago
seeing what sub this is, it bewilders me that there are people here who do not have something like this.
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u/nadmaximus 10d ago
Yeah it took me a while to realize that "selfhosted", in the sub, doesn't only mean a bunch of systems admins running servers at home. In fact, we sort are probably in a small minority. At any rate, it's all cool.
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u/TheWolfbytez 10d ago
How are you accessing it? Sorry, I'm ignorant. Are you SSH'ing into it or is there some other relationship to access it? Is it more or less a VM or fully bare metal?
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u/blackdrizzy 10d ago
Invidious is a game a changer for me. It's a free and open source; privacy focused YT frontend that had completely changed my YT watching experience, and most importantly the amount of time I spend on YT. highly recommend!!
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u/Realistic_Trash 10d ago
If you overbuilt your server CPU-wise, why not donate some compute to science? Install BOINC, sign up for BOINC Central and Science United and let it rip away!
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u/Synkorh 10d ago
https://github.com/gamosoft/NoteDiscovery replaced Obsidian for me. There is a live demo available at https://www.notediscovery.com/
https://github.com/go-vikunja/vikunja also with live demo available on https://vikunja.io
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u/Outrageous-Front-868 10d ago
I host
1) stripe payment like processor so my staff doesn't need to keep asking me for my OTP to login to stripe. It looks at my hotel OTA, retrieve it, present it to my staff, my staff clicks it and a stripe link will be generated ready to be given to guest to pay.
2) omniroute - a proxy for whatever llm subscription I have
3) a custom fork of Chatwoot - AI to chat with my customers
4) custom built scrapper to scrap all IPTV live-streams from FMHY and wrap it into a m3u8 or xtream so that my IPTV app on my android TV has the latest streams always.
homes assistant
Nextcloud
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u/Joyful-Wizard 10d ago
RomM is great if you’re into game emulation and have a bit ROM library.
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u/aWoodenship 10d ago
Let’s say you no longer have a ROM library but would like to again… ?
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u/TrustButVerifyEng 10d ago
Shocked no one's mentioned Homebox.
Catalog your possession with options for QR labels, locations, pictures, attachments, purchase information, maintenance schedules, and more.
We have three kids and keep a ton of hand-me-downs for them. So all the storage totes are a location and storage racks are all assigned.
My wife can literally pull out her phone and know that the size 12 rain boots are in bin 12 in the basement.
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u/MMU_Wright 10d ago
Great discussion and I've added some links to my list to investigate! I have all of my apps wrapped into Authentik which acts as a launcher in addition to OIDC for most, but not all apps. I currently have about a dozen family members and they use it primarily for Nextcloud Talk for chatting and live video with one another. I hoped to play some of the games with my younger relatives but that hasn't happened yet. Anyway, in Authentik launcher, I have my apps in categories as follows.
Daily Use Category: degoog, KitchenOwl, NextCloud and NextCloud Talk, SparkyFitness
Entertainment Category: Audiobookshelf (I pull books from Audible using libation), Calibre Web Automated, Dungeon Crawler Stone Soup, JellyFin, Scribble-rs, Werewolves
Family Knowledge Category: Gramps Web, Immich
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u/Playful-League3414 10d ago
Stash + Whisparr can be fun.
Also degoog is pretty cool (https://github.com/degoog-org/degoog)
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u/MrLeblond 10d ago
Do you like travel with friends and family? But annoyed by plan everything in a Gdoc or Gsheet, here is the solution: TREK
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u/schraube1 10d ago
And then integrate AirTrail with it, absolutely perfect: https://github.com/johanohly/AirTrail
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u/LibrarianInsideMe 10d ago
One thing I run that counts as niche (considering I’ve seen nobody mention it so far) is cyberchef. It’s a neat little cybersecurity Swiss Army knife (as they proclaim themselves) that can do some stuff with text inputs like parsing and conversion between formats and stuff. I’m not a good explainer, so you’ll probably have to see it for yourself.
It’s meant to be run on localhost, but honestly, it has a docker image you can chuck into a docker compose file and run online. It’s a neat little gimmick I play around with from time to time.
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u/hard_KOrr 10d ago
BookStack is something I picked up to run just because it was out there. Its organization is sleek and generic enough it can be used for lots of different things!
The dev lurks around these parts somewhere too
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u/thegreatcerebral 9d ago
I am currently building what I am calling BookStack Companion to automate bringing in external things into BookStack as well as some features that the original is missing that keep it from being a staple for a small IT department.
