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Cake day: May 11th, 2025

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  • if it seems daunting, which it is!, maybe it would be a good piont to ask yourself if you really need to run a server and these self hosted web apps in the first place. i did for about 10 years but i realised at some point i didnt need half of it.

    if youre planning on having multiple users or want to share one of the services (like real time editing of files or passwords etc) then thats where self hosted stuff makes sense to me, but if not then syncthing can do a lot without needing any complicated setup

    keepass is a good example. or note taking apps like jopin or obsidian where the data is store in plain text and where you can choose where the data is stored works great with syncthing

    for about a year before i did any self hosted stuff i was running only syncthing on my laptop and phone without any server so its do-able and you can get started right now and worry about getting a server later.

    tailscale is a huge help as well and is very easy to setup. say you repurpose an old laptop as a server for now and install whatever services on it, jellyfin for example, you will only be able to access that when you are on your home network but not when you are away, and thats where tailscale comes in. as long as its installed on each device you should be able to connect to your apps/services from anywhere.

    basically you can start small and then over the coming months and years as you learn more you will get more confident about moving onto more complicated setups







  • the phone part would the tricky bit. i think it should be doable using Termux on Android to run it. Termux has a “boot” plugin that should start Radicale every time the phone is turned on, but whether it will run reliably is another question.

    Syncthing runs a discovery server that helps nodes/devices find each other when you are away from your home network, so it should still sync in most cases. on some routers, if it cant get around the NAT then files will be synced using Syncthing’s relay server, but you have the option to turn both of those off if you want either


  • ive been going back to basics the last few years after years of messing around with self hosted stuff for a while. i just like the simplicity of the files being local and not worrying about logins or needing to be iconnected to my home network or needing remote access etc.

    plain text markdown files for note taking. keepass for passwords, which is just a single file. instead of using jellyfin to watch movies i usually just open a file browser. m3u playlists for listening to music with mpv. then syncthing for syncing all that between devices.

    something i want to do soon is to run Radicale/calDAV locally on each device and then have syncthing sync the changes instead of needing every device to talk to a central calDAV server. DecSync is another option for this kind of thing i think

    for bookmark syncing im currently using Floccus with the webDAV server thats running on my synology, but i would like get that webDAV server running locally with syncthing at some point as well

    mainly if its something that i use daily i want to try and get the files to always be stored locally, then other things that i might only use 2 or 3 times i week i dont mind doing self hosted stuff



  • if you need to share passwords with other people and do that often then that would be the only reason i would recommend a server-client based password manager. otherwise theres too many points of failure for my liking, especially for something that i use on a daily basis.

    KeePass on the other hand is just a single file thats stored locally and all you need is an app to read it. you dont need an internet connection or a VPN to access it remotely. your wifi could be down, even your power could be out and you would still have access to your database

    being able autofill desktop program logins was the main reason i switched away from bitwarden years ago

    KeepassXC on desktop has a feature called “Autotype” which basically simulates keystrokes to fill in your passwords. theres also an option to integrate with the KeepassXC browser extension, but with Autotype your browser has no connection to your database at all. i kind of feel this is a huge elephant in the room that most other password managers just gloss over. sure, you are getting a lot more convenience by having your browser autofill your passwords but its also adding a huge attack surface just for the sake of a few seconds or a few clicks.

    that said, Autotype isnt great at guessing all sites you might be trying to log into but there is this browser extension that will change your browsers window title to show the full site url which KeepassXC can then read

    one really underrated feature that i dont see any of the others doing is giving you the ability to use multiple vaults at once. you can have one vault for things that are really important, then everything else in another vault and have different strength passwords/passphrases for each one. i have maybe 300 logins but only around 10% of them are important. its kind of a pain if all you want to do is just log into some random forum but you have to type a long secure master password just to open your vault



  • theres also the option of using a “key file” with Keepass, which can be any file, an mp3, an ebook or whatever, and then you select that file when youre entering your password. so as well as someone trying to brute force your password they also have to guess what key file youre using, which would be next to impossible if you had a folder full of hundreds of files





  • no. ive skimmed through maybe 2 things overall but thats about it. i use too many apps to be able to audit them all and i dont have the proper skills to audit code anyway, and even if i did i would still have to re-audit after every update or every few years. its just not worth the effort

    youre taking a chance whether you use closed or open source software, at least with open source there is the option to look through things yourself, and with a popular project theres going to be a bigger chance of others looking through it





  • ive been using floccus for a few years now and no complaints

    i havnt tried syncing tabs but i think its an option. what i do have is a one-way sync job for the tabs in each browser so i at least have a backup of them, and each browser has its own file, but i would imagine if you tried to sync the same file between multiple devices it would just get very messy at some point