Happy Friday, r/selfhosted! Linked below is the latest edition of Self-Host Weekly, a weekly newsletter recap of the latest activity in self-hosted software and content.

This week's features include:

• The latest DumbWare project launch
• Software updates and launches
• A spotlight on Mazanoke -- a self-hosted image conversion app for the browser (u/humming6)
• Other guides, videos, and content from the community

Thanks, and as usual, feel free to reach out with feedback!

Self-Host Weekly (2 May 2025)

It's easy to access Jellyfin remotely for free. If you're coming from Plex because you can't access your media remotely for free anymore, this guide is for you! You can also use the second part of this guide (reverse proxy set up) to expose your Plex and access it remotely without relying on its internal, now paid, features.

Stuff I'm assuming you have or can have since you already host Plex

• A server you can use to install Linux and Docker to host your containers
• Media files stored in a directory you want to mount to the container
• A transcoding device (e.g. iGPU) - used to require Plex pass, free with Jellyfin!

Create a Docker Compose File for Jellyfin

• Create a file named compose.yaml in your preferred directory and add the following configuration:

  • Replace <your timezone> and <media path here> with appropriate values.
  • You can add/remove media directories as needed
  • Since you're coming from Plex, if you have HW accelerated transcoding for Plex, you can use the GPU the same way here

  • You can use network_type host if you need DLNA, otherwise it's better to keep it as brdige

    services: jellyfin: image: jellyfin/jellyfin container_name: jellyfin environment: - TZ=<your timezone> volumes: - <config path here>:/config - <cache path here>:/cache - <media path for movies here>:/movies - <media path for shows here>:/shows ports: - 8096:8096 devices: - <hardware acceleration device here>:/dev/dri/renderD128 # remove/modify this line as needed restart: unless-stopped

• Deploy Jellyfin: docker-compose up -d

• Navigate to <server's ip address>:8096 to ensure it's up and running

Setting Up Caddy for Reverse Proxy

This will allow you and your users to access Jellyfin remotely wihtout a VPN. If you're using Jellyfin with VPN, you can skip the rest of this guide.

Prerequisites for remote access without a VPN

• Access to your router to open ports 80 and 443 (if not using VPN)

• A domain with you server's public IP address (if not using VPN)

  • You can sign up for a free domain using any provider (e.g. noip, cloudflare)
  • It's really easy and quick, and free!

• Create a Docker Compose File (compose.yaml) for Caddy and add:

  ``` services: caddy: container_name: caddy image: caddy:latest restart: unless-stopped ports: - "80:80" - "443:443" volumes: - <caddy config path>/Caddyfile:/etc/caddy/Caddyfile - <caddy site path>:/srv - <caddy data path>:/data - <caddy config path>:/config

  volumes: caddy_data: caddy_config:

  ```

  • With a text editor create and open a file named Caddyfile in <caddy config path> and configure it:

    <your domain with your server's public IP address> { reverse_proxy <internal IP for Jellyfin>:8096 }

  • For example:

    myjellyfinserver.com { reverse_proxy 192.168.20.106:8096 }

• Do not deploy caddy yet!

Open the Required Ports

• If you don't have a static public IP address, you need to setup Dynamic DNS. You can use any provider (e.g. noip, cloudflare) and set your router to update it dynamically as it changes (you can google the guide for your specific router)
• If your router doesn't support DDNS, there are Docker images that let you host a service that updates your IP dynamically.

• Ensure ports 443 and 80 are open on the router and are forwarded to the server hosting Caddy (internal IP for Caddy, not Jellyfin, could be the same if hosted on the same server), so that external access functions correctly.

• Once you have all above set up, deploy Caddy by running docker-compose up -d

• Monitor the container's logs for potential errors (note that even if you're not using port 80, you still need it opened for certification challenge)

• Once set up, Jellyfin should be accessible via your domain!

Hey folks,

After not getting placed during the campus placement season, I was just sitting and messing around with some ideas I’d shelved earlier. Ended up building something over the past couple weekends — it’s called Sietch Vault.

