this post was submitted on 10 Dec 2025
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Selfhosted

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Fun/interesting things to self host? (lemmy.world)
submitted 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) by halloween_spookster@lemmy.world to c/selfhosted@lemmy.world
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What things do you self host (or know about) that are fun/interesting/useful to you? I'm thinking of setting up a home server and am looking for things that would be useful or fun for me to run on it. I want to host things that are useful/fun, but not a project itself (I've got enough projects), if that makes sense.

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

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

Edit: thank you everyone for your awesome responses!

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[–] JadedBlueEyes@programming.dev 9 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (2 children)

Here are some of the things I self host that I haven't seen mentioned:

  • Continuwuity is a chat server that talks Matrix, so you can join the chat rooms of a lot of open source projects or make end to end encrypted private chats
  • Forgejo is a self-hosted code forge (github alternative) - very useful
  • FreshRSS is a good one if you like to follow blogs, newsletters or pretty much anything 'news'
  • Grafana plus VictoriaMetrics and/or Quickwit is very useful for keeping track of the health of all your services
  • Homepage is a... homepage for all your services
  • Stalwart gives you a mail server. Set it up for any other projects that need to send mail, or as a backup for your emails, contacts or calendars - it's the easiest way to set that up self hosted. Making it suitable as your main email may need more effort (delivery).
  • Related to Continuwuity / matrix, you can set up the Mautrix collection of bridges, which let you bridge Discord, WhatsApp, IRC, telegram, and more into your matrix account or chats seamlessly.
  • LMS (lightweight Media Server, not to be confused with Logitech Media Server) is an alternative to Navidrome that I find works better with my library tagging and ListenBrainz
  • Speakr - audio transcription with diarisation. Very useful if you like to record meetings.
[–] Electricd@lemmybefree.net 1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Don’t know about stalwart but I can personally recommend mailcow

[–] arcayne@lemmy.today 1 points 6 months ago

I used Mailcow for a while before switching to Stalwart out of curiosity. Stalwart was a bit easier to deploy and feels more polished than Mailcow, but they both get the job done.

[–] Electricd@lemmybefree.net 1 points 6 months ago

Speakr looks amazing! Thanks