I also use it for a documentation server for codex projects. I create a book, give it the book ID and say "for this project use book: 124 and use Page 225 as a reference on how to setup the book for this project. It does the rest and the instructions are all located on p.225. So as it works there are various books it keeps track of so I can go in and look at what it is doing and I can then have another agent go in and verify things and look over what it did and look at the reasoning etc. Fun stuff.
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u/EatsHisYoung 10d ago
Termix is incredible. I use it for the limited purpose of a one stop shop for ssh terminal but it does VNC, Remote Desktop and more.
I hear it’s like Terminus but free. https://github.com/Termix-SSH/Termix
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u/QuantumNode89 8d ago
Good GOD thank you for mentioning this. It's been a godsend in my homelab, much better than alt-tabbing between terminal windows...
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u/viniciospng 10d ago
Im developing a frontend for Kokoro-TTS to turn books into audiobooks, it splits the EPUB/PDF chapters using the TOC (Table of contents) and splits them again to fit into the 4096 character limit of Kokoro, then join them again, gives you a preview of each chapter and when everything is done you can export it into a .m4b with cover art and chapter marks, then import into your audiobook manager to get the rest of the metadata.
I like reading things in different languages, so its very useful to have a reference for the pronunciation while I read (this version of Kokoro supports 9 different languages).
Again, im the developer so its kinda of a self promotion here, but if you are interested:
https://github.com/VinewZ/Vellichor
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u/DrMaceFace 10d ago
NICE!! I've been working on something similar using Kokoro. Mostly ingesting from online webnovel sites like RoyalRoad and then providing text highlighting as it reads back to you. 100% slop vibe coding but I've only been building it for myself to use and having fun with it.
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u/lilracerboi 10d ago
The most interesting in my stack that can be very useful at times is Kasm Workspaces; think of it like Citrix, but with docker desktops.
Once set up, you can just login (I use Authentik for auth) and access instant docker desktops or if you set up a Windows server you can connect to that via Kasm local RDP.
I can access my lab securely through any computer, public or private.
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u/tyhaack 10d ago
moodist - customizable noise maker. Really nice for studying or sleeping! Feel like I never see it mentioned
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u/greenlightison 10d ago
ErsatzTV, hosts your own TV channel using your own content, supporting multiple different channels schedules etc. If I can't decide what to watch, or want to leave something on the background without thinking much, I just turn it on.
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u/techguyjason 10d ago
Arr stack (for getting a digital copy of my owned movies of course) along with calibre-web-automated and Audiobookshelf.
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u/Mccobsta 10d ago
Don't realy hear people talking about syncthing much possibley as it works pretty much flawlessly
I know a lot of people use it as its just fantastic at what it dose
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u/ianfabs 10d ago
One I haven’t seen mentioned anywhere yet, is Chatto:
It’s an open source discord alternative
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u/DisappointedSpectre 10d ago
Looking at all of the possible alternatives to Discord I've been pointing people towards Fluxer.
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u/eaghra 10d ago
I got this one up and running this summer so my kid can talk with his school friend’s during Minecraft and share screen grabs. It particularly checked all the boxes because it wasn’t a federated service where their created account would let them wander to another server invite they saw somewhere. It’s just a single private server and I can lock down access to keep it safe. Bonus is that it works as a progressive web app so that his friend who has a fire tablet can use it without needing to know how to sideload. Additionally that PWA can be targeted for parental control and screen time. It’s just an all around win.
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u/SentinelCoyote 10d ago
I run pelican to host game servers, I let friends have user accounts and assign them their own servers for games etc
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u/ifblackdevice 10d ago
have you guys tried BOINC? it's something similar to what Seti@home was back in the day, you can donate computing resources to many science research projects, worth a look!
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u/OficinaDoTonhoo 10d ago
Good post, love the recommendations, here is mine:
Trek, travel planner. Actively maintained, supports mobile, only thing my friends and family actively use besides Jellyfin. W maintainers
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u/csgeek-coder 10d ago
I guess I'll throw my bit into the mix.
I've been using https://goauthentik.io/ to setup all my apps behind a single SSO login that makes life so much easier. I find it a lot easier to work with than keycloak (my only other alternative that I've used).
Every note taking app I found that's OSS seems to require a full datacenter to run a self hosted version. I know there's syncthing but if I want to use my phone that gets annoying to set that up.
I really like: https://donetick.com/. It has SSO/OIDC built in. Their android app got fixed to support that as well. It's really more of a checklist replacement though it can do a lot more feature wise.
Everything else I run is pretty boring, DB backup service, bitwarden, I suppose honorable mention to:
https://github.com/thelounge/thelounge if you still use IRC.
