A decade of “personal cloud box” attempts has shown that the hard part isn’t the hardware, it’s the long-term social contract. Synology/WD/My Cloud/etc all eventually hit the same wall: once the company pivots or dies, you’re left with a sealed brick that you don’t fully control, holding the most irreplaceable thing you own: your data. If you’re going to charge an Apple-like premium on commodity mini-PC hardware, you really have to over-communicate what happens if Umbrel-the-company disappears or changes direction: how do I keep using this thing in 5–10 years without your cloud, your app store, your updates?
The interesting opportunity here isn’t selling a fancy N100 box, it’s turning “self-hosted everything” into something your non-technical friend could actually live with. That’s mostly about boring stuff: automatic off-site backup that isn’t tied to one vendor, painless replacement/restore if the hardware dies, and clear guarantees about what runs locally vs phoning home. If Umbrel leans into being forkable and portable across generic hardware, it has a shot at being trusted infrastructure instead of just another pretty NAS that people regret once the marketing site goes dark.
Don't forget the user experience needs to be seamless. We bubble ourselves to this as tech fluent folks on HN, but the seamless quality needs to be on par or better with Google Drive, iCloud drive, Google / iCloud Photos etc.
Ability to share, good default security, and seamless integration with the things people care about.
If this device can't automatically backup a phone wirelessly and without my interaction, it will be a poor proposition to most people.
We would all have been better off fiercely advocating for open protocols for all this stuff first (forced interop), but technologists have not wanted to wade into that in a sustained, en masse way
I've tried a lot of personal cloud options (ownCloud, a Resilio Sync mesh, CloundMounter + B2) and somehow ended up back on iCloud because of this.
My next experiment is just to use NFS over Nebula/Tailscale and see how much data I can just host off my NAS, but it's surprisingly been quite a journey for a simple problem.
You can't really switch away from iCloud without sacrificing it's deep integration.
The whole whole ecosystem is designed around it.
Don't get me wrong, Apple could've written their software with different upstream options, but they choose not to - hence going away from iCloud forces you to give up on a lot of features
I'm just pointing this out because if you've already attempted different options and went back to iCloud, then trying others isn't likely to be worthwhile, honestly.
You'd first have to accept that moving away from it means sacrificing features such as the photos sync (including delete etc).
Sorry, isn't this running an open-source OS? The header has a link to a github with a non-commercial license[0].
If so, couldn't you just use the OS on non-premium-priced mini-PC hardware and never have to worry about them locking you out of your box? I guess maybe it's concerning if you're being forced to update by the OS? I've never actually run a system like that, but was considering umbrel OS (didn't actually know about the hardware until this post), so if I'm being naive about something, it's in earnest.
A non-commercial license prevents it from being open-source, and I think already constitutes extremely clear communication about what will happen to users when Umbrel goes bankrupt: they will be stranded, because the license doesn't allow another company to step up and take over maintenance the way an open-source license would.
these companies - if they are so afraid of an OSI approved license - should put certain conditions into their that trigger when they go out of business and the IP gets released
I’m not worried about “can I, personally, keep this thing running?” so much as “what is the long-term story for the kind of person who buys a turnkey appliance”.
Yes, Umbrel OS is on GitHub and you can already run it on generic NUCs / Pi etc. That’s great. But the value prop of the hardware is the whole bundle: curated apps, painless updates, maybe remote access, maybe backups. If Umbrel-the-company pivots or withers, the repo still being there under a non-commercial license doesn’t guarantee ongoing maintenance, an app store, or support. And the NC clause is exactly what makes it hard for someone else to step in and sell a fully supported forked “Umbrel but maintained” box to non-technical users. So for people like you and me, sure, we can just install it elsewhere; for the target audience of an expensive plug-and-play box, the long-term social contract is still the fragile part.
Ah, okay, yeah, I get you now. I could get behind a splashy section about how users can "walk away at any time" with a roadmap that seems reasonable. I think that fits in with the general ethos of what these things should offer to consumers. I can certainly see why a company wouldn't be keen to advertise "if we die, here's what you can do.", but a way to tell consumers how to gracefully exit doesn't seem so antithetical to a marketing plan, and personally, knowing they've given me an off-ramp does make me more likely to use a thing.
> you’re left with a sealed brick that you don’t fully control
Totally agreed. I had seen umbrel and others in the past but recently decided to just get a 4-bay m.2 ssd enclosure (using RAID 1 for 2 sets of 2), not a NAS (after previously having a Synology NAS). I only want pure file access in a small, quiet form factor and I can have another Mac host and cloud backup. Currently using Tailscale Drive (alpha feature) to share it with devices and working pretty well so far.
Goal is my mom running it, and keeping it 100% open source.
It looks like there isn't a lot of visible progress, but there's now a branch with a live CD installer, and an admin UI, so no command line shenanigans are necessary. Once that is cleaned up, the website will be refreshed.
I really need to quit my job so I can work on this full time.
What will make development sustainable? I mean it could take some time until it gets trackson and also usually open source works if there is a supporting company behind it.
I am going to get it to a point where moderately technical people would be happy to use it over other options, and build a community that contributes. I will continue to work on making it easier to use over time.
No, if you use the installer CD it's a fully UI based install. No command line. No awareness it's even running nix.
Administration is through a web UI.
It could easily be pre-installed on a device like a NUC and delivered to my mom.
Did you read the FAQ?
I've got all this running on a branch but it's still rough. Once it's relatively stable it will be merged to master and the home page completely revamped.
I am uninterested in purchasing proprietary hardware running a proprietary operating system that'll work (maybe) for some amount of time. Sure, it's technically self hosted. But you can't extend it (without their proprietary app store). It doesn't seem like you can write your own apps without registering, or side load them. Details are extremely thin on the site, so let me know if I'm wrong.
