Tuesday, December 2, 2025
Another year has passed, and it’s time to update my app defaults. A lot has happened in the world since Andrew, Martin, and Jason of Hemispheric Views listed their defaults for the first time.
I’ve tried to ditch big‑tech companies and move my data and services to more open platforms, some of them self‑hosted.
Indicated are unchanged entries (🔒) and updated entries (✨). I still use the various categories as written by Andrew:
- 🔒 Mail Client: Mail
- 🔒 Mail Server: posteo.net - still a secondary account on iCloud with custom domain
- 🔒 Notes: Obsidian - Notes.app is empty now
- ✨ To-Do: Pen and Paper - still use Remind Me Faster w/ Reminders.app (NextCloud) to capture things on the go and transfer them to my Bujo later
- 🔒 iPhone Photo Shooting: iOS Camera
- ✨ Photo Management: Photos - looking into ente and Immich (self-hosted) in parallel
- 🔒 Calendar: Calendar - Data moved to NextCloud; using a couple of other apps besides, like Grila or Dato
- ✨ Cloud file storage: Koofr, Filen.io, and NextCloud - this is a mess, have to consolidate; some app data still on iCloud because of lock-in
- ✨ RSS: Classic Reeder and NetNewsWire with FreshRSS (self-hosted) - left Feedbin behind, was using it with Unread in between
- 🔒 Contacts: Contacts - Data moved to NextCloud
- 🔒 Browser: Safari
- ✨ Chat: iMessage, Threema, and Signal - still have WhatsApp installed, but don’t start conversations there and try not to use it at all; access to contacts, pictures, etc. is blocked
- ✨ Bookmarks: Linkding (self-hosted) - switched from Anybox
- 🔒 Read It Later: Readwise Reader - evaluating Readeck (self-hosted)
- 🔒 Word Processing: Pages (MS Word at work) - trying to get familiar with LibreOffice, but it’s so ugly 😢
- 🔒 Spreadsheets: Numbers (MS Excel at work) - cf. above
- 🔒 Presentations: Keynote - cf. above
- 🔒 Shopping Lists: Pons
- 🔒 Meal Planning: Mela
- 🔒 Budgeting & Personal Finance: YNAB - already set-up Actual (self-hosted) but did not switch yet
- 🔒 News: Mastodon, tagesschau.de
- 🔒 Music: Apple Music - started playing around with Navidrome (self-hosted)
- ✨ Podcasts: Overcast - back to Overcast; I’ve used Apple Podcasts and Queue in between
- ✨ Password Management: 1Password - back to 1PW, iCloud Keychain was degraded to “backup”
Update 2025-12-03: removed note to myself
Tuesday, November 25, 2025
For a couple of years, I’ve had two Raspberry Pis running on my home network. One was for a Magic Mirror 2 server instance with a few self-written Python scripts. A very cheaply acquired Fire Tablet hangs on the fridge and displays its website in Full Kiosk Mode. The other Raspberry run Pi-Hole and filters ads for the entire home network. To become a little more independent from the big tech bros, in the middle of the year, a VPS from Hetzner joined the setup, running NextCloud. It now provides the entire family with cloud storage, calendar, and address book. The NextCloud software and the VPS are maintained by Hetzner; I only have to worry about the NextCloud configuration. I didn’t dare to do more. Self-hosting, I found and still find - without any (professional) knowledge of networks - quite scary.
That changed a few weeks ago. I still find it scary, but I installed a bit of software anyway. It started, as so often, with a post from Marcus. He mentioned OwnTracks and Geo Activity Playground in his article. I was curious, and since I absolutely didn’t want to open up my home network yet, I rented a regular, very cheap VPS for a few Euros a month from Hetzner and installed OwnTracks there. That was almost too easy. But I didn’t want to install Geo Activity Playground as well on the same server as I didn’t know how to correctly limit access and separate both installations. So finally I started to look into Docker.
Let’s fast forward a bit; I don’t want to bore you too much.
I now have - and it’s all still very much in flux - a dedicated VPS running OwnTracks and another one running Docker. It took a while, but eventually, I understood this YAML syntax for Docker Compose and how to integrate drives, networks, etc. Now, Portainer.io, Watchtower, SWAG, FreshRSS, Linkding, and Dawarich are running on it. I also looked at Actual Budget, ntfy, Wallabag, and KOReader Sync and successfully installed and configured them. Everything runs with its own subdomains, secured with the Hetzner Firewall, backed by regular backups, and snapshots. I learned how to disable shell logins via passwords, generate SSH keys and put them on servers, how to close ports with ufw, and a few other things. Inside the SWAG container, fail2ban is running, and I’ve blocked foreign countries using the DBIP-SWAG-Docker-Mod and also tried to keep bots out. Thanks to FreshRSS, I canceled Feedbin. I’m currently reading my RSS feeds on my Mac and iOS with NetNewsWire (or Reeder Classic), as I don’t like the integration with Unread as much - I can cancel that subscription too. Linkding is so incredibly close to pinboard.in - I immediately felt at home. I love not having to wait for Anybox to finish syncing anymore. Geo Activity Playgrounds is now running peacefully in a Docker container on a new Raspberry Pi 5, with 16 GB Ram and a 256 GB SSD connected via M.2 hat, in my house. Portainer, Watchtower, and additionally Immich, Pi-hole, MagicMirror 2, Calibre-Web, Dashy, and Readeck are also running on it. If I want to access it on the go, I do it via VPN through my Fritz!Box. The two dedicated Pis for the ad blocker and MM2 have been retired and can now be used for other tinkering projects. BTW Calibre-Web is absolutely great, Dashy is fun, and I will switch to Readeck as soon as Readwise reaches Phase 4 of Enshittification. And I’m now looking at Immich in parallel. If I manage to break away from Apple Photos, it will probably be with its help.
tl;dr I’ve learned a lot about self-hosting in the last two weeks, installed and tried out many services, and will now hopefully slow down, see how stable everything runs, and will certainly move one or two services to another server or turn them off again - we’ll see.
What projects are you self-hosting? 😇