Self-hosting is one of those hobbies where you start with one small service and suddenly you have dashboards, reverse proxies, monitoring, media libraries, Git hosting, document management and at least three tools that tell you which other tools are currently broken.
Dashboard & Access
| App | Why it matters |
| Homepage | Main homelab dashboard. |
| Nginx Proxy Manager | Reverse proxy and SSL UI. |
Monitoring & Alerts
| App | Why it matters |
| Uptime Kuma | Service uptime monitoring. |
| Glances | System resource monitoring. |
| Scrutiny | SMART disk health monitoring. |
| Speedtest Tracker | Internet speed history. |
| ntfy | Lightweight push notifications. |
Docker & Operations
| App | Why it matters |
| Arcane | Modern Docker management UI. |
| Dockpeek | Quick Docker container overview. |
| Dozzle | Web UI for Docker logs. |
| Portracker | Port discovery and tracking. |
Development & CI/CD
| App | Why it matters |
| Forgejo | Self-hosted Git service. |
| Forgejo Runner | CI/CD runner for Forgejo. |
| code-server | VS Code in the browser. |
Documents, Knowledge & Planning
| App | Why it matters |
| Actual Budget | Local-first budgeting and personal finance. |
| Paperless-ngx | Document management with OCR. |
| BentoPDF | Privacy-focused PDF toolbox. |
| ConvertX | Self-hosted file converter. |
| draw.io / diagrams.net | Architecture and network diagrams. |
| Excalidraw | Fast sketch-style diagrams. |
| BookStack | Structured documentation and wiki. |
| Memos | Lightweight notes. |
| Planka | Kanban boards for projects. |
Media, Photos & Reading
| App | Why it matters |
| Immich | Self-hosted photo and video backup. |
| Jellyfin | Personal media server. |
| MeTube | Web UI for yt-dlp downloads. |
| Tube Archivist | YouTube archiving and indexing. |
| Grimmory | Self-hosted digital library. |
| Readeck | Read-it-later archive. |
Mail & Archiving
| App | Why it matters |
| Bichon | Lightweight email archiving. |
| Mail-Archiver | Web-based email archive. |
Security
| App | Why it matters |
| Vaultwarden | Bitwarden-compatible password server. |
Why these apps are in my homelab
My Verdict
Self-hosting is not about running every app that exists. For me, the useful apps are the ones that solve a real problem: backups, documents, photos, monitoring, notes, Git, email archiving, media, passwords and daily homelab operations.
The nice thing is that all of these apps can grow with the setup. Start small, keep the data organized, back up properly and only expose what really needs to be exposed.
And yes, sometimes an app is installed just because it looks interesting.