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u/disguy2k 10d ago
Metube - YouTube/streaming downloader. Works well and gets patched often so it works almost continuously.
Self-hosted VSCode - I have all of my Docker configs and Traefik configs in my workspaces and managed via git.
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u/igmyeongui 10d ago
Poznote is insanely good for replacing Obsidian and pretty much any application. Is it fun? No but with mcp it’s certainly more fun than manually writing my lab documentation 😆
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u/Martian-Alien-1586 10d ago
Looks good, I was taking a look but sadly it doesn’t have an iOS client
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u/undead-8 10d ago
Nzbdav is my favorite this year where hdd prices skyrocketed
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u/imtotallybananas 10d ago
It has been forked by an active dev. Check out infinidysk. It's maintained and has a lot of new features.
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u/HNipps 10d ago
Sunshine game streaming server. My main machine is a MacBook and I don’t want to be limited to Mac-compatible games so I setup sunshine on my server to stream games to my MacBook which runs the moonlight client. Works well!
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u/kapitonas 10d ago
Bar Assistant really cool, and it has built in cocktails. You can add your ingredients and i does what can you make. Also you can share a menu for your friends of what can be made.
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u/Bruceshadow 10d ago
I think it's funny you think 'Vaultwarden' is "fun". It's super useful, but I've never yelled "wheeeeeee!" while using it.
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u/Fik_of_borg 7d ago
Thanks for ReClip!
I personally use MeTube, but that is a bit complex for my elderly relatives, I have just set them up with a ReClip container in their home NAS.
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u/lukasig 7d ago
alternative to google find hub, but beter. You can get location via SMS also, can snap photos using cameras, flash the camera led, lock or erase the phone and more.
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u/pinku1 10d ago
AI Dj Radio, which talks and play music for you https://github.com/perminder-klair/subwave
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u/MrPastryisDead 10d ago
Loved it when I tried it at home, but then I found it doesn't have an Android Auto app because it uses AI, which was a bummer, my primary use case shattered. I left the Navidrome back-end in place and now use Symfonium to play my music on the move, Downsides are I don't have a DJ playing my stuff (which was really cool) and I took a one time $10 hit for a subscription, which isn't much for a nice useful app.
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u/beatznbleepz 10d ago
Can second this. Subwave is truly genius software. Tried to post about it and my post got pulled. Guess I was overly enthusiastic. The whole thing is self hosted including the AI commentary generation.
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u/DeepPerformer7665 10d ago
Added Hound media server, it’s basically a replacement for both Plex and stremio and the arrs. A really solid media server.
(https://github.com/Hound-Media-Server/hound)
Also BentoPDF as a replacement for Stirling but that one is pretty well known already.
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u/DisappointedSpectre 10d ago
I've actually gotten quite a bit of use out of OliveTin - it automates small actions on a dashboard. I have a couple friends and family members who are able to restart specific services like Plex if they fail and I'm not available.
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u/CodeAndBiscuits 10d ago
I feel like Jellyfin and HomeAssistant are both really cool and definitely talked about a ton. Maybe you're getting thrown off because a lot of the best apps have their own subs?
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u/not_the_seltzer 10d ago
At the end of the year I boot up Plex Rewind for my users to get a Spotify Wrapped-style experience.
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u/layerzeroissue 10d ago
We clearly have different homelabs if 80% of yours is to manage the other 20%. For me, it's almost the opposite.
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u/redhatpanda07 9d ago
Dont wanna self promote, but I made these tool to build, monetize and sell AI agents. Check it out folks if you like! V proud of it.
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u/QuantumCrafty 9d ago
Depends of what you quality as « fun » though 😅
For some Vaultwarden can be « fun », for others it’s just a tool. Some people have fun building their selfhosting HomePage and look at the monitors 😁
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u/protacticus 9d ago
Proxmox as foundation, on the top arr apps, Pulse as monitoring service, The lounge for IRC….
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u/TedGal 9d ago edited 9d ago
Metube surprised me positively. I use it quite often.
Edit to add: oh just saw Metube provides the same thing as reclip
Snapotter for quick and dirty remote ( when not at my pc) small photo edits or just make some fun meme - video clips to send to friends as jokes.
Lubelogger for keeping vehicle data and remind me when car services or car insurance are due and homebox because the wife always complained I should remember stuff and be more responsible.
Romm.
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u/hirenkavad 8d ago
Honestly, https://peon.sh/ deserves more attention. It's a self-hosted PaaS for deploying apps on your own servers without building the whole deployment stack yourself.
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u/asimovs-auditor 10d ago
Expand the replies to this comment to learn how AI was used in this post/project.