Basically, it’s a decentralized file syncing tool that works without the internet — over LAN, USB drives. I made it mainly out of curiosity, and also frustration with how everything these days relies on cloud infra you don’t control.

It’s open source and still kinda rough, but would really appreciate thoughts from anyone here — whether it's useful, dumb, broken, or something worth polishing further.

Project link: https://sietch.nilaysharan.in
GitHub: https://github.com/SubstantialCattle5/Sietch

https://preview.redd.it/ev65386qs3ye1.png?width=2527&format=png&auto=webp&s=c93d19a789a7b989428507913e181d896dc05c56

Would love any kind of feedback — design, tech, or even just "bro why" 😅

Hey everyone!

I recently made the switch to Jellyfin and noticed something missing that I really liked from my previous media management setup — smart, dynamic collections. I wanted the ability to define detailed rules so that any media matching those would automatically be added to a collection.

While browsing around, I came across a great plugin by johnpc that worked with tags. Inspired by that, I decided to fork it and build on the idea — but with more flexibility.

Introducing my version of the Smart Collections plugin:
https://github.com/KeksBombe/jellyfin-plugin-auto-collections

🔧 Features:

• Create dynamic collections based on Title, Studio, or Genre
• Just enter a string, and all matching media will be included
• Collections update automatically based on your rules every 24 hours or when manually triggered

No more manually maintaining collections — just set your rules and let the plugin do the work.

I'd love for fellow Jellyfin users to try it out and let me know what you think. Contributions and feedback are welcome!

Hi everyone,

I wanted to ask for some advice on what I should consider when self-hosting a web application (Python backend, Javascript frontend, Postgres DB).

I actually did this a few months ago using a Raspberry Pi 5. I managed to get it running with Cloudflare and Nginx, but honestly, I'm not sure how secure or robust my setup really was. Also, I wanted to use Coolify, but it did not work out for me at that time. Would like to try that again.

Do you have any tips or resources I could check out to learn more about doing this properly?

I've now ordered the following mini-PC:

https://verybox.com/en/computers/2051-minix-neo-z100-aero.html

If you have better suggestions or see potential issues with this device, I'd appreciate your feedback.

I've learned a lot on my own and by using LLMs, but I definitely didn't understand everything I implemented. For example, I enabled fail2ban, everything was password-protected, and database access was restricted to SSH connections only. Despite these steps, I was never really sure if I was doing things correctly, as I'm still a beginner.

Some additional context:

• The website I'll be hosting is just a hobby project and won't have many users.
• Most importantly: no sensitive data will be stored in the database – no user passwords, personal details, etc.
• No sensitive data like passwords will be stored on the home server itself either.

My main concern now is: What steps can I take to minimize the risk to my home network? (i.e., the risk to other devices on the same network like personal computers, phones, etc., should the server somehow get compromised).

My plan is to install Ubuntu Server 24.04. It's simply what I'm somewhat familiar with, as I also used it on the RPi 5.

I'd be grateful for any tips and recommendations you might have.

Thanks in advance!

https://github.com/luigi311/JellyPlex-Watched

Has an Unraid "App" already too

Really simple script - active developer,

I run JF and Emby and sync everything between them every hour or so.

im in no way associated with this, Just a fan and its much better than all the alternatives I've seen. Not a fan of Trakt .

I'm a digital consultant and have too many clients to handle myself so I'm trying to automate some heavy work that takes too much of my time.

I wanna be able to insert my client data like messaging history (that file might have more than 40.000 words) and talk to the AI about it creatively. Asking questions like" Did we mention this and that? Did we respond to their question in this way before? According to their previous answers, what would be the best approach in this specific scenario?" It needs to read the message history I give it in detail and be able brainstorm it with me. I also would like it if it has a longer memory so I don't need to train it and talk to it about what I want every single time.

