I run a lot of self-hosted software. Some of it lives in Docker Compose files, some of it in one-off containers I forget about until they break. At some point I got tired of that split; my smart home lived in Home Assistant, and everything else lived somewhere else, managed a different way, with different update habits and different failure modes.
So I started packaging the self-hosted apps I actually use as native Home Assistant add-ons. Not because Home Assistant needed another audiobook server or time tracker built in; it obviously doesn’t, but because I wanted one place to check for updates, one place to look at logs, one backup routine that covers everything.
That collection now lives at github.com/andreibarburas/hassio-apps, and it’s grown into a small but genuinely useful add-on repository. Here’s what’s in it and why.
What’s in the repo
Audiobookshelf — a self-hosted audiobook and podcast server. If you’ve got a library of audiobooks scattered across drives, this gives it a proper home with progress tracking, multi-user support, and a mobile-friendly interface.
Feishin — a modern music player client for Navidrome, Jellyfin, and Subsonic-compatible servers. If you’re already running a music server, Feishin is a genuinely nice front end for it; clean, fast, and it doesn’t try to reinvent what a music player should look like.
Homepage — the highly customizable startpage/dashboard that’s probably shown up in half the self-hosting screenshots you’ve seen. One glanceable page for every service running on your network.
Musicload — a mobile-first companion app for Navidrome. It handles searching, previewing, downloading, and organizing music, with ListenBrainz automation built in so your listening history and recommendations stay in sync without extra setup.
SearXNG — a privacy-respecting metasearch engine. It routes your search queries through your own Home Assistant server rather than hitting search engines directly with your IP, aggregating results from multiple sources without the tracking.
Solidtime — an open-source time tracker aimed at freelancers and agencies. It’s a heavier add-on than the others; it ships with its own PostgreSQL database, a scheduler, and a queue worker, but that also means it works out of the box with no external database to stand up separately.
Termix — a web-based server management platform with a built-in SSH terminal, tunneling, and file editing. Useful if you want terminal access to your other machines without leaving the browser.
All of them support both amd64 and aarch64, so they run whether you’re on a mini PC or a Raspberry Pi–class board.
Why add-ons instead of Compose
The honest answer is convenience, but a specific kind of convenience. Home Assistant already gives you:
- A single place to see what’s installed and whether it needs an update
- Built-in log viewing without SSHing in
- A consistent way to expose ports and manage storage
- Backups that sweep up everything alongside your automations, if you want them to
None of that is exotic; you can get all of it with a well-organized Compose setup and a bit of discipline. But I already have Home Assistant running 24/7 as the hub for everything else in the house, so folding these apps into it meant one less system to think about separately.
Packaging third-party apps as add-ons isn’t always a drop-in process, either. A few of the recurring problems worth mentioning if you’re curious about the mechanics:
- Some upstream images declare Docker
VOLUMEpaths that quietly block Home Assistant’s own persistent storage from working; the fix is redirecting the app’s data path elsewhere and adjusting permissions. - Upstream entrypoints often don’t
chownHome Assistant–specific paths (like media folders), so that has to be handled explicitly before handing off to the app. - Apps with multiple internal services, Solidtime’s Postgres instance, for example; need that extra service started and managed manually inside the add-on before the main app can come up.
None of this is difficult, but it’s the kind of detail that makes “just wrap it in a container” a bit more involved than it sounds.
Installing the repo
If you want to try any of these:
- In Home Assistant, Go to Settings → Apps → Install app
- Click the three-dot menu (⋮) in the top right and select Repositories
- Paste in the repository URL and hit Add:
https://github.com/andreibarburas/hassio-apps
- The apps will show up in the store — install whichever ones are useful to you.
What’s next
This is an ongoing project; new add-ons get added as I need them, and existing ones get patched as upstream changes. A bunq-to-Firefly III sync tool is in progress right now, and there’s a running list of smaller cleanup items (repo naming consistency, a deferred VPN routing setup for SearXNG) that’ll get sorted along the way.
If you find any of these useful, the repo is open for issues and pull requests: github.com/andreibarburas/hassio-apps. And if you’d like to support the work directly, you can always head to https://bunq.me/barburasdonations.
Built with AI-assisted development, as always disclosed.