Hell, all the compelling software isn't even theirs! They're just running other OSS apps, and god knows whether you'll be able to manage or upgrade it.
Arguably, this is the worst of all worlds: you're paying the overhead of closed hardware, running closed software that you don't control, and sort of just crossing your fingers that they don't pull the rug out from underneath you. You'd be infinitely better off buying a comparable NUC and spending an afternoon loading up Docker on it. Shit like this is genuinely insulting to the demographic of folks who should be the target audience.
Have things changed drastically? I have an Umbrel instance running on an x86 server at home. When I installed it, it was fully open source, open API, and free.
I had one of those systems years ago (don't remember the name). Used it for a while, then one day they just disappeared and my "personal cloud" was a "personal brick".
I like Umbrel’s technical approach: Its apps are just docker compose files with a little extra, making it very easy to support. The UI layer is Next JS, which gives tight coupling with the backend (so good state sync).
I also like their marketing approach: They really have a nice app store and a nice page for each app.
I did not like the reliability around app installations and the disappointment that it’s actually quite proprietary.
I wish there was a standard „server app“ format similar to what Umbrel uses with a strong ecosystem and multiple solutions. It‘s a key missing piece to self hosting stuff, IMO.
A format to easily wrap containerized applications in an app store or like a package manager? Sort of like a lightweight proxmox?
I’ve had the same idea. It’s the missing piece to beautiful UI wrapping around a homelab. I think this is one of the cooler pieces of what Umbrel is providing.
Looks like they're selling an N150 based "Mini PC" for $500.
You can get a very similar 16GB RAM, 1TB storage Minipc in the same form factor from Amazon for around $260 so looks like you're paying almost twice the price for the NAS-type software?
Yea you’re definitively paying more for a product vs just a raw computer. I wouldn’t want it as I bought an intel nuc and manage it myself but I could see less tech savvy people who what to get into the space finding this interesting.
>You can get a very similar 16GB RAM, 1TB storage Minipc in the same form factor from Amazon for around $260
Not apples/apples, it looks like the Umbrel at $500 comes with 4TB, you're pricing out a 1TB above. A bare Samsung 990EVO 4TB is $328, on a straight $/TB that's an extra $246 putting your total build more like $500.
Kind of wild that even an option literally phrased in a way indicating you want to immediately give them money requires clicking again to even start making a selection (without even getting into the fact that the actual specs are behind a link that makes it sound like it's for when you've already made up your mind to buy it).
Seconded I quite like this business model of sharing open source software and selling hardware with software pre-installed. Seems like best of both worlds to serve everyone with a tidy profit.
On a non-backup "Personal Cloud" that does not even have a RAID 1 for a bit of redundancy?
Big no no.
It looks really cool, but I really dislike products that encourage dangerous behaviors, especially to users that might completely be unaware and think about replacing their Apple or Google Cloud with this so called "personal cloud".
It would be great with a transparent integration with rsync.net, they even have a lifetime pricing for 1TB storage @ 540 USD, or geo-redundant for 945.
I might pay 1000 bucks for a box that came with that promise of 'never lose anything again'
All the concerns about umbrel being all proprietary are really about continuity and interoperability. We want a personal cloud where we can maintain continuity, and it needs to be, well, in some cloud that isn't your home, but also it needs to be replicated to your home (because again, continuity). Continuity in the face of:
- switching providers
- providers going bankrupt or being acquired by others who don't care
- account lockouts!
- switching device OSes
Open source means continuity and interoperability. Proprietary means the opposite.
This is hard, because on one hand I do love self-hosting (I self-host a number of the services they list in their "App Store") but I don't quite get the target market for this (probably because I'm not in it).
The lack of RAID or similar means that you've traded the cloud for 1 component losing all your data. Coupled with the lack of any (obvious) backup solution is concerning. Do you really want to backup your files/images to a single point of failure? If this is supposed to be turn-key then I think there are opportunities to sell cloud backup as an add-on but as-is you are handing people a ticking time bomb.
I'm not a fan of the Crypto angle highlighted in the store, it's a red flag.
I'm interested in what the app compatibility story is here. Like how much post-install configuration are they handling?
> Sonarr on umbrelOS will automatically connect to download clients installed from the Umbrel App Store. Choose from Transmission, qBittorerent, and SABnzbd. Simply install your preferred client(s).
Does that mean they have post-install hooks (on both Sonarr and the download client's end) to configure those? Or is that just speak for "Yeah, you can easily configure XYZ download client that you also installed".
All-in-all it seems overpriced and limited for what it's offering and that's all assuming they stick around and don't peter out. Maybe this is a good first step for someone interested in this but I feel like the type of person interested in this either already can figure out how to set it up themselves (Synology, UnRaid, Docker, etc) or will need a lot of handholding when things break/don't work as expected.
It's entirely possible that there are a lot of people that this would be good for, I just don't know who it would be.
Lastly, no mention of anything like SSO or Remote Access (both things that could be a good value-add IMHO alongside cloud backup). It's overly nerdy in some ways and underly nerdy in others which is why I can't figure out the target audience.
This is a hard problem. Offering autonomy and ownership of data to non-techy people is HARD.
Although I'm not at all convinced Umbrel is the right answer, they seem to be on the right track. Can they empower regular people to own their data without causing havoc down the road if they run out of money and go out of business? I'm sceptical, but I do respect them for trying to tackle this head on. But having skimmed their website, they could do a better job of building trust and answer the long-term question of what happens if they fail.
