They rent you the library. Build your own.

MIT · Getting started · Contributing · Feed the keep

A self-hosted home for your movies, TV shows and music. One command, one page, and it sets itself up: no technical knowledge needed, and nothing to install or configure by hand. Everything underneath (the search engines, the download manager, the subtitle finder) wires itself together automatically on first start. You never touch them unless you want to.

Host it. Change it. Keep the keys.

In short: an open-source, self-hosted media server and Netflix-style streaming app for your own movies, TV shows and music. Search, request, download and watch in one place, with Radarr, Sonarr, Lidarr, Prowlarr and qBittorrent built in and set up for you, all in one Docker Compose stack. No account, no subscription, and your files stay on your machine.

Why virtuallyView

• One app instead of five. Library, player, requests, downloads and settings in one interface. No separate media server, request app or download dashboard to wire together.
• Sets itself up. One command starts everything and connects every service to every other one. No API keys to copy, no ports to match.
• Repairs itself. Stuck or dead downloads are replaced with another release, a dead VPN relay is swapped for a working one, and a half-downloaded show keeps searching for the missing episodes, without you noticing.
• Plays anything in the browser. Direct play when the browser can, live conversion when it cannot (MKV, HEVC, DTS, 5.1 audio), with seeking that just works.
• Every screen in the house. Phones, TVs and laptops open it at the address shown in Settings, including your Tailscale address for watching away from home. Cast to Chromecast, AirPlay or DLNA.
• Private by default. Searches can go through a free, no-account VPN or Tor, and nothing needs a cloud account.

If you can copy-paste one command, you can run this. No server experience required. See it done start to finish in install for beginners.

The quiet war

Somewhere a licence expired last night and a film you loved is gone. A price went up. A show you were halfway through moved behind another paywall. An app you paid for changed its rules, and you found out from the notice you clicked past.

None of that is an accident. Renting culture instead of letting you own it is the business model. The catalogue is theirs, the menu is theirs, the record of everything you watch is theirs. You are the tenant, and tenants get notice.

virtuallyView is the other side of that line. One small server in your house. Your library, your accounts and your history in a folder you can copy to a drive and carry away. No account with us, because there is no us holding one. No telemetry. No switch anyone else can flip.

The Keepers

People who run their own server are called keepers here. Nobody enrols, nothing is sold, and there is no ranking. A keeper is anyone who decided that what they watch and listen to should still be there tomorrow, and who is willing to plug in a box to make it true.

The oath, if you want one:

1. Host it. The server lives where you can touch it.
2. Change it. The code is MIT. Read it, break it, fork it.
3. Keep the keys. Your accounts and your data never leave your hands.
4. Pass it on. Set one up for a friend who is still renting.

It does not supply media and it does not replace the tools behind it. It is the interface to the setup you already run, or the one it helps you build. Use media and services you have the right to use.

Status: early release. The features below work in the source and were exercised in a browser against the bundled stack, but not every combination of services, formats and devices has been tried. Bug reports with reproduction steps help more than anything else.

What you get

• Library. Movies, TV and music from Radarr, Sonarr and Lidarr, with sort, filters (genre, studio, collection), A-Z jump, Continue Watching, Next Up and a personal My List. Music has lyrics, instant mix and a full track list with missing tracks marked. Concerts and music videos you download file themselves under the artist (created if new) in Concerts and Videos sections (how).
• Player. Direct play where the browser can, live conversion with ffmpeg where it cannot (MKV, HEVC, DTS). Seek bar with chapter marks, Skip intro and Skip credits, speed, fullscreen, picture in picture, subtitles (sidecar files, text tracks and picture tracks such as PGS), audio track and quality choice while converting, and next episode with an episode picker.
• Requests. One search across your library and everything you can request, with posters. Pick the exact match and the quality profile (for example Ultra-HD if you have a 4K screen). Requesting a film that is still in cinemas warns that only camera copies exist and offers to wait for a proper release. Follow progress from search to download to import, and manage failed requests in bulk.
• Downloads. The qBittorrent and NZBGet queue, with pause, resume and remove. A setup checklist and one-click public indexers (Settings > Indexers) make sure requests actually find something. A short starting set of lawful sources is connected automatically; one click in Settings > Indexers adds every public, non-adult source that answers (a bundled FlareSolverr helps with Cloudflare-protected ones), so one being slow or blocked does not leave requests stuck.
• Accounts. Several users, an administrator role, per-person watch progress and lists, profile pictures, age limits per person, a list of signed-in devices, sign in another device with a code, and sign-up closed unless you open it. Optional request approval and per-person limits. Other devices on your network sign in at the same address.
• Refresh. A button in the top bar of every page reloads what you are looking at and asks the server to forget its short-lived caches and re-check requests and downloads now (it is hidden while a video plays).
• Notifications. A bell in the top bar, desktop pop-ups, and channels for Discord, Slack, Telegram, ntfy, Gotify, webhooks and email.
• Backups. Daily automatic backup, one-click download and restore, and an admin command line for when you are locked out.
• Themes. Fifteen themes with live previews, chosen per device, plus a theme creator. Light, dark or follow the system.
• Live TV, photos and books. Live channels from any M3U playlist with record-now, seek-bar preview thumbnails in the player, a photo browser with slideshow, and a book shelf. Cast to a TV with Chromecast, AirPlay or DLNA, no account needed (casting).
• Wiki and other apps. Offline Wikipedia, medical and survival libraries through Kiwix, and links to Immich, Audiobookshelf and Kavita, each one command away (wiki, apps).
• Optional assistant. A local model through Ollama that can answer questions and act on your library, with confirmation for anything destructive.
• Privacy. Searches through a free VPN with no account (VPN Gate), or downloads and searches through your own VPN provider, and Tor for search (privacy). The free relays do not carry torrent traffic, so with them downloads go direct. Optional automatic updates (updates).
• Optional proxy. Route the server's public lookups (metadata, covers, trailers) through Tor, SOCKS5 or HTTP.

