These are 6 apps I always run on my NAS

abdulmanannet77@gmail.comDecember 25, 2025

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A NAS is an invaluable part of a robust backup solution, and more reliable than just plugging in a flash drive to take backups every now and then. However, a NAS is also a miniature computer that can run additional services on your network. These are 6 that I always run on mine.

Pi-hole or Adguard

The few times I’ve had to start my home lab from scratch, the very first thing I start with every time is AdGuard Home or Pi-hole.

Both serve as a sort of network-wide ad blocking, allowing you to block ads on things like smart TVs, all phones and PCs, and your refrigerator, if you have a refrigerator that serves you ads.

I’ve used both in the past, but currently use AdGuard Home because most of my services now run on an old Windows 10 PC that functions as my NAS.

PiHole is awesome too. In the past, I’ve run a PiHole on a Raspberry Pi Zero without any major performance impact. If your NAS can’t handle running Adguard Home or PiHole, you can certainly move this service to an older Raspberry Pi without a problem.

Pi-Hole running on a Raspberry Pi 3 B as a backup instance.

Jelly

Jellyfin is a one-stop shop for your self-hosted TV shows, movies, music, and more. If you have a digitized multimedia collection, Jellyfin excels with films and television in particular.

NaviDrome

NaviDrome is a self-hosted media server that lets you turn the stack of old CDs you’ve collected in a closet into your own personal Spotify or Apple Music.

I use Navidrome on the same device which works as my NAS without issue, and as a bonus the NAS already comes with tons of storage space for music I’ve copied from CDs.

You can access NaviDrome through a web interface or use a number of supported third-party applications to access your library. On the media server I use in my car (which automatically syncs with my NAS), I use Symphonium, as it works well with Android Auto.

A VPN (WireGuard)

If you host a lot of services yourself, you’ll probably want to be able to access them from outside your home. Typically, this involves setting up a reverse proxy so that you don’t have to manually expose each service to the Internet.

However, I have a static IP address provided by my ISP. Instead of going to the trouble of managing a Cloudflare tunnel or other reverse proxy setup, I run a WireGuard VPN on my network instead.

Select the WireGuard server from the available VPN options.

This way, whenever I want to use one of my self-hosted services, all I have to do is launch WireGuard on my phone or laptop and everything acts as if the devices were actually connected to my local network.

It’s simple, as secure as possible, and takes just a few minutes to operate.

Cloudflare’s outage destroyed half the internet, but this open source app saved my homelab

Don’t let a third-party outage prevent you from accessing your self-hosted services.

Caliber-web

I aggressively collect PDFs of all kinds: public domain books, manuals for every tool, computer component or piece of equipment I own, scientific articles, etc.

Instead of just dumping them all in one catastrophically cluttered folder, I run a Calibrre-web instance on my NAS. Whenever I need something, Caliber provides a much more convenient interface. Additionally, Caliber lets you mark or highlight documents just like you would in real life, which can be handy if you want to jot down important information for later.

Immich

Using your NAS to back up your photos from your phone or digital camera is pretty common, but you can take it to the next level by using Immich.

Unlike a simple file transfer system (like SAMBA), Immich comes with a Google Photos-like user interface that is extremely convenient to use. As an added bonus, Immich also includes AI features that run locally on your NAS: no internet connection required. This allows Immich to intelligently sort your photos, tag people, and offer other “smart” conveniences without compromising your privacy.

Immich requires a bit more resources than most other services you might try to host on your NAS, and the official recommendation is a virtual machine with 4 cores and at least 6 GB of RAM.

Of course, if you find that your NAS can’t handle all of these services at once, you’ll need to choose which one you use. If you want to get started with self-hosting, you should consider repurposing an old PC to function as your NAS: it will have more power, be upgradeable, and function as a home lab in one.