XDA Developers

Last night, I asked my Nest Hub to turn off all the smart lights in my house, as I always do, only to be greeted by a spinning wheel and what seemed like a random reboot. I eventually resorted to turning the lights off via the Philips Hue app after assuming it was an isolated issue, which has unfortunately become far too common with Google and Nest smart home products.

Self-hosting has always been about controlling the software I use. Docker made that even easier. I could try a new application, deploy it in minutes, and keep adding more services to my server. That flexibility is one reason I enjoy running my own infrastructure.

If you're a Plex user on Apple TV, Roku, Android TV, or Fire TV, you'll likely be happy about this news. Plex has finally decided to pull back on its recent overhaul of the TV app for its streaming devices following backlash from the self-hosting app's community. This means the very useful left-hand-side menu is back.

When it comes to optimizing Wi-Fi performance, most people focus on moving the router, switching bands, moving to a wired connection, or rebooting the router. However, none of these fixes address the one router setting you never checked, something that quietly slows down everything you do on your network.

Back-to-school season is not just about pencil cases and laptops anymore. For a lot of families, it is also the point in the year when the desk setup gets a rethink, whether that is a student settling into hybrid classes, a teacher prepping lesson plans at home, or a parent working remotely while managing the household schedule.

Docker started as a way for me to experiment with a few self-hosted apps, but it quickly turned into a crucial part of my digital life. Now, everything from my personal cloud storage to my project manager runs in its own isolated container and gives me unparalleled control, privacy, and flexibility. Let me walk you through my entire setup and show you how I use these Docker containers to manage my entire digital life.

One of the coolest parts of Linux is that it's built upon decades of user effort. Something we do, or use, or install today could have fingerprints on it that have survived longer than some of Linux's younger users. However, as much as the Linux kernel and each distro it powers have rich histories, there's also a lot to be said for its software.

YouTube Music has been my default choice on Android Auto for as long as I can remember. It is convenient, works well with voice commands, and gives me access to practically anything I want to play. But the more time I spent using it in the car, the more I noticed little annoyances.

Wi-Fi is the most natural fit for most connections in a home, especially when you're trying to work around the restrictions of a rental unit or have great distance between devices. When these connections feel slow or interrupted in a certain area, the impulse is to buy more coverage in the form of a range extender or, better yet, a mesh node. More coverage, better signal, and more of the thing you already have. When I had done this in my own home, however, I found that this didn't actually solve

Ollama has been my default runtime for running LLMs locally. It makes the entire process almost stupidly easy. I can download a model with one command, run it immediately, and connect it to other apps through a local API without worrying about model formats or hardware configuration. I had no major complaints about Ollama, but I have this habit of messing around and keep trying new things.

By and large, Windows' File Explorer stays out of the way, but there's nothing more noticeable when it does get in the way. Mine had developed a habit where folders would take their sweet time to open. The stalls clustered around the moments Explorer likes to glance at the network, as I opened a new window, clicked into the navigation pane, or expanded This PC. These were times when Explorer would pause, as if checking in with something before showing me what was already right in front of it.

Have you ever wanted to watch your self-hosted Jellyfin server in Minecraft? Probably not, right? Well, that hasn't stopped Reddit user choke527 from making that happen.

Tailscale is one of the most recommended services for private external access. It earned its place not just by being free, but by making networking feel almost unfairly easy. You add your devices to the tailnet, and suddenly they can talk to each other without any unnecessary overhead.

A few weeks ago I ran DeepSeek V4 Flash on a single Lenovo ThinkStation PGX, and it worked, even if it had some pretty big caveats. The ds4 engine is a cleverly designed C project built for a single model family, and it hit 10 to 14 tokens per second with a million-token context window. But that's still slow enough that you sit and watch it, and to fit 284 billion parameters into 128 GB at all, ds4 has to quantize the routed experts down to 2 bits. So the model was both slow and measurably worse

When most people think of setting up a home security system, investing in an NVR (Network Video Recorder) comes to mind. With 4K streams and multiple cameras, it feels like an essential requirement to store mountains of data. So when I was looking at upgrading my home surveillance system, it was predictably something I was keeping an eye out for. That's until I discovered Frigate. It turns out there's a better way to handle security footage. After putting it through a thorough test, I can confir

My Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090 has 32GB of GDDR7 memory, and it's honestly wasted on 90% of what I use my PC for. I’ve been finding new ways to use that GPU's potential lately, because it’s only using 3.4 GB most of the time, so it has plenty of resources to share. It’s idle, while DDR5 prices skyrocket and my WSL2 environment complains about memory every time I bring up containers, builds, and tricky LLM work that breaks on Windows.

Nobody can deny that Google Maps is an excellent navigation app. But as good as it is, it can't account for every driving scenario. I'll be honest, driving where I live is an entirely unique experience.

Productivity apps can be a godsend when you’re about to head back to school for the upcoming semester. But considering the subscription-heavy nature of most cloud-based tools, it might be a good idea to self-host your own QoL applications. Contrary to what most beginners think, you don’t need bulky enterprise-grade systems to build a cheap self-hosting workstation for your everyday tasks.

There are three Strix Halo machines in my office, and until this week, the Asus ROG Flow Z13 was the one doing the least AI work. The least work at all, in fact, as it was being used to play Death Stranding 2 and not much else. But after putting Lemonade on every other box I run LLMs on, I wanted to see how well the tablet would do.

Many of the most popular backup solutions require a hefty purchase and a more involved setup, like a NAS decked out with multiple drives plus a cloud subscription for extra storage. There's nothing wrong with that strategy, but it's not the easiest way to do it, and it costs more than it has to.