How it works
Your media on your hardware, reachable from anywhere, with no cloud and no subscription. What Home Media Hub does, what it’s built with, and how far along it is.
The premise
A self-hosted media server for video and photo libraries spread across lots of drives. Home Media Hub Manager, a desktop app for Windows and macOS, installs it as a system service with Node.js and ffmpeg included, so there’s no Docker to set up. Reach it from anywhere over Tailscale, or directly through a port you forward on your router. Version 0.0.10 is published for Windows as an unsigned preview, with a 14-day trial. It will be $100, paid once, for one server; keys aren’t on sale yet. It was called Free-WAN until November 2026.
Video your browser can play directly streams as-is, and everything else gets converted to HLS on the fly. All your drives show up as one library with full-text search and filters, sorted automatically based on your folder structure. You can also put your own branding on it.
What’s included
Plays files directly when it can, and converts to HLS on the fly when it can’t
One searchable library across multiple drives, organized from your folder structure
Embedded and separate subtitle files, playback speed, and pick up where you left off
A manager app that installs the server as a service, and looks after its connection, license, settings and media folders
Reachable from anywhere over Tailscale, or directly with HTTPS on a port you forward
How it’s built
Home Media Hub is built on TypeScript, Tauri, Rust, ffmpeg, HLS and Tailscale.
The repository is 76% TypeScript, 18% Swift, 4% JavaScript by volume.
It carries 150 commits since Jun 2026, most recently changed in Oct 2026.
How the work is done
Every project here starts as a written spec, and the spec stays the source of truth once there’s code. The repository keeps a build plan with current status, an append-only decision log of where the code departed from the plan, and a handoff document that describes where things stand, including the unfinished parts.
That’s how one person keeps this many projects moving, and it’s what this page is written from.
Current state
Shipping. Released and usable today.
The source is private, so the way to check what this page says is to use the product.
Try it
Try Home Media Hub on your desktop
Download Home Media Hub Manager for Windows, and try the server free for 14 days. Keys aren’t on sale yet.
- Price
- $100
- Paid
- one time
- Covers
- one owner, one server at a time
- Refund
- 30 days
Nothing is being charged today. There's no pre-order, no deposit, and no waiting list. If you want to know when it opens, send an email and you'll get one reply when it does.