this post was submitted on 27 Jul 2026

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144

What's your favourite thing to self host and why? (aussie.zone)

submitted 20 hours ago* (last edited 19 hours ago) by SuspiciousCarrot78@aussie.zone to c/selfhosted@lemmy.world

104 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Topic per title, basically.

For me: after setting up all the integrations and fall overs using the arr stack and Jellyfin (inc Sabnzdb etc)... I keep circling back to Nova video player.

https://github.com/nova-video-player/aos-AVP/releases

It's arguably not even self hosting...but there something undeniably cool about sticking a USB stick into a router, installing a single app on your TV and boom, done. EDIT: of course, it can consume the *arr stack, integrate with Ombi etc

IOW, I really like stuff that simple to set up and punches above its weight class.

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[–] __hetz@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 hour ago

Don't know if I can pick a favorite but I'm often the most happy when I'm actively using Homebox and LubeLogger. I track my tools with the former and track service records, parts inventory, mileage and such with the latter. If I'm using those services extensively it's because I'm wrenching on something and adding more RockAuto magnets to my collection. Even when the circumstances suck, I genuinely enjoy an opportunity to take things apart, tinker and repair them.

No longer directly related to self hosting

I like busting out the jack and stands, reefing on a breaker bar, field repairs that succeed in getting out of a bind without waiting 2 hours for a tow bill in the hundreds of dollars, then making it home safely and doing it the right way, meticulously cleaning gasket surfaces...

It's zen for me and I don't know why. The same reason I enjoy stripping down a firearm and cleaning it more than the day at the range leading up to that point. Or why I'll go through the trouble of disassembling a $30 tower fan to extract every bit of dust and pet hair that has found it's way trapped inside. I couldn't pay someone else to do that for less than the damn thing costs... I just know that I can do it and feel compelled to. I might be an overgrown gnome.

I've got the family's vehicles in LubeLogger, having become the mechanic for anything short of transmission problems or requiring welding or a machine shop. The riding mower is in there too just because. It's never often enough and I'm tempted to find a bike or an old beater I can tune up just to have a project that doesn't have me sitting at the keyboard.

[–] undefinedTruth@lemmy.zip 5 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

If I had to only pick one that is by far Home Assistant.

[–] lka1988@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 hour ago* (last edited 1 hour ago) (1 children)

100%. Home Assistant has proven to be incredibly useful in my house. My wife loves it for the laundry notifications, the fact that I essentially replaced Life360 with it (Traccar, really, but it ties into HA so nicely), and the automated lighting: our basement (the younger kids' play area), and themed lighting for the outdoor lights.

We've been fighting tangled toilet flapper chains over the last few years. The tangled chain keeps the flapper from closing, which causes the tank to continuously run into the bowl, which causes my water bill to skyrocket if gone unnoticed (we have 5 kids, 4 toilets, and the chains get tangled no matter what I do: new chain, longer chain, shorter chain, different type of chain/string/twine, etc... I blame the hard water). I finally got fed up, so I bought and installed a zigbee water level sensor for each toilet tank, then whipped up an automation which notifies us via Android's "alarm_stream" notification channel if a sensor has been dry for longer than a few minutes. That channel overrides DND, and I am going to add an entry to ping my HA Voice thing as well in case we don't have our phones on us.

[–] CmdrShepard49@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 hour ago

You should really up your game and buy some ESPs and servo motors to jiggle the toilet handles when the toilets are running.

[–] xthexder@l.sw0.com 1 points 4 hours ago

Selfhosting Lemmy has been surprisingly nice

[–] Reannlegge@lemmy.ca 2 points 5 hours ago

I was going to come in and say pihole, hands down as it got me into home labbing. But then I got reading some of the responses and my thoughts changed to Home Assistant because I can automate so much. An app that I had purchased to help me stay on top of my medications decided to go subscription so I was able to use HA to set up reminders to take my drugs go off on my watch which I would turn into reminders to do so much more. Than I thought Docker, because it is so much easier to install things with docker. Than I thought OpenWRT because I now have a real firewall that I can do so much more with than my ISPs dinky little thing. I was almost ready to reply when I read your question over again and I saw you mention the *arr stack and Jellyfin, which got me thinking how much I love that. Which reminded me of someone saying immich. I have to go for some blood letting today so I keep my blood req in paperless. I self host nextcloud and that is one thing I am looking at finding alternatives to but all that being said picking one is like picking a favourite family member, sure some you may like more than others but you are never going to tell which one.

[–] communism@lemmy.ml 6 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

Email's probably the most satisfying. I learnt a lot in setting up my own email server, and it's nice being in complete control (well, of my end of things at least, ofc not of the other person's end) of such an essential service.

[–] weps@lemmy.world 8 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

Damn, never heard anyone enjoy hosting e-mail servers

that's crazy though

[–] irmadlad@lemmy.world 1 points 5 hours ago

There are some decent packages out there like MailCow, Mailu, there's another one for Docker, but it escapes me. I've tried, and failed. From what I understand, it takes a level of dedication.

[–] amorpheus@lemmy.world 5 points 8 hours ago

Plex. Right now we're on vacation and can chill out with our current shows before bedtime, watching on the TV of the relative hosting us. No fuss. Aside from Movies and TV Series it also holds my music collection, Plexamp is awesome.