I do believe this is a growing market, giving people who are fed up with BigTech a way out that does not require that you are a nerd. I am only worried people can be scared it this goes wrong. Paying a premium for rather basic hardware if the setup and software is super smooth could be perfectly acceptable to non-techies that do not at all want the hassle of maintaining a custom NAS.
>I do believe this is a growing market, giving people who are fed up with BigTech
Most people I interact with don't even think about "Big Tech" in this way. They don't question iCloud storage, Google Drive or Google Workspace, Microsoft OneDrive etc.
They do sometimes get upset about right to repair, AI, and sometimes I hear about net neutrality or how Google search sucks, or how Facebook is privacy invasive.
To reiterate though, the core services like a product like this would replace - Google Drive, iCloud Drive, OneDrive etc. - that is not on the radar. Let alone having functional seamless replacements for email or calendar or contacts etc.
These are people adept at using technology too, there simply is no reason to invest in these types of products to them.
The reason these companies struggle is because mass market doesn't care about this enough first and foremost. They aren't seamless drop in replacements.
They don't handle my phone backups, for example, wirelessly and seamlessly. They don't offer seamless contact sharing, photo sharing and sometimes even file sharing is so clunky compared to a Google Drive link, or an iCloud download link.
How do they handle expiry on a link address for said share?
At best, what you have here is an on premise redundant storage drive and little else. It doesn't have the seamless features to do what the other services do. Even if its on the spec sheet, the experience isn't seamless enough. This is the same problem Nextcloud has been trying to solve for some time.
I think among technologists, the market for this is growing, but thats been the case for some time, its simply reaching more and more of us. This being a knock out commercial success where every 3rd person you know is buying something like this? That isn't happening in the foreseeable future.
> Can they empower regular people to own their data
Unless they make their software fully open and make the devices hackable, no.
I'm glad to pay for cloud hosting because at least I know my money is getting me some degree of service in return. The risk that my iCloud data will be lost in the next five years is very low. The risk that this company will disappear in the next five years and I've got a $500 paperweight is exceedingly high.
I want a personal cloud, but one that can be hosted in an actual cloud.
Ideally, I think we would something like Sandstorm but that can be deployed on everything from a home server to a Docker-based cloud service like Google Cloud Run or... Amazon Fargate (I'm not too familiar with their services).
I don't use the cloud for scaling, but so that I never have to worry about power, internet, or machine-level security.
Just be aware that cloud providers like to end-of-life their managed service versions pretty quickly, so you should plan on doing maintenance work on your deployment every year or so if you decide to go that route.
This hasn't been the case for the Docker-based services like GCP Cloud Run. As long as you have a container that has an HTTP server on 0.0.0.0:8080 you're good. You can run anything you want in the container.
It's always good to see some movement in the self-hosted space but I'm wondering who is this for.
People like myself are all in and enjoy the technical aspects of running Proxmox/NixOS/Docker/Kubernetes on our own hardware, building the systems exactly as we like and (hopefully) with a sound backup strategy and without a dependency on a company providing an appliance-like experience.
Running services is not trivial and solutions like this help with getting started but not with the really hard aspects on how to operate services safely with little risk of data loss.
I'm wondering if this would be more accessible and safer to operate if instead of relying on users having their own hardware it would require users to bring their a VPS (removing the need of managing hardware) and object storage (for managed backups).
I'm very pleased that it seems like there is a real movement happening in the self-hosted space. I've been self-hosting for about 6 months and actually started with umbrel because the UI looks so polished, which is comforting for people like me who didn't live in the CL. But there's a reason dev and eng tools always have the CL fallback, the GUI limits customization and hacking. And I hit those limits super fast on Umbrel. Then I moved to dokploy, then coolify, and finally `ssh homelab "cd /opt/<homelab>/stacks/<app> && docker compose up -d"`, and I couldn't be happier to tinker to my heart's desire.
The biggest upgrade of this movement is privacy & data sovereignty, so I hope it continues growing, and hope Umbrel has success in being a gateway for a lot of selfhost-curious.
So difficult but look somebody has to try. For us to make any progress we need attempts at this. Package the hardware and software, find a target demographic and go after it. I don't know if there's a mistake in going too broad or not having a tailored OS with a smaller footprint or being the general utility but we only learn through these tests. Good luck Umbrel team!
I'd really love to see an off the shelf distributed FS server in a NUC form factor that you plug in and is largely self-managed. Automatic atomic updates, QR codes to add a server to your swarm, manage it through a browser, client side encryption so a compromised server doesn't mean data exposure. If you want to get fancy, you could have user quotas so you and all your friends set up a single swarm with shared storage and you'd have a very distributed cloud. Optionally add a hetzner instance to the swarm.
Downtime and backups is why I don't take self-hosted more seriously. If I could easily be up and running after a hardware failure or software upgrade failure, I would pay for that in a heartbeat and ditch the comparable SaaS.
As for now, I run Immich but keep Google photos around as I'm afraid to upgrade it and don't have confidence on restoring it if my server dies. See how long and full of warning messages their backup and restore page is https://docs.immich.app/administration/backup-and-restore/.
This would be relatively straighforward to solve with encrypted cloud backups and matching "restore" software. Of course, the cloud backup part would have to be a subscription, similar to offerings like Apple's iCloud.
This looks really well done. The software is both well-designed (from UX / UI pov) AND it's OSS AND it's just an SSD / NAS underneath it all, I think this kind of thing is a welcome addition to the market.
It very much came from the Bitcoin world and was sold as a way to run your own node. Great experience if you’re into that but it’s nothing that is forced on you, they’re just “apps” like everything else you can install on it.
Ok, and what do I do when these guys go out of business/get bought by Amazon/microsoft/whatever in 3 or 5 years? Like, the game’s up with this cloud stuff, surely. None of it is to be trusted.
