A curated list of awesome, family-focused, and kid-friendly self-hosted solutions to create the ultimate private family cloud.
Break free from Big Tech. Build your digital home.
In a world of walled gardens and monthly subscriptions, self-hosting gives you the ultimate power: control. It's about building a safe, private, and fun digital space for the people who matter most. No ads, no data mining, just your services, for your family.
This list is for the tinkerers, the privacy advocates, and the parents who want to build something awesome for their family. From a private "Netflix" to a secure photo backup that will last a lifetime, this is your launchpad.
- The All-in-One Hubs
- 📸 Photo & Video Memories
- 🎬 Media Streaming Kingdom
- 📚 Books & Documents Library
- 🍔 Recipe & Meal Planning
- 🔑 Password & Security Fortress
- 💬 Private Communication Channels
- 🤖 Home Automation & Monitoring
- 🕹️ Gaming & Kid-Friendly Fun
- 🛠️ Essential Utilities
Your family's central command center.
- Nextcloud - The undisputed king. Your private Google Workspace replacement with Files, Calendar, Contacts, Talk, and more.
- ownCloud - A solid and mature alternative for file sync and sharing.
- CasaOS - An incredibly simple and elegant home cloud system based on Docker. Perfect for beginners.
- Homarr - A sleek, modern, and highly customizable dashboard for all your services.
- Heimdall - A beautiful and simple application dashboard.
- YunoHost - A server operating system aiming to make self-hosting accessible to everyone.
Ditch Google Photos and own your memories forever.
- Immich - The high-performance Google Photos replacement. Slick mobile apps, AI search, and facial recognition.
- PhotoPrism - Another brilliant AI-powered photo server, great for organizing huge libraries.
- Piwigo - Open-source photo gallery software with a large community and tons of plugins.
- LibrePhotos - A self-hosted open source photo management service.
Your personal, ad-free Netflix & Spotify.
- Jellyfin - 100% free, open-source media system. Create accounts for kids with content restrictions.
- Plex - The super-polished and easy-to-use media server.
- Emby - A personal media server with apps for all your devices.
- Navidrome - A modern, lightweight music server and streamer.
- Audiobookshelf - Self-hosted server for your audiobooks and podcasts.
- Kavita - A blazingly fast, feature-rich, and modern manga/comic/book server.
Organize your digital paper trail.
- Calibre-Web - A web app for Browse, reading, and downloading eBooks stored in a Calibre database.
- Paperless-ngx - Scan, index, and archive all your physical documents.
- Stirling-PDF - A powerful, locally hosted web-based PDF manipulation tool.
- Bookstack - A simple, self-hosted, easy-to-use platform for organizing and storing information.
- Joplin - A free, open-source note-taking and to-do application.
The family that cooks together, stays together.
- Tandoor Recipes - A beautiful recipe manager with meal planning and shopping lists.
- Mealie - A powerful recipe manager with a focus on community and a REST API.
Keep the family's digital keys safe.
- Vaultwarden - An unofficial Bitwarden compatible server written in Rust, perfect for self-hosting.
- Passbolt - Open-source password manager for teams and families.
Your own secure family chat.
- Matrix (Synapse) - A decentralized, secure communication protocol for federated chat, VoIP, and video.
- Jitsi Meet - Secure, simple, and scalable video conferencing that you host yourself.
- Rocket.Chat - A powerful and extensible open-source communications platform.
The brains of your smart home.
- Home Assistant - The ultimate open-source home automation platform. Puts local control and privacy first.
- Frigate - NVR with real-time local object detection for IP cameras.
- Shinobi - Open-source CCTV and NVR solution.
Because self-hosting should be fun!
- Minecraft Server - Host your own private world for family and friends.
- Minetest - An open-source voxel game engine. Kid-friendly and highly moddable.
- Kolibri - An offline-first educational platform for underserved communities, great for homeschooling.
- Piped - A privacy-friendly YouTube frontend. No ads, no tracking.
- Excalidraw - A virtual collaborative whiteboard for sketching out ideas or just having fun.
The tools that work silently in the background.
- Pi-hole - The black hole for internet advertisements. Block ads for your entire home network.
- AdGuard Home - A powerful network-wide ad-blocker with parental control features.
- Syncthing - A continuous file synchronization program. Think private, peer-to-peer Dropbox.
- RustDesk - Open-source remote desktop software, the self-hosted TeamViewer alternative.
- Uptime Kuma - A fancy self-hosted monitoring tool to keep an eye on all your services.
Got an awesome family-friendly app to add? Found a broken link?
- Fork this repository.
- Add your awesome app to the list in the correct category. (Please keep it alphabetical!)
- Submit a Pull Request.
Let's make this the best resource for families looking to self-host!
Built with ❤️ for families everywhere.