Self-Host Weekly (5 September 2025)

SPONSORED BY    PikaPods

Weekly Highlights

To kick things off, apologies to the several thousand readers I Rickrolled last week. I was actually so committed to the bit I bought a dummy domain for a few bucks (open-source.lol) that I was unable to configure in time. (I promise, all links below are safe.)

Unrelatedly, earlier this year I began including a self-hosted Formbricks survey (note: they sponsor various aspects of this publication) in the newsletter to collect feedback. At the time, I wasn't aware of just how much feedback I'd receive – and it's been a ton.

Unfortunately, I don't always have time to respond (and don't even ask readers for contact info upon submission). In lieu of this, I thought I'd address a few popular feedback themes this week:

• There are too many projects listed in the newsletter. I know, but I have 20,000+ readers with different tastes and preferences and would hate to do a disservice to any project by not listing it. In the next few weeks, I'll begin marking 5-6 apps in each section as Editor's Choice for those who (for some reason) trust my judgment and don't want to dig through the list themselves.
• Add an SSO toggle to the directory. I am, and I'm almost there. I'm currently working on a redesign and will pivot to wrapping up the SSO tag as soon as I'm finished.
• Why did you stop posting the newsletter to Reddit? I'm afraid I may have overstayed my welcome on r/selfhosted given a lack of engagement earlier this year. I've since switched to sharing just the first newsletter of each month, although users are always welcome to share it when I don't.
• Spark Mail doesn't display the newsletter correctly. I know, but I'm pretty sure this is a Ghost problem, not a me problem. Plus, formatting e-mail newsletters is hard.
• Bring back the podcast. You'd like that, wouldn't you?

And lastly, because one bulleted list is never enough, my highlights from the week:

• Futurehome reminded us why we self-host by forcing customers to begin paying a subscription to use their hub after filing for bankruptcy
• Home Assistant's September update finally brings speak and volume controls to Reolink doorbells
• This dev built a third-party Jellyseerr client for...the Nintendo Switch?
• Every so often, I stumble across a GitHub username that makes me chuckle. This week, meet the developer of DoorOpener – Sloth-on-meth.

Happy selfh.st/ing!

Newswire

Why isn’t there one standard?

We explore why supporting multiple open smart home standards is better than having just one, highlighting the launch of the new Connect ZWA-2.

Building the Open HomePaulus Schoutsen

Detecting Exposed LLM Servers: A Shodan Case Study on Ollama

We uncovered 1,100+ exposed Ollama LLM servers—20% with open models—revealing critical security gaps and the need for better LLM threat monitoring.

Cisco BlogsDr. Giannis Tziakouris

Self-Hosting Update: Migration to GitHub Container Registry

Hi everyone, Due to recent Docker container limitations, we have migrated our images from Docker Hub to GitHub Container Registry. If you are deploying using methods that do not utilize the bitwarden.sh or bitwarden.ps1 scripts, please take a moment to update your image references to the new GitHub Container Registry URLs. Example E.g. ghcr.io/bitwarden/image_name:version Deployment Guides For general deployment guides, check out the following Help Center articles: Linux Windows Unified U…

Bitwarden Community Forumsdwbit

Replacing Music Streaming Services with a Self-hosted Stack

Replacing TV and movie streaming services is pretty trivial, and typically one of the first projects for any new self-hoster, but music streaming services are a whole different beast. There’s a growing need to replace the likes of Spotify, but there’s no one-size-fits-all solution, and maintaining an on-disk music library

Badabingus!nfreak

WordPress shows off Telex, its experimental AI development tool | TechCrunch

WordPress CEO Matt Mullenweg introduced the new WordPress AI tool, called Telex, at the company’s WordCamp US 2025 conference in Portland last week, alongside other AI experiments.

TechCrunchSarah Perez

Frient joins Works with Home Assistant

After a long break, more Zigbee devices join the program, bringing everything from energy meter monitoring to smoke alarms.

Home AssistantMiranda Bishop

Feedback

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Content Spotlight

Meet rwMarkable, a lightweight, no-frills app for checklists and notes. With rwMarkable, users can easily create, manage, and update checklists and to-do's from the comfort of a minimal (yet functional) web interface. Features include checklists, rich-text notes, sharing, database-less storage, multi-user support, and themes.

rwMarkable can be easily deployed via Docker and doesn't require additional dependencies.

Links: Source Code

Videos and Podcasts

• Your Bookmark Chaos Ends NOW! Linkwarden + Unraid Setup | AlienTech42
• Everything New In Home Assistant 2025.9! | Everything Smart Home
• Wazuh - The FREE SIEM You Need to Try! | Jim's Garage
• Build your own HomeLab Firewall! // OPNSense Tutorial | Christian Lempa
• Jellyfin Definitive Guide 2025 (Redux) | IBRACORP
• Grist: The Open Source Self-Hosted Spreadsheet with Database Superpowers | Lawrence Systems

Command Line Corner

Use realpath <file> to quickly view the absolute path of a file:

$ realpath example.txt
  /home/users/rick/example.txt

Share Your Content

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