I must be missing something but $500 for an N150 mini PC pre-loaded with a 4tb nas and a custom OS is a terrible value proposition. And I have multiple form factor N1xx based machines running 24/7, so this is the exact type of thing I would be interested in. Could it have been priced in a more compelling manner without the NVME?
There's room for innovation in this space, but making a viable business here will be hard.
The enthusiast market is so wrapped up in Home Assistant and existing NAS boxes that you would need a killer app to aim first for more normie use. It looks like they tried being a crypto node at home solution and are now pivoting to be more general.
Cool, but honestly I always end up regretting another device that is not just plain "non user-firendly" Linux. First you buy Synology because it's just quick and easy to set-up, and "I'll figure the rest later". But when time comes to figure the rest out, it's just so unreasonably inconvenient. In theory, it is just Linux, and DSM is just for convenience, and there are special packages intended to use Docker and install stuff and all, but there are so many "user-friendly improvements" on top of that, that I get tired even just thinking about all the hoops I have to jump to do something super-simple and end up choosing some another device for all tasks that theoretically would be a good fit for my NAS to perform. The only good thing is hot-swap and automatic volume rebuild, that is super convenient. But, honestly, are these 2 minutes of convenience worth the rest? I don't know.
Picked up an Umbrel server to run Bitcoin Knots node last month. Works extremely well, I highly recommend it for similar applications. Nice web based UI.
according to [0] it looks like the "Umbrel Home" device they sell (with 16GB RAM and an N150 CPU) can run a 7B model at 2.7 tokens/sec, or a 13B model at 1.5 t/s.
especially when they seem to be aiming for a not-terribly-technical market segment, there seems to be a pretty big mismatch between that performance and their website claims:
> The most transformative technology of our generation shouldn't be confined to corporate data centers. Umbrel Home democratizes access to AI, allowing you to run powerful models on a device you own and control.
It’s all subjective. Personally I think it would border on useless for local inference but maybe some people are happy with low quality models at slow speeds.
So they say they built umbrelOS from the ground up...
Did they really? I'm guessing this is a BSD of some kind? Or have they actually built their own kernel from scratch? I kinda doubt it, and it was hard to tell, even their GitHub readme.md is just marketing material, not the tech specifics for Devs I'm used to finding there.
It's just weird that I couldn't find any info on which kernel they use. Linux seems the obvious choice for the task (most internet facing servers run Linux after all), but my (admittedly very poor) understanding of the GNU licence is that derivative works also needs to be published under the GNU licence? And they're using a different licence..
You misunderstand how licensing works. They can build an entirely closed source OS around the Linux kernel if they want. The only thing they'd have to publish is the changes to the kernel itself. I don't see why they'd need to modify the kernel so they'd have to publish absolutely nothing!
But to answer your question, umbrelOS is debian. You're right that they don't advertise that fact anywhere (that I've seen). They use rugpi to build a preconfigured image that includes their changes and their software. All the details are indeed public and open, if you know what you're looking for:
That also answers the questions some other commenters have had elsewhere in this thread, about what happens to the hardware if the company fails. Now we know: it's Debian. Apt will remain.
Like frigghome.ai I do not see much interest in these, but they could be an interesting way to bring a homeserver per home, potentially powering a public blockchain for digital identity, (smart)contracts hashed publicly, and a digital currency not owned by anyone in particular with also Liquid Feedback blockchain to construct a new society.
The road is very long, but technically feasible, obviously I expect ferocious push against...
A decade of “personal cloud box” attempts has shown that the hard part isn’t the hardware, it’s the long-term social contract. Synology/WD/My Cloud/etc all eventually hit the same wall: once the company pivots or dies, you’re left with a sealed brick that you don’t fully control, holding the most irreplaceable thing you own: your data. If you’re going to charge an Apple-like premium on commodity mini-PC hardware, you really have to over-communicate what happens if Umbrel-the-company disappears or changes direction: how do I keep using this thing in 5–10 years without your cloud, your app store, your updates?
The interesting opportunity here isn’t selling a fancy N100 box, it’s turning “self-hosted everything” into something your non-technical friend could actually live with. That’s mostly about boring stuff: automatic off-site backup that isn’t tied to one vendor, painless replacement/restore if the hardware dies, and clear guarantees about what runs locally vs phoning home. If Umbrel leans into being forkable and portable across generic hardware, it has a shot at being trusted infrastructure instead of just another pretty NAS that people regret once the marketing site goes dark.
Don't forget the user experience needs to be seamless. We bubble ourselves to this as tech fluent folks on HN, but the seamless quality needs to be on par or better with Google Drive, iCloud drive, Google / iCloud Photos etc.
Ability to share, good default security, and seamless integration with the things people care about.
If this device can't automatically backup a phone wirelessly and without my interaction, it will be a poor proposition to most people.
We would all have been better off fiercely advocating for open protocols for all this stuff first (forced interop), but technologists have not wanted to wade into that in a sustained, en masse way
I've tried a lot of personal cloud options (ownCloud, a Resilio Sync mesh, CloundMounter + B2) and somehow ended up back on iCloud because of this.
My next experiment is just to use NFS over Nebula/Tailscale and see how much data I can just host off my NAS, but it's surprisingly been quite a journey for a simple problem.
You can't really switch away from iCloud without sacrificing it's deep integration.
The whole whole ecosystem is designed around it.
Don't get me wrong, Apple could've written their software with different upstream options, but they choose not to - hence going away from iCloud forces you to give up on a lot of features
I'm just pointing this out because if you've already attempted different options and went back to iCloud, then trying others isn't likely to be worthwhile, honestly.
You'd first have to accept that moving away from it means sacrificing features such as the photos sync (including delete etc).
