If you're running a homelab, you may already be running lots of applications for your cloud or to assist in running your homelab stack. If you are just like me, your lab is never complete, and you're always looking for something else to install and try out. This article will look at some apps you can try out in your lab to increase their maintainability, manage them better, or add new functionality to maximize your Homelab.

If you have your favourites or alternatives, please comment and let the people know! 📣

Photoprism

If you are an avid photographer or photo archiver, Photoprism may be the tool you are looking for. This app allows you to view all your photos your way. The app automatically uses embedded photo tags to find your pictures, making finding and sorting your photos seamless. You can run it at home, on a private server, or in the cloud, making it work for any setup you need.

Like other features locked down to Google Photos or Apple Photos, Photoprism can recognize the faces of your family and friends in your photos, automatically classify pictures based on their content and location, and includes four high-resolution world maps to bring back memories of your favourite trips. If you already collect media like TV and movies, your photos may be a part of your collection that you must pay attention to. Check it out here.

Akaunting

Suppose you are in the market for a highly polished and featured personal or business accounting application. Akaunting could be a perfect fit. This application can give you better insights into your financial data and help you stay on top of some of those invoices or bills. 

This application is perfect for anyone running the books of multiple companies, allowing you to easily separate the finances into their view. It also allows you to easily share any reports on the financial data collected so you can share it with the relevant parties. Only some options for accounting software can be self-hosted. This is a highly polished application you would usually have to pay for to get the same features, so it is worth looking into for any use case.

You can find docs for getting started with Akaunting on the following page.

Plex

You may be like many of us with a Homelab and running some media automation applications to gather or view the files. If you have yet to hear of Plex, it is one of the leading free applications for viewing your media files, including personal videos, music, movies, and TV.

You can create a Plex account for free and use the application's essential features. However, some features, like downloading media onto your mobile devices for offline viewing, require a Plex pass subscription. Plex often offers lifetime subscriptions to Plex Pass, so keep an eye on your email, and you'll likely get a good deal.

Note that Plex is an external service you will depend on to use the application. A consequence of this integration is that if Plex goes down for any reason, you may be unable to use Plex features completely. Plex login servers have been going down occasionally, but the overall features and polish you are getting are worth it.

Home Assistant

This popular home assistant platform has garnered much attention due to its extensive range of integrations with various devices and systems and simple setup. Even as the home automation space has become more complex with the introduction of new platforms and communication standards, this platform has remained a popular choice. One of its standout features is its high level of customization, which allows users to tailor the system to their specific needs, thereby enhancing the user experience.

You can customize your automation to the Nth degree through the platform's modern UI or by writing simple YAML config files, making your home more efficient and personalized. Whether it's adjusting the lighting, regulating the temperature, or controlling your home security system, the possibilities are endless with custom home automation. The ability to also write automation code and manage it as code allows for a very extensible and scalable way of building your home automation setup. Check out the docs here.

Portainer

If you currently use Docker containers, you might know some of your struggles when managing many containers as your fleet grows. Accessing things like logs or inspecting config can also be a chore when using just the CLI when it would be nice to quickly scan and click for the information you are looking for. You might be looking for a management UI for your Docker host!

Portainer provides a sleek, modern UI to view all the critical information on the containers running on your docker host. This connection is facilitated through a direct socket connection via a volume mount or an HTTP connection to the docker API. The UI provides information for each container, such as logs, configuration, and management actions like restarting, deleting, or editing containers.

If you are running Docker on multiple hosts, Portainer also makes it easy to view and manage the Docker environment of each host through a single pane of glass, saving you time. Portainer also provides a scalable way to give others access to the Docker environment through user provisioning and resource RBAC. Note that these are available through the paid version of the app.

Nextcloud

NextCloud positions itself as an open-source alternative to similar products like Google Drive that provide cloud storage across your devices and offer productive tools like online document viewing and editing for supported formats.

NextCloud instances also have a robust user system that allows multiple users to access and share files on a single instance. NextCloud also offers an extensive app network to easily integrate new features into your NextCloud server for your users. These can range from standard features like draw.io support to 3D models and cookbook viewers for your files.

Suppose you are looking for further endorsement for Nextcloud and its data protection. In that case, governments have even adopted the application due to its on-premise hosting and cloud-like features it offers users. See the story below.

German state & Nextcloud build digitally sovereign AI for public sector - Nextcloud

FileBrowser

Another good alternative to accessing files on a remote machine like Filestash is FileBrowser. This application provides more features to manage your files with simple file editing and viewing through the browser.

One difference between FileBrowser and Filestash is that this application focuses only on exposing the local filesystem to the application's users. With its additional admin features to add other users with their permissions, it is perfect as an administration utility you can run on your Homelab or Home server host.

You can find documentation for getting started using FileBrowser here.

GitHub - filebrowser/filebrowser: 📂 Web File Browser

Jellyfin 

Jellyfin has grown into a strong competitor to Plex Media Server, the usual media server recommendation. Being open-sourced and community-driven provides an alternative with built-in features that are very fast compared to the privately developed Plex. You can try the live demo here.

The application offers a clean and polished UI for accessing self-hosted media, including Movies, TV, Music, Live TV and DVR, books, and photos, across many devices, including Web, Desktop, Android, Apple, and other standard smart TVs. Check out their complete app list here.

Wrapping Up

Thanks to the open-source community, you should have some inspiration for new applications you could use in your homelab today. These applications can be a great way to learn a new skill or gain new functionality from your homelab for free! The library of applications you can install onto your homelab or home server keeps growing yearly, with new and more polished features constantly available. The best part is that you get many free features since they are open source. 

So enjoy the possible new projects for your homelab or home server if you feel inspired by any apps showcased in this post! If you want more inspiration, check out our last list of apps below.

• 7 Apps for your Homelab in 2024
• Installing Slackware packages on Unraid
  
• 10 Apps for your Homelab in 2022
  

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