Limits

SABnzbd, Plex and Emby are not supported. virtuallyView plays files itself and needs no other media server. Scheduled live TV recording, a programme guide, an EPUB reader and plugins are planned for phase 2. Picture subtitles (PGS, VobSub) are drawn onto the video, so they only work while the file is being converted. Missing metadata or an offline service limits what a page can show, and the pages say so.

Privacy

Self-hosted does not mean nothing leaves the machine.

• Library actions talk to the services you configured. Those services make their own metadata, indexer and download requests.
• Posters, trailers and cast photos are loaded from public sites (TMDB, YouTube, MusicBrainz, Wikipedia). Those sites see the request. The outbound proxy setting can hide the server's own lookups.
• Search suggestions send your query text to Wikipedia. Ollama model downloads need the network; a local model runs inference on your machine.

Read your service settings before pointing this at anything sensitive. For routing search or downloads through Tor or a VPN, see privacy.

Quick start

Docker or Podman (recommended)

git clone https://github.com/VirtuallyTrue12/virtuallyView.git && cd virtuallyView
docker compose -f docker-compose.yml -f docker-compose.release.yml up -d

This pulls the published, versioned image and starts virtuallyView with the services underneath it, already connected to each other. Prefer to build it yourself from this folder? docker compose up -d does that instead (a few minutes longer on the first run). It needs Docker with Compose 2.24 or newer, or Podman with a compatible Compose; plan for about 2 GB of images, 4 GB of RAM and free disk for your media. If you have never touched Docker before, install for beginners walks through every step, screenshots included.

Under the hood it brings up a small stack of open-source engines that do the actual finding and downloading (Radarr, Sonarr, Prowlarr, Lidarr, Bazarr, qBittorrent and NZBGet) and connects them to each other and to virtuallyView automatically: root folders, the download client, the indexer connections, all of it. You never need to open their pages or know what they are. They share a private network, but the ports published on your computer are reachable by anything that can reach it, so read deployment before exposing them.

Each new install gets its own generated service keys (docker/seed/README.md); the one shared default left is qBittorrent's login, which only this machine can reach. Read security before exposing anything beyond your home network.

Open http://localhost:3000 and create the first account. It becomes the administrator. Then:

• Indexers. Without one, requests find nothing. Add public indexers in one click under Settings > Indexers in virtuallyView (private trackers are added in Prowlarr, http://localhost:9696, with your own login). Choose sources you are entitled to use; none are added for you. The Home page checklist tells you when this is missing.
• Bazarr. Open http://localhost:6767, finish its setup, copy the API key and enter the URL and key under Settings > Services. Use an address the app container can reach, not localhost.

If a root folder or download client is missing after first boot:

docker compose run --rm --no-deps provision

To run only the app against services you already have:

docker compose up -d app

Then connect them under Settings > Services.

New to Docker? Follow the install guide for beginners.

It worked? Tell one friend still renting, and if it saved you a subscription, the keep is fed by people like you.

The published image is ghcr.io/virtuallytrue12/virtuallyview, tagged with each release version (and latest).