Sorry, isn't this running an open-source OS? The header has a link to a github with a non-commercial license[0].
If so, couldn't you just use the OS on non-premium-priced mini-PC hardware and never have to worry about them locking you out of your box? I guess maybe it's concerning if you're being forced to update by the OS? I've never actually run a system like that, but was considering umbrel OS (didn't actually know about the hardware until this post), so if I'm being naive about something, it's in earnest.
[0] https://github.com/getumbrel/umbrel
A non-commercial license prevents it from being open-source, and I think already constitutes extremely clear communication about what will happen to users when Umbrel goes bankrupt: they will be stranded, because the license doesn't allow another company to step up and take over maintenance the way an open-source license would.
these companies - if they are so afraid of an OSI approved license - should put certain conditions into their that trigger when they go out of business and the IP gets released
I’m not worried about “can I, personally, keep this thing running?” so much as “what is the long-term story for the kind of person who buys a turnkey appliance”.
Yes, Umbrel OS is on GitHub and you can already run it on generic NUCs / Pi etc. That’s great. But the value prop of the hardware is the whole bundle: curated apps, painless updates, maybe remote access, maybe backups. If Umbrel-the-company pivots or withers, the repo still being there under a non-commercial license doesn’t guarantee ongoing maintenance, an app store, or support. And the NC clause is exactly what makes it hard for someone else to step in and sell a fully supported forked “Umbrel but maintained” box to non-technical users. So for people like you and me, sure, we can just install it elsewhere; for the target audience of an expensive plug-and-play box, the long-term social contract is still the fragile part.
Ah, okay, yeah, I get you now. I could get behind a splashy section about how users can "walk away at any time" with a roadmap that seems reasonable. I think that fits in with the general ethos of what these things should offer to consumers. I can certainly see why a company wouldn't be keen to advertise "if we die, here's what you can do.", but a way to tell consumers how to gracefully exit doesn't seem so antithetical to a marketing plan, and personally, knowing they've given me an off-ramp does make me more likely to use a thing.
I run umbrel in a VM . For non fiat finops stuff.
I also run Cloudron on a VPS.
I wish both of those solutions had more mindshare. They save me so much time and effort. Especially Cloudron!
I looked at Cloudron and I'm not sure why I would choose this over just throwing in Proxmox on a box and start clicking stuff in their 'app store'.
> you’re left with a sealed brick that you don’t fully control
Totally agreed. I had seen umbrel and others in the past but recently decided to just get a 4-bay m.2 ssd enclosure (using RAID 1 for 2 sets of 2), not a NAS (after previously having a Synology NAS). I only want pure file access in a small, quiet form factor and I can have another Mac host and cloud backup. Currently using Tailscale Drive (alpha feature) to share it with devices and working pretty well so far.
https://x.com/Stammy/status/2000355524429402472
That's exactly my goal with HomeFree:
https://homefree.host
Goal is my mom running it, and keeping it 100% open source.
It looks like there isn't a lot of visible progress, but there's now a branch with a live CD installer, and an admin UI, so no command line shenanigans are necessary. Once that is cleaned up, the website will be refreshed.
I really need to quit my job so I can work on this full time.
What will make development sustainable? I mean it could take some time until it gets trackson and also usually open source works if there is a supporting company behind it.
I am going to get it to a point where moderately technical people would be happy to use it over other options, and build a community that contributes. I will continue to work on making it easier to use over time.
HomeFree must be deployed from another machine with Nix installed.
Your mom runs Nix?
No, if you use the installer CD it's a fully UI based install. No command line. No awareness it's even running nix.
Administration is through a web UI.
It could easily be pre-installed on a device like a NUC and delivered to my mom.
Did you read the FAQ?
I've got all this running on a branch but it's still rough. Once it's relatively stable it will be merged to master and the home page completely revamped.
this can be solved by adding an external nas - for redundancy - and an opensource application or extension that manages the syncing?
making self hosting more seamless is key, we simply can't trust to be dependent on third parties for access to our own data in the long term
If you already have a NAS I’m not sure what this does for you that just getting a bigger NAS wouln’t?
Isn't Umbrel mostly open source and Docker-based?
I am uninterested in purchasing proprietary hardware running a proprietary operating system that'll work (maybe) for some amount of time. Sure, it's technically self hosted. But you can't extend it (without their proprietary app store). It doesn't seem like you can write your own apps without registering, or side load them. Details are extremely thin on the site, so let me know if I'm wrong.
Hell, all the compelling software isn't even theirs! They're just running other OSS apps, and god knows whether you'll be able to manage or upgrade it.
Arguably, this is the worst of all worlds: you're paying the overhead of closed hardware, running closed software that you don't control, and sort of just crossing your fingers that they don't pull the rug out from underneath you. You'd be infinitely better off buying a comparable NUC and spending an afternoon loading up Docker on it. Shit like this is genuinely insulting to the demographic of folks who should be the target audience.
Have things changed drastically? I have an Umbrel instance running on an x86 server at home. When I installed it, it was fully open source, open API, and free.
This reads like a laundry list of assumptions rather than facts
Well the parent did say this:
> Details are extremely thin on the site, so let me know if I'm wrong.
There's a Github link for the os, but it is under some strange not-quite OSS or Free Software license... https://github.com/getumbrel/umbrel
Yes, it's one of those "do not compete with us" licenses.
I had one of those systems years ago (don't remember the name). Used it for a while, then one day they just disappeared and my "personal cloud" was a "personal brick".
In what way is the proprietary? It looks to be just a PC box running OSS apps?
I like Umbrel’s technical approach: Its apps are just docker compose files with a little extra, making it very easy to support. The UI layer is Next JS, which gives tight coupling with the backend (so good state sync).