I'm semi tech savvy guy (meaning I can follow technical instructions if they're detailed). I’ve got a MacBook Air M3 so I downloaded GTP4All and tried the DeepSeek 14B model. I fed it a text file ( That 40.000 word one) to test it but it doesn’t seem to be reading the file in detail like I hoped and it’s not particularly good at brainstorming (also answers take too long to be useful).

I'm not against paying somewhere between $100 and $150 a month if I can find a perfect or better privacy focused solution.

What would be the best solution for my case?

Hey selfhosters,👋

I'm on the CopilotKit team, and I'm excited to announce we've just added built-in support for MCP. The update went live today.

For those unfamiliar, CopilotKit is a self-hostable, full-stack framework for building user interactive agents and copilots.. Our focus is allowing your agents to take control of your application (by human approval), communicate what it's doing, and generate a completely custom UI for the user.

What’s an MCP Client?

It’s a web-based, client (React in this case) that lets you chat with any MCP server in your own app. All you need is a URL from Composio to get started.

MCP lets you connect LLMs to external tools in a standardized way. Now you can use a chat interface to talk to any MCP-compatible server, right from your React app, with no agent framework required.

Quickstart:
With one command you can start talking to MCP servers locally, from your own Next.js app.

 copilotkit@latest init -m MCP 

What we built:
To show it off, I connected a simple self-hosted ToDo app to two platforms using MCP:

• Asana – Send blog ideas as tasks, assign them to myself, and set due dates.
• Typefully – Pull blog titles and save them as draft tweets.

Stack:

• UI: CopilotKit
• MCP servers: Composio
• Framework: Next.js
• Agentic framework: None

The code is open source and contributions are welcome.

• GitHub: https://github.com/CopilotKit/copilotkit-mcp-demo
• Docs: https://docs.copilotkit.ai/guides/model-context-protocol
• Video demo: https://x.com/CopilotKit/status/1917976289547522074
• Twitter Announcement: https://x.com/CopilotKit/status/1917976289547522074

Would love to hear what you're connecting MCP to.

Searching this subreddit I have found a few posts where people have asked similar questions but thats more about self hosting the map itself. I don't have that much storage or computer power to self host maps data. Just want a webapp that maybe uses OpenStreepMap as the engine but i just want to make lists/maps on top of it like we can do in Google maps.

Hey everyone,

I’ve run into a weird issue with Nginx Proxy Manager (v2.12.3) running in Docker on Ubuntu 24.04 LTS (Docker 24.0+ / Compose v2.24.4). I’m trying to inject a custom snippet into the main proxy server block via /data/nginx/custom/server_proxy.conf:

real_ip_header CF-Connecting-IP;

However, on container startup this directive isn’t applied—requests still show the Cloudflare IP instead of the real client IP. Strangely, as soon as I open any existing Proxy Host in the UI, click “Edit” and then “Save” (without making any changes), the configuration reloads and everything starts working as expected (real IP is correctly forwarded).

Has anyone encountered this before? Any ideas how to force NPM to load custom snippets at startup without the manual “edit → save” workaround?

Thanks in advance!

Hi all,

I have a library with multiple versions of the same movie or TV show episode in Jellyfin, for example: • 4K (high bitrate, HEVC) • Full HD / 1080p (lower bitrate, AVC)

What I’m wondering is: can Jellyfin automatically detect what version would play best on the client and select that version to avoid transcoding?

For example: • If the client only supports 1080p, or the network is too slow for 4K, it should ideally just direct play the FHD version. • If the client supports 4K and has enough bandwidth, it could play the 4K version.

Right now, it seems like Jellyfin always defaults to the primary version and will transcode if necessary, unless the user manually selects the alternate version. Is there a way to make Jellyfin automatically select the “best” version (i.e. direct play > transcode) without user interaction?

Thanks a lot in advance!

Hi everyone, hoping you can help me get an idea of what would I need to recreate a Citrix Workspace experience in a private use context.

Reason is, that from professional point of view, I am almost entirely working on a VDI via Citrix and I actually quite like the experience. I can connect from anywhere in the world to a known stable windows system, the VDI is customized to my needs with user settings and everything, I have access to the company's network, internet, etc.

