My home server plans usually die when I look at the hardware list.Everyone claims you need a dedicated box, which is rough if you don't have a spare machine sitting around.In reality, the PC you already have can handle most of it.
Docker Desktop runs on Windows, and plenty of useful tools are small enough that they barely register next to my browser tabs.Add How-To Geek on Google Add as Preferred Source Follow on Google Discover Jellyfin will stream your media Your storage setup will slow it down Close Jellyfin is the one people usually bring up when they talk about media streaming.It's a free, open-source media server.
It sorts your local movies, TV shows, and music and streams them to your phone, smart TV, or browser.There's no subscription and no data collection.When you run it in Docker Desktop on a regular Windows PC, it runs inside a small Linux virtual machine that Windows manages behind the scenes.
Storage gets a little weird with Jellyfin’s servers.If your media files live on a Windows drive like C:\Media, Docker has to share them across the Windows/Linux divide every time Jellyfin needs to read them.That handoff goes through a protocol layer that's a lot slower than native Linux storage.
Scanning a folder with 3,000 files can take nearly three seconds this way versus almost instantly on native storage.If you're writing video chunks to that same Windows drive during playback, streams can stall while waiting for those files to save.Besides the weird file naming convention, I really have no problem with Jellyfin.
I think it could be better, but it's free, so I can't really complain.Pi-hole will block ads on every device Windows already uses port 53 Pi-hole acts as a DNS filter for your whole network.When any device asks where a website is, Pi-hole checks that domain against a blocklist of known ad and tracking servers and just refuses to answer for the bad ones.
The ads never load because the request never goes anywhere.This works for every device on your network automatically, including smart TVs and IoT gadgets where you can't install a browser extension.It runs very lean inside Docker, usually using 50 to 150 MB of RAM and barely any CPU.
Getting it running on Windows can be a hassle because port 53 is where DNS traffic lives, and Windows already has services listening on it.When Docker tries to bind Pi-hole to port 53, it usually fails.You have to either disable the Windows Internet Connection Sharing (ICS) service or tell Pi-hole to bind to a specific network address instead of all of them.
I turn it on and off every so often since I don't want the whole network going down.If your router is set to use Pi-hole as the only DNS server and your PC goes to sleep or reboots for Windows updates, every device on your network loses internet access until the PC wakes back up and Docker restarts.Vaultwarden is a light password manager You need HTTPS to make it work Vaultwarden is an open-source password manager written in Rust.
Bitwarden is built for enterprise and needs serious resources to run, but Vaultwarden does the same job in a single small binary using under 50MB of RAM.It stores everything in a SQLite database and works with all the official Bitwarden apps and browser extensions.You need HTTPS for this one.
If you try to open Vaultwarden over plain HTTP on a local IP address, the browser blocks the encryption features it needs, and the vault just won't work.Mobile apps refuse to connect to non-HTTPS servers entirely.It keeps your passwords, notes, and payment cards in an encrypted database.
The whole point is getting the full Bitwarden experience for free on hardware that barely breaks a sweat.Losing your data is the bigger risk here.If the drive fails, power cuts out at the wrong moment, or the WSL 2 virtual disk gets corrupted, your SQLite database can be gone for good with no way to get it back.
Syncthing and Photoview will back up your photos You can skip the cloud and the AI features Syncthing is a free, open source tool for syncing files, and it's easy on a PC.It automatically copies photos from your phone into a plain folder on your computer.You don't need a cloud, an account, or a database.
It's a small program that runs right on Windows and usually uses well under 200MB of RAM, just sitting quietly in the system tray.It only syncs files, so you skip the AI face recognition, searching by description, and the annoying timeline.Your photos just show up in a normal Windows folder, where you can browse them in File Explorer or the Photos app.
The official Syncthing app has been discontinued, but a community fork called Syncthing-Fork keeps it going and works well.If you want a browsable web gallery on top of this, Photoview is a good pick.It scans a folder and builds thumbnails, and that part runs in Docker.
I like them together so they count as one.Uptime Kuma will watch your other services It goes offline when your PC does Uptime Kuma is a monitoring dashboard you host yourself to keep tabs on whether your websites, apps, and network devices are up and running.It regularly checks HTTP endpoints, pings, DNS records, and more on whatever schedule you set.
If something goes down, it sends you an alert right away through Discord, Telegram, email, or a handful of other options.It's a nice companion to the other containers on this list since you can keep an eye on Jellyfin, Pi-hole, and Vaultwarden all from one dashboard.It also monitors external sites and other devices on your network.
It's very light too, using around 100 to 200 MB of RAM with almost no CPU.The obvious catch is that the monitoring tool lives on the same machine as everything it's monitoring.So every time your computer sleeps, restarts, or runs Windows updates, Uptime Kuma goes offline too.
When the PC wakes back up, Kuma sees all the time it was asleep as downtime and fires off a pile of false alerts.That's not a big deal to me, though.This doesn't mean your PC can do it all Running these on an everyday PC has its limits.
Sleep, reboots, and Windows updates will knock things offline.Nothing bad has happened to me so far, and I'm not going to stop running most of them.If you already have a Windows PC that's on most days, you're pretty much set.
Docker OS Windows, macOS, Linux Brand Docker Price Starting at $9/month Free trial Free version with limited features Docker is an application that makes it easy to develop new apps.See at Docker Expand Collapse
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