I also like their marketing approach: They really have a nice app store and a nice page for each app.
I did not like the reliability around app installations and the disappointment that it’s actually quite proprietary.
I wish there was a standard „server app“ format similar to what Umbrel uses with a strong ecosystem and multiple solutions. It‘s a key missing piece to self hosting stuff, IMO.
A format to easily wrap containerized applications in an app store or like a package manager? Sort of like a lightweight proxmox?
I’ve had the same idea. It’s the missing piece to beautiful UI wrapping around a homelab. I think this is one of the cooler pieces of what Umbrel is providing.
Nice breakdown.
Looks like they're selling an N150 based "Mini PC" for $500.
You can get a very similar 16GB RAM, 1TB storage Minipc in the same form factor from Amazon for around $260 so looks like you're paying almost twice the price for the NAS-type software?
Yea you’re definitively paying more for a product vs just a raw computer. I wouldn’t want it as I bought an intel nuc and manage it myself but I could see less tech savvy people who what to get into the space finding this interesting.
>You can get a very similar 16GB RAM, 1TB storage Minipc in the same form factor from Amazon for around $260
Not apples/apples, it looks like the Umbrel at $500 comes with 4TB, you're pricing out a 1TB above. A bare Samsung 990EVO 4TB is $328, on a straight $/TB that's an extra $246 putting your total build more like $500.
nope, it's "starts at $499" with "up to 4TB" of storage
if you click "Buy Now" and then...click "Buy Now" again, that takes you to the actual pricing. $500 for 1TB, or 4TB for $800.
Kind of wild that even an option literally phrased in a way indicating you want to immediately give them money requires clicking again to even start making a selection (without even getting into the fact that the actual specs are behind a link that makes it sound like it's for when you've already made up your mind to buy it).
Seconded I quite like this business model of sharing open source software and selling hardware with software pre-installed. Seems like best of both worlds to serve everyone with a tidy profit.
any recommendations for non-Chinese products ?
> Store your files
On a non-backup "Personal Cloud" that does not even have a RAID 1 for a bit of redundancy? Big no no.
It looks really cool, but I really dislike products that encourage dangerous behaviors, especially to users that might completely be unaware and think about replacing their Apple or Google Cloud with this so called "personal cloud".
It would be great with a transparent integration with rsync.net, they even have a lifetime pricing for 1TB storage @ 540 USD, or geo-redundant for 945.
I might pay 1000 bucks for a box that came with that promise of 'never lose anything again'
All the concerns about umbrel being all proprietary are really about continuity and interoperability. We want a personal cloud where we can maintain continuity, and it needs to be, well, in some cloud that isn't your home, but also it needs to be replicated to your home (because again, continuity). Continuity in the face of:
- switching providers
- providers going bankrupt or being acquired by others who don't care
- account lockouts!
- switching device OSes
Open source means continuity and interoperability. Proprietary means the opposite.
This is hard, because on one hand I do love self-hosting (I self-host a number of the services they list in their "App Store") but I don't quite get the target market for this (probably because I'm not in it).
The lack of RAID or similar means that you've traded the cloud for 1 component losing all your data. Coupled with the lack of any (obvious) backup solution is concerning. Do you really want to backup your files/images to a single point of failure? If this is supposed to be turn-key then I think there are opportunities to sell cloud backup as an add-on but as-is you are handing people a ticking time bomb.
I'm not a fan of the Crypto angle highlighted in the store, it's a red flag.
I'm interested in what the app compatibility story is here. Like how much post-install configuration are they handling?
> Sonarr on umbrelOS will automatically connect to download clients installed from the Umbrel App Store. Choose from Transmission, qBittorerent, and SABnzbd. Simply install your preferred client(s).
Does that mean they have post-install hooks (on both Sonarr and the download client's end) to configure those? Or is that just speak for "Yeah, you can easily configure XYZ download client that you also installed".
All-in-all it seems overpriced and limited for what it's offering and that's all assuming they stick around and don't peter out. Maybe this is a good first step for someone interested in this but I feel like the type of person interested in this either already can figure out how to set it up themselves (Synology, UnRaid, Docker, etc) or will need a lot of handholding when things break/don't work as expected.
It's entirely possible that there are a lot of people that this would be good for, I just don't know who it would be.
Lastly, no mention of anything like SSO or Remote Access (both things that could be a good value-add IMHO alongside cloud backup). It's overly nerdy in some ways and underly nerdy in others which is why I can't figure out the target audience.
This is a hard problem. Offering autonomy and ownership of data to non-techy people is HARD.
Although I'm not at all convinced Umbrel is the right answer, they seem to be on the right track. Can they empower regular people to own their data without causing havoc down the road if they run out of money and go out of business? I'm sceptical, but I do respect them for trying to tackle this head on. But having skimmed their website, they could do a better job of building trust and answer the long-term question of what happens if they fail.
I do believe this is a growing market, giving people who are fed up with BigTech a way out that does not require that you are a nerd. I am only worried people can be scared it this goes wrong. Paying a premium for rather basic hardware if the setup and software is super smooth could be perfectly acceptable to non-techies that do not at all want the hassle of maintaining a custom NAS.
>I do believe this is a growing market, giving people who are fed up with BigTech
Most people I interact with don't even think about "Big Tech" in this way. They don't question iCloud storage, Google Drive or Google Workspace, Microsoft OneDrive etc.
They do sometimes get upset about right to repair, AI, and sometimes I hear about net neutrality or how Google search sucks, or how Facebook is privacy invasive.
To reiterate though, the core services like a product like this would replace - Google Drive, iCloud Drive, OneDrive etc. - that is not on the radar. Let alone having functional seamless replacements for email or calendar or contacts etc.