Another reason why I would like to have a similar experience in a private context, is that I travel a lot for work, and while I am away from home, I still need to do the occasional thing on a private computer (taxes, etc., no gaming or streaming). I could stop bringing two laptops, if I had something like Citrix at home.

Now, the problem is that I cannot install programs on my work laptop. So either I would have to connect to my "private VDI" through the Citrix App, a portable program, standard Windows Tools (RDP?) or the browser.

How would you go about setting something like that up? What are the "gets the deed done" and the "this is the way" options?

Thank you!

Homer's documentation says:

Using smart cards, which interact with other services, will require either that:

All services are exposed on the same domain as homer (mydomain.tld/pihole, mydomain.tld/proxmox), avoiding any cross domain request issues (CORS).

All services accept cross site requests (= send the necessary CORS headers, either set directly in the service configuration if possible, or using a proxy to set the headers

How do I do either of these? Right now I'm using AdGuard rewrites and a reverse proxy to give each of my services a different domain.

Hi everyone!

I was recently able to get myself quite a cool dedicated server from the Hetzner auction.

Specs:

XEON E-2176G
2x U.2 NVMe SSD 960GB Datacenter
64GB DDR4 ECC RAM (4x 16GB)
1Gbit connection

I already had some cool ideas on what to do with it, but now I'm wondering if there's any other cool things you guys could recommend that I didn't think of.

I currently already installed Cosmos Server on it, as it seems like quite a solid option, with nice security features already built-in the easy to use GUI.

Even though I am relatively technical and I like to tinker with stuff, I'd prefer for my own personal server/cloud to be very stable, reliable & easy to maintain. I could technically just setup everything with docker etc. in the CLI, but I don't want to use the CLI every time something breaks.

As I want to create my own little ecosystem, I'd love to use something like:

• Nextcloud/ownCloud (OCIS)/Seafile
  • I like the "hub" features of Nextcloud, but I'm not sure if I feel like it might be a bit too bloated? Especially as I want to use more dedicated apps like Immich etc. for photo/videos. Would you still recommend it, or would you recommend to use more "dedicated" apps for the specific use cases I need? Often, something that tries to do it all just becomes "kinda ok" at everything.
• Immich --> iCloud Photos alternative
• Jellyfin (not sure yet, don't really have/use that much movies/tv shows, etc.)
• Koel (Looks quite nice for my music, as I am a DJ with around 80GB of music)
• Maybe some kind of assistant/automation tool? Maybe like n8n or something?
  • Would be nice to maybe get some kind of easy overview/summary everyday of incoming e-mails, things to do, etc.
• An integration with my email accounts/calendar? (don't want to manage a mailserver myself lol)
• Website
  • I'd like a small website as I like to tinker with websites. Maybe I'd like to host a Wordpress website on my server, although it won't really be the intention to make it a popular/much-visited website, more for me to play, although it would be public.
  • Not sure if this can be securely added on the same server? I had tried to install Proxmox on my bare metal server, but instantly got some notifications about Hetzner complaining that I had multiple mac addresses on my server, which wasn't allowed. So I'd maybe stay away from that until I know more about it. But is it okay to run Wordpress on this server as well, taking into consideration security as my data will be on the server as well? can I kind of containerize it or would I install some kind of VM tool on my Cosmos Server to install WP in?
• Are there any other cool (low-maintenance) tools that I'm not thinking of, and that you would highly recommend? :)

Just a small FYI: Doing this completely in the cloud instead of having my own server at home and having a cloud backup as in Belgium we're a bit screwed by telecom companies. Paying like 160EUR/mo for our telecom package, which only provides 300mbps down, 30mbps up, and after 750GB/mo it gets limited to 15mbps down and 5mbps up. (Theoretical speeds, lower in practice). So syncing data from my own home server to the cloud would probably constantly throttle my internet speed :/, and the 30mbps upload also doesn't seem too great.

Thanks in advance for the help! :D