I've not gotten very deep into selfhosting due to priorities and time but I look forward to trying Immich as well as Home Assistant in the future.

[–] lemonuri@infosec.pub 6 points 10 hours ago (2 children)

I still love getting messages via xmpp from friends and family using my own snikket/ejabberd instances after years of use. Calls as well.

Video conferences via jitsi meet fill my heart with joy since the covid epidemic. These are also xmpp based. It's just a cool lightweight protocol.

[–] motruck@lemmy.zip 5 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

XMPP is nice but even with all of the quality of life extensions it definitely feels clunky. I tried switching to it recently from matrix and while matrix leaves a lot to be desired I found it was more useful in its current form than XMPP.

[–] unitedwithme@lemmy.today 1 points 6 hours ago

I use a jmp.chat # w Snikket server on Cheogram. Calls handling through native dialer. Works pretty well minus kicking off group chats with mixed users.

[–] unitedwithme@lemmy.today 1 points 6 hours ago

I wish Snikket could work on Yunohost! 😢 I have a core i5-10500T and 32GB RAM Ynh server with planty of resources to spare. Would be nice!

[–] Surp@lemmy.world 8 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

Game servers that my friends can enjoy

[–] motruck@lemmy.zip 6 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

Which ones get he most play?

[–] Surp@lemmy.world 3 points 6 hours ago

Whatever is the most popular at the time of the games release or update. Valheim/terraria/Minecraft/satisfactory/palworld to name a few.

[–] arisunz@lemmy.blahaj.zone 6 points 10 hours ago (3 children)

My own art gallery. Started feeling the ick about posting on social media and just moved everything to my own hand-coded home page in Lustre. Feels nice to have a little space that's just mine.

It ain't much, but I'm also pretty proud of my Forgejo+actions setup. Pushing a commit and seeing my services update, knowing it's all happening on "my" (VPS, but still) infra gives me such a warm fuzzy feeling.

[–] irmadlad@lemmy.world 2 points 6 hours ago

My own art gallery

What kind of art? Do you paint, create pottery, etc. My lady friend is a self taught painter, and does some mind blowing stuff. Hell, I can't even put paint on a wall or draw stick figures. LOL She tells me I am biased, but I respond that I know good art when I see it. I always wanted to get into pottery. That seems like it would be super cool.

[–] drkt@scribe.disroot.org 4 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

Same!! I don't trust other sites to preserve my photography indefinitely, and definitely not in the quality I want, so I built this from scratch https://p.drkt.eu/ and it's just sitting on a box in my living room. Feels nice to watch the traffic tick by in the logs :)

[–] irmadlad@lemmy.world 1 points 6 hours ago

This is your photography? Man that's good stuff. I like this one a lot. It appeals to me.. I also see you too like exploring abandoned structures.

[–] EonNShadow@pawb.social 3 points 8 hours ago

PiHole on old laptops started the journey for me

Now I've got all sorts of things, most visible are Plex and Audiobookshelf. The most useful to me personally is Headscale for what at I assume are obvious reasons.

I'd like to use Matrix more but that requires some buy-in from friends.

I ostensibly use this as a means of continued education for myself, but really it's because I enjoy using/learning about open-source software and creating my own ecosystem outside of "big tech"

I've got it all set up in a way that really works for me, which is all that really matters in the end.

[–] BruisedMoose@piefed.social 20 points 13 hours ago (2 children)

Navidrome for me. I have a physical collection of around 2000 albums across CD, vinyl, and cassette, plus a lot of digitally only purchases over the years. Finally getting it all on my own server and being able to just tap a button to shuffle the entire collection is just about everything I ever wanted.

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[–] Flamekebab@piefed.social 38 points 15 hours ago (2 children)

I love Immich. I've pulled in all my photos going back to high school in the early 2000s and it's so awesome having a timeline of them.

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[–] Tiger_Man_@szmer.info 3 points 9 hours ago

sftp, few of my friends have access to a shared directory where we upload random stuff

[–] pigup@lemmy.world 10 points 12 hours ago

OpenWRT, pihole, immich are among the most well-functioning powerful and clean pieces of software I have ever used. They just work.

[–] remon@ani.social 13 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

Definitely Plex, it's pretty much the entire reason I'm self hosting in the first place!

Haven't watched or listened to any mainstream media in another way for years and it also gets plenty of usage from other people.

[–] thakur0@lemmy.zip 6 points 12 hours ago (5 children)

I think jellyfin is better, isn't it?

[–] remon@ani.social 6 points 11 hours ago* (last edited 11 hours ago) (2 children)

Jellyfin is free and open-source, which is why it is very popular with the lemmy crowd. But unless you value those two aspects extremely high, it's not better.

[–] foggy@lemmy.world 6 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

Yeah anyone who bought a lifetime Plex pass back when it was very reasonably priced is left looking at the jellyfin/Plex debate a bit crosseyed.

If you don't have a lifetime pass, and need to cut costs, go jellyfin. Otherwise, I choose Plex.

[–] Passerby6497@lemmy.world 6 points 9 hours ago

Lifetime plex holder here, haven't installed plex since the third time my server shit the bed and it couldn't recover. Jellyfin has never had an issue with hardware failures. It also doesn't try to advertise random shit to me that I'm not interested in, so there's that too.

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