These are people adept at using technology too, there simply is no reason to invest in these types of products to them.
The reason these companies struggle is because mass market doesn't care about this enough first and foremost. They aren't seamless drop in replacements.
They don't handle my phone backups, for example, wirelessly and seamlessly. They don't offer seamless contact sharing, photo sharing and sometimes even file sharing is so clunky compared to a Google Drive link, or an iCloud download link.
How do they handle expiry on a link address for said share?
At best, what you have here is an on premise redundant storage drive and little else. It doesn't have the seamless features to do what the other services do. Even if its on the spec sheet, the experience isn't seamless enough. This is the same problem Nextcloud has been trying to solve for some time.
I think among technologists, the market for this is growing, but thats been the case for some time, its simply reaching more and more of us. This being a knock out commercial success where every 3rd person you know is buying something like this? That isn't happening in the foreseeable future.
> Can they empower regular people to own their data
Unless they make their software fully open and make the devices hackable, no.
I'm glad to pay for cloud hosting because at least I know my money is getting me some degree of service in return. The risk that my iCloud data will be lost in the next five years is very low. The risk that this company will disappear in the next five years and I've got a $500 paperweight is exceedingly high.
I want a personal cloud, but one that can be hosted in an actual cloud.
Ideally, I think we would something like Sandstorm but that can be deployed on everything from a home server to a Docker-based cloud service like Google Cloud Run or... Amazon Fargate (I'm not too familiar with their services).
I don't use the cloud for scaling, but so that I never have to worry about power, internet, or machine-level security.
Just be aware that cloud providers like to end-of-life their managed service versions pretty quickly, so you should plan on doing maintenance work on your deployment every year or so if you decide to go that route.
This hasn't been the case for the Docker-based services like GCP Cloud Run. As long as you have a container that has an HTTP server on 0.0.0.0:8080 you're good. You can run anything you want in the container.
https://docs.cloud.google.com/run/docs/container-contract
It's always good to see some movement in the self-hosted space but I'm wondering who is this for.
People like myself are all in and enjoy the technical aspects of running Proxmox/NixOS/Docker/Kubernetes on our own hardware, building the systems exactly as we like and (hopefully) with a sound backup strategy and without a dependency on a company providing an appliance-like experience.
Running services is not trivial and solutions like this help with getting started but not with the really hard aspects on how to operate services safely with little risk of data loss.
I'm wondering if this would be more accessible and safer to operate if instead of relying on users having their own hardware it would require users to bring their a VPS (removing the need of managing hardware) and object storage (for managed backups).
I'm very pleased that it seems like there is a real movement happening in the self-hosted space. I've been self-hosting for about 6 months and actually started with umbrel because the UI looks so polished, which is comforting for people like me who didn't live in the CL. But there's a reason dev and eng tools always have the CL fallback, the GUI limits customization and hacking. And I hit those limits super fast on Umbrel. Then I moved to dokploy, then coolify, and finally `ssh homelab "cd /opt/<homelab>/stacks/<app> && docker compose up -d"`, and I couldn't be happier to tinker to my heart's desire.
The biggest upgrade of this movement is privacy & data sovereignty, so I hope it continues growing, and hope Umbrel has success in being a gateway for a lot of selfhost-curious.
So difficult but look somebody has to try. For us to make any progress we need attempts at this. Package the hardware and software, find a target demographic and go after it. I don't know if there's a mistake in going too broad or not having a tailored OS with a smaller footprint or being the general utility but we only learn through these tests. Good luck Umbrel team!
I'd really love to see an off the shelf distributed FS server in a NUC form factor that you plug in and is largely self-managed. Automatic atomic updates, QR codes to add a server to your swarm, manage it through a browser, client side encryption so a compromised server doesn't mean data exposure. If you want to get fancy, you could have user quotas so you and all your friends set up a single swarm with shared storage and you'd have a very distributed cloud. Optionally add a hetzner instance to the swarm.
Downtime and backups is why I don't take self-hosted more seriously. If I could easily be up and running after a hardware failure or software upgrade failure, I would pay for that in a heartbeat and ditch the comparable SaaS.
As for now, I run Immich but keep Google photos around as I'm afraid to upgrade it and don't have confidence on restoring it if my server dies. See how long and full of warning messages their backup and restore page is https://docs.immich.app/administration/backup-and-restore/.
This would be relatively straighforward to solve with encrypted cloud backups and matching "restore" software. Of course, the cloud backup part would have to be a subscription, similar to offerings like Apple's iCloud.
Wouldn't this be solved easily with a cheap VPS and backup?
Do you even really get hardware failires with VPSs today?
This looks really well done. The software is both well-designed (from UX / UI pov) AND it's OSS AND it's just an SSD / NAS underneath it all, I think this kind of thing is a welcome addition to the market.
The entire UI seems lifted from icloud and osx. I can't even tell the difference
Personally I'm cool with that. Originality is overrated. Do whatever works.
Last time I looked at it it had some craptocurrecy stuff, which lost me as a user.
It very much came from the Bitcoin world and was sold as a way to run your own node. Great experience if you’re into that but it’s nothing that is forced on you, they’re just “apps” like everything else you can install on it.
I had the same feeling but that was years ago. They seem pretty neutral now.
Ok, and what do I do when these guys go out of business/get bought by Amazon/microsoft/whatever in 3 or 5 years? Like, the game’s up with this cloud stuff, surely. None of it is to be trusted.
I must be missing something but $500 for an N150 mini PC pre-loaded with a 4tb nas and a custom OS is a terrible value proposition. And I have multiple form factor N1xx based machines running 24/7, so this is the exact type of thing I would be interested in. Could it have been priced in a more compelling manner without the NVME?
but when you click to purchase, you’ll find that $499 only gets you 1TB.
