I am setting up my NAS right now, and I need some suggestions for apps that I can run on my NAS or self-host.
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I have seen some online articles, but they are too confusing because they list too many apps for each category.
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I want backup apps for iOS, Android, Mac and Windows. (It would be great if they could back up automatically).
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I want to sync my calendars and contacts.
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I want to download media like TV shows and movies. (And music, too). “Of course, only legal obtained from the internet cough.”
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I want apps that let me access my data from anywhere.
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I saw this cool thing where you could use a Raspberry Pi to access your NAS bios from your PC.
Os - Unraid
There are some different way you can achieve many of these. There are like the cloud collaboration suits, and syncthing way
I want to sync my calendars and contacts
For this you can have something like nextcloud or it’s alternatives, or syncthing with decsync, or a separate caldav service
I want to download media like TV shows and movies. (And music, too). “Of course, only legal obtained from the internet cough.”
I personally use jellyfin + transmission. I’m still trying to set up *arr suite, but it’s not working, then I could use something like jellyseer. But transmission is working well anyway
I have a working setup with Jellyfin, Sonarr, Radarr and Jellyseer that downloads from torrents and usenet. Works quite well.
Ugh, Nextcloud. It is always touted but it is such a pain to set up properly, and then it is slow as molasses.
I’ve tried, and I’ve tried the similar suite from Synology, but in the end always come back to the Google system - much as I hate to admit it, Google “just works”.
Ugh, Nextcloud. It is always touted but it is such a pain to set up properly,
The problem is mainly maintenance - they do YOLO style database handling, so you can’t miss any release or you have fun upgrading. Plus you need to kick it after installing to upgrade the databases.
Other services (like SoGO) have proper upgrade scripts, and automatically adjust the database schema from pretty much any version on first start after upgrading.
Nextcloud is literally “Jack of all trades, master of none”. It tries to do EVERYTHING, and it fails to be even decent in most of these things…
I actually like it, i’m using deck, cospend, share folders, manage some projects, send other people shares
For me it feels perfect, I don’t need to manage different services and know them in depth
Other people just need to create one account and we can do all the stuff by using our names, you know
For me nextcloud “just works”
For me google isn’t “just works”. Very few functions in the ui, pretty slow
I use nixos, so configuration for me is not that painful. And every version it becomes faster and faster, and right now it’s pretty fast
I would avoid self-hosting backups at the same location where your devices are currently kept. There is a reason off-site backups are a thing. So many failure causes are shared with devices in the same home, from electrical issues (lightning and technical defects among other things) over water and fire damage to theft.
That being said: backing up to a single, central, local location and then syncing those backups to some offsite location can actually be very efficient (and avoids having to spread the credentials for whatever off-site storage you use to multiple devices).
I’d say it’s about designing a good strategy. I have local backups on my NAS and a nightly incremental backup to cloud locations from there. That way the capture from my local equipment to the NAS is lightning fast and it’s not a big deal to have it take a few hours to reach the cloud. Also having a NAS on a power backup is a must-have.
I want apps that let me access my data from anywhere
This may sound exaggerated, but paperless-ngx combined with a good network scanner will change your life. All paper mail accessible anywhere and also searchable. Plus, it is much easier to just scan something and drop it in an archive box instead of trying to figure out which folder (banking or taxes or maybe bills?) to file it in AND still remember that decision years later when you need to find it.
Brother ADS-1700W (edit: now that’s the exact model)
Tiny,fast, scans double-sided straight to a network share. It’s the most amazing thing I’ve bought in years, literally.
Since I have this exact problem and need… I went looking. By any chance did you mean the Brother ADS 1700W? If I’m going to take recommendations from strangers on the internet, I want to be sure I get it right. =)
Yes! Sorry for giving wrong details. That was from memory, and I am a goldfish…
The printer has a web interface where you set up destinations, and I set up a file path there. Separately, on the printer itself, you can set it up to do one action automatically when it detects material in the auto sheet feeder, and I used that so it auto-scans to PDF/A and saves it on that network share.
Then I have Paperless check that path once a minute. So my workflow is literally, drop the paper in the scanner, and 5 seconds later put it in a box, then a minute later I see it in Paperless. It’s bliss.
Among my must-have selfhosting items, in no particular order, I can recommend:
- Portainer, to keep track of what’s going on.
- Nginx Proxy Manager, to ensure https with valid certificate to those services I want to have available from the outside.
- Pihole, of course.
- Gitea, to store my coding stuff.
- Paperless-ngx, to store every paper in my life.
- Immich, an amazingly good replacement for Google Photos.
Due to some concerns about Gitea’s future I would recommend Forgejo instead. It’s a drop-in replacement with less concerning contribution policies and management structure.
What are those concerns? Why is it relevant to self-hosting?
Is it like the rumor that the Lemmy devs are pro-Russia or whatever it was about?
Honestly asking, here. Not trying to start a flame war, just want to know whether to bother to care about this.
Gitea is managed by a for profit which is now offering a hosting service. That alone is already a conflict of interest because one of Giteas core features is the easy self hosting.
Then the contribution guidelines have been made stricter, anyone contributing now has to give up their copyright to the gitea management, meaning they could change the opensource license to a stricter one down the line without requiring community consent.
The concern is that as time passes features will be locked behind a premium tier for self-hosters or the self-hosting itself will be made more difficult in an effort to push their cloud service.
You should try PhotoPrism, it’s amazing. All great picks BTW. Gittea had GH Actions compatible runners now!
I’ve commented elsewhere on this page:
Brother ADS-1700W
Tiny,fast, scans double-sided straight to a network share. It’s the most amazing thing I’ve bought in years, literally.
The printer has a web interface where you set up destinations, and I set up a file path there. Separately, on the printer itself, you can set it up to do one action automatically when it detects material in the auto sheet feeder, and I used that so it auto-scans to PDF/A and saves it on that network share.
Then I have Paperless check that path once a minute. So my workflow is literally, drop the paper in the scanner, and 5 seconds later put it in a box, then a minute later I see it in Paperless. It’s bliss.
Sorry but that’s not true. I have been running Immich for a long time now, and it is solid and stable.
A recent update had a change in the Docker configuration, and if you didn’t know that and just blindly upgraded, it would still run and show a helpful explanation. That’s amazing service.
Ha e you looked at dockge? I like it way more than portainer, atleast for single instance. It works with normal compose files so it keeps your stuff a lot more compatible to change and its by the guy who makes uotime kuma.
If you don’t mind, could you please check your typing? You had some obvious typos so I am not so sure of the exact name of the tool you are suggesting.
Sorry about that, my reply was from my phone and therefore terrible. Here’s the app: https://github.com/louislam/dockge