The bundled stack keeps its library and downloads in named volumes, not in this folder. To use an existing library, change the media-movies, media-tv, media-music and downloads volumes in docker-compose.yml to bind mounts. The *arr containers run as PUID=0/PGID=0 to avoid volume permission trouble; see the seed guide for how to run unprivileged.

On Podman, a few things behave differently after a reboot. See troubleshooting.

Other devices

Anyone on your network can open http://<this-computer's-ip>:3000. Add their accounts under Settings > Users, or switch on sign-up under Settings > Server. Settings > Server also has the address to share and a note about the firewall. To watch on a TV, follow watching on your TV: the TV's browser, casting, or a TV the server finds by itself.

From source

Requires Node.js 22.5 or newer (the server uses the built-in SQLite module; the Docker image runs Node 24).

npm install
npm run dev --workspace=apps/server   # API on :3000
npm run dev --workspace=apps/web      # web app on :3001, proxies /api

Assistant (optional)

The assistant is not installed by default, because it adds a download of about 5 GB. To add it to the Docker stack:

docker compose --profile ai up -d

A small model (qwen2.5:0.5b) is pulled on first use, or pick one under Settings > AI Assistant. Everyday questions (downloads, problems, retries) are answered without the model, so a small one is enough. Small models make mistakes: read what the assistant proposes before you confirm it.

Running from source instead: install Ollama from https://ollama.com, start it with ollama serve, and the server finds it at 127.0.0.1:11434.

Commands

Command	What it does
npm run dev --workspace=apps/server	API server with reload, port 3000
npm run dev --workspace=apps/web	Vite dev server, port 3001
npm run typecheck	Typecheck server and web
npm run lint	Lint server and web
npm test	Unit and integration tests
npm run test:browser	Browser tests (needs a build and Chromium)
npm run admin -- <command>	Reset a password, list or promote accounts
npm run build	Build server and web
npm start --workspace=apps/server	Production server (also serves the built web app)

Layout

apps/web/               React + Vite frontend
apps/server/            Fastify API and services
packages/integrations/  Radarr, Sonarr, Prowlarr, Lidarr, Bazarr, qBittorrent, NZBGet adapters
packages/themes/        Theme token schema and validation
packages/ai/            Assistant provider contract and tools
packages/types/         Shared types
themes/                 Bundled themes
docker/seed/            Seed configuration for the bundled stack
scripts/                Setup and provisioning

Documentation

• Architecture
• Install for beginners
• Getting started
• API
• Requests
• Integrations
• Themes
• Assistant and tools
• Features
• Administration: indexers, approvals, notifications, backup, locked-out recovery
• Watching on your TV
• Casting
• Privacy: anonymous search and downloads (Tor, VPN)
• Rights and acceptable use
• Compatibility and using services you already run
• Automatic updates
• Start and stop buttons (the helper)
• Wiki (offline Wikipedia via Kiwix)
• Other apps (Immich, Audiobookshelf, Kavita)
• Roadmap
• HTTPS and reaching it from outside your home
• Development
• Deployment
• Troubleshooting
• Security

Tech

React 18, React Router 7, Vite 6, TypeScript, Fastify 5, SQLite (node:sqlite), ffmpeg for conversion, optional Ollama. npm workspaces.

Contributing

Bug reports with steps to reproduce, setup guide fixes, tested integration notes, themes and code are all welcome. See CONTRIBUTING.md. Never paste credentials or private library details into an issue.

Feed the keep

The big platforms have advertising budgets, lawyers and thousands of engineers. This project has spare evenings. Every bug fixed, every device tested and every server bill comes out of them.

If virtuallyView is running in your house and has saved you a subscription, add to the fire. Five dollars is a real contribution. Ten is a good month. Nothing is required, and nobody sees who gave.

What it pays for: test hardware, hosting, and the time to answer issues and fix things.

What it buys you: nothing. No priority, no features, no vote on the roadmap. It buys the project's survival, which is the point.

Other ways to be a keeper, free: star the repository, report a bug with steps to reproduce, host one for a friend, or send a fix.

Why crypto: no bank, no payment processor and no platform sits between you and a small open project, able to freeze it or take a cut. Bitcoin donations show on the public chain, so anyone can check that the address is live. Monero is private by design. Crypto is irreversible and not an investment: check the address and the network yourself, and send a small test first.

Bitcoin:

bc1q5twatnq2vpqtg3nj86tfzyncxjh42zz2razjhp

Monero:

45Sb3B4iELhCL8vE1hrN6u9yDyPb5fgcYgXzG9ZKWCWfe4BS7HpLHGpFE2wdka9vutaAkSeNoykvLAx2dQTbcXh4RcLiq8b

License

MIT. See LICENSE.