There's room for innovation in this space, but making a viable business here will be hard.
The enthusiast market is so wrapped up in Home Assistant and existing NAS boxes that you would need a killer app to aim first for more normie use. It looks like they tried being a crypto node at home solution and are now pivoting to be more general.
I think I have a killer app for normie use. Do you have technical experience with these?
and HexOS I guess.
I run an umbrel on an off the shelf mini pc and it’s been great! Very polished and nice experience!
if you don't have your data when you don't have access to third parties you don't own your data.
we should start switching to solutions like this to keep control and freedom
you can find their opensource repos here: https://github.com/getumbrel
> you can find their opensource repos here: github.com/getumbrel
Not all Umbrel repos are OSS (and that's okay): https://blog.getumbrel.com/everything-you-need-to-know-about... / https://archive.vn/4M4xO
Cool, but honestly I always end up regretting another device that is not just plain "non user-firendly" Linux. First you buy Synology because it's just quick and easy to set-up, and "I'll figure the rest later". But when time comes to figure the rest out, it's just so unreasonably inconvenient. In theory, it is just Linux, and DSM is just for convenience, and there are special packages intended to use Docker and install stuff and all, but there are so many "user-friendly improvements" on top of that, that I get tired even just thinking about all the hoops I have to jump to do something super-simple and end up choosing some another device for all tasks that theoretically would be a good fit for my NAS to perform. The only good thing is hot-swap and automatic volume rebuild, that is super convenient. But, honestly, are these 2 minutes of convenience worth the rest? I don't know.
Picked up an Umbrel server to run Bitcoin Knots node last month. Works extremely well, I highly recommend it for similar applications. Nice web based UI.
"run a Bitcoin node" <closes tab>
IF I already have a NAS/mini pc can I just install this stuff and get all the benefits because I don't need the hardware?
Yes looks like they offer the OS for Raspberry pi and "any x86 system"
https://github.com/getumbrel/umbrel
Seems to be a hardware + software thing.
Here's a comparison on running it on your own hardware vs. theirs: https://github.com/getumbrel/umbrel/wiki/umbrelOS-on-Umbrel-...
> Store your files, download and stream media, run a Bitcoin node, and more — all in your home.
Run a Bitcoin node? No, thanks, I don’t want my files anywhere near a crypto bro cloud box.
Can it really run local LLMs at any decent size? I find it hard to believe for the price it can run anything more than 7b or 8b models slowly.
according to [0] it looks like the "Umbrel Home" device they sell (with 16GB RAM and an N150 CPU) can run a 7B model at 2.7 tokens/sec, or a 13B model at 1.5 t/s.
especially when they seem to be aiming for a not-terribly-technical market segment, there seems to be a pretty big mismatch between that performance and their website claims:
> The most transformative technology of our generation shouldn't be confined to corporate data centers. Umbrel Home democratizes access to AI, allowing you to run powerful models on a device you own and control.
0: https://github.com/getumbrel/llama-gpt?tab=readme-ov-file#be...
Wow that's wild that they advertise "Run Deepseek-R1 locally" when the screenshot in the app store refers to "DeepSeek-R1-0528-Qwen3-8B"
It’s all subjective. Personally I think it would border on useless for local inference but maybe some people are happy with low quality models at slow speeds.
was the market for this birthed by synology when they insisted on synology certified drives?
moment I read personal cloud, how is fail over supported... probably dumb question I assume.
Or get the same specs with Beelink for $300? This is a mini PC with Linux pre-installed.
So they say they built umbrelOS from the ground up...
Did they really? I'm guessing this is a BSD of some kind? Or have they actually built their own kernel from scratch? I kinda doubt it, and it was hard to tell, even their GitHub readme.md is just marketing material, not the tech specifics for Devs I'm used to finding there.
"If you wish to make an [operating system] from scratch, you must first invent the universe."
It's just weird that I couldn't find any info on which kernel they use. Linux seems the obvious choice for the task (most internet facing servers run Linux after all), but my (admittedly very poor) understanding of the GNU licence is that derivative works also needs to be published under the GNU licence? And they're using a different licence..
So.... BSD?
You misunderstand how licensing works. They can build an entirely closed source OS around the Linux kernel if they want. The only thing they'd have to publish is the changes to the kernel itself. I don't see why they'd need to modify the kernel so they'd have to publish absolutely nothing!
But to answer your question, umbrelOS is debian. You're right that they don't advertise that fact anywhere (that I've seen). They use rugpi to build a preconfigured image that includes their changes and their software. All the details are indeed public and open, if you know what you're looking for:
https://github.com/getumbrel/umbrel/tree/master/packages/os
Ah there we go! Thanks!
That also answers the questions some other commenters have had elsewhere in this thread, about what happens to the hardware if the company fails. Now we know: it's Debian. Apt will remain.
Like frigghome.ai I do not see much interest in these, but they could be an interesting way to bring a homeserver per home, potentially powering a public blockchain for digital identity, (smart)contracts hashed publicly, and a digital currency not owned by anyone in particular with also Liquid Feedback blockchain to construct a new society.
The road is very long, but technically feasible, obviously I expect ferocious push against...
SSH is my "personal cloud"...
This seems a lot easier for the average consumer.
Does it?
Half of the IT team I am on is seemingly incapable of understanding using a public/private keypair for SSH logins.
Can I use yours? How to copy them? Should they be unique per user? Should I email the private key? Etc?
I believe grandparent post was referring to Umbrel as easier than SSH
"This" was a little ambiguous but after another read I believe you're likely correct.