If I had a nickel for every time someone has whined that you need to self host this, I’d have 2 nickels. Which isn’t a lot but still noteworthy because this is literally a self-host community.
this post was submitted on 29 Apr 2025
240 points (98.4% liked)
Selfhosted
46410 readers
1447 users here now
A place to share alternatives to popular online services that can be self-hosted without giving up privacy or locking you into a service you don't control.
Rules:
-
Be civil: we're here to support and learn from one another. Insults won't be tolerated. Flame wars are frowned upon.
-
No spam posting.
-
Posts have to be centered around self-hosting. There are other communities for discussing hardware or home computing. If it's not obvious why your post topic revolves around selfhosting, please include details to make it clear.
-
Don't duplicate the full text of your blog or github here. Just post the link for folks to click.
-
Submission headline should match the article title (don’t cherry-pick information from the title to fit your agenda).
-
No trolling.
Resources:
- selfh.st Newsletter and index of selfhosted software and apps
- awesome-selfhosted software
- awesome-sysadmin resources
- Self-Hosted Podcast from Jupiter Broadcasting
Any issues on the community? Report it using the report flag.
Questions? DM the mods!
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
We need a running service when a simple command will do?
How big an attack surface do you need?
Nice but I believe it lacks the ability to chose the codec, bitrate, etc for videos (and bitrate for audio?)
Wow, it even includes plenty of 3d file types which are quite hard to actually find converters for.
It's nice there's a front end for all these tools but I kinda don't get why is everything "hosted". This could have just been a desktop app. I guess it can be useful when you want to convert something on your phone but to me it just seems like unnecessary server maintenance burden.
I think that a good chunk of the selfhosted community is "sole IT guy at a tiny company". This is great for that, since having to update desktop software in twenty places sucks.
It’s nice because I don’t have to install it. Now I can use it when I work, on my computer at home or when my dad calls me.
But there is also merit to using a desktop application.
Something like this is useful as well if you have a large item to convert since you can offload that processing to your server/NAS and not have it bog down your PC/phone/etc
Fair enough. I guess I imagined someone hosting all the selfhosted web apps that get posted to this forum, when most people likely just host only the few they need on the go, so it isn't really that burdensome.
Edit: Forgot to add: I always though that it could be useful to just set up Apache Guacamole, so that instead of the hosted services, my family members could just use remote desktop apps but I never got around to it.
My small repurposed NAS could not handle hosting everything posted here, but it would be really nice if I had the time to both set it up AND use them. I'm suprised it can even handle almost 10 apps (but I am the only user).
I also had a dream of setting up Guacamole and run Heroes of Might and Magic III turn based. But I never got it working (didn't use docker back then) so I gave up on it.
Different use cases.
It's not like your uploading and downloading gigabytes to it to use ffmpeg. For that you use something local. This is for converting smaller files conveniently. For example from a laptop and you don't want to use a public converter that might keep the content.
If you regularly convert certain file types on a computer, dedicated programs tend to be better than these combo ones anyway.
Why would anyone setup and maintain a server to do infrequent conversions of small files?
In addition to the other post...
You already have a setup and throwing one more docker on isn't a big deal. especially if you have watchtower already setup as well... then it even updates itself.
I use tools like this all the time... PDF for example stirling-pdf makes doing something things a LOT easier than firing up a "proper" pdf editor. This tool would likely be the same concept for other workflows.
Because otherwise you need to maintain it on everyone of your computers and phone and everytime you wipe them and in every virtual machine you make and the developpers would need to maintain a version for every operating system that exists and they always forget to make a version for BeOS so that sucks
I'm genuinely confused about the use cases you all seem to have. When are you sitting in a field on your phone trying desperately to convert a .avi to a .mkv?
For desktops you just need to have ffmpeg or handbrake or ImageMagick installed - there's nothing to "maintain". Image conversion is as simple as convert test.jpg test.png.
I’m genuinely confused about the use cases you all seem to have. When are you sitting in a field on your phone trying desperately to convert a .avi to a .mkv?
I worked IT for a newspaper back when they were more relevant. The satelite offices and in-field work had a surprising amount of problems like that.
Why not both?
I use this on desktop https://github.com/Tichau/FileConverter but then on mobile how you would convert files, especially niche technical ones? I used to rely on cloudconvert.com but now I can install this on my server
An app?
You need an $100/year developer account to publish apps on the apple store. Without that, your app cannot be used by owners of an apple product.
Self hosting has no such problems
Screw apple products. Release on F-Droid.
Yeah please
This is awesome, thank you for sharing.
This is a great addition to my home-lab, no more "free online convert" tools needed.
Same, I've been looking for something like that for quite some time
If only you needn't host it.
you can run it locally