Self-Host Dashy: Configurable Homelab Dashboard 2026

TL;DR

Dashy (MIT, ~17K GitHub stars, Vue.js) is a highly customizable homelab dashboard. Define your services in YAML (or use the visual editor), pick from 50+ themes, add widgets, and get a polished start page for your self-hosted services. Status checks show which services are up/down, search lets you jump to any app instantly, and multi-page layouts organize services by category. Zero-config deployment — runs from a single YAML file.

Key Takeaways

Dashy: MIT, ~17K stars, Vue.js — configurable dashboard with 50+ themes
YAML + visual editor: Configure in YAML or use the built-in UI editor
50+ themes: From minimal to cyberpunk — switch with one click
Widgets: Clock, weather, RSS, system info, crypto prices, and more
Status checking: Automatic ping/HTTP checks to show service health
Search: Fuzzy search across all services — type to jump

Dashy vs Homepage vs Homarr

Feature	Dashy	Homepage	Homarr
Config style	YAML + visual editor	YAML only	Web UI only
Themes	50+ built-in	CSS customization	Built-in
Status checks	Yes (built-in)	Yes (via services)	Yes (built-in)
Docker integration	Labels	Excellent	Deep (start/stop)
Widgets	30+	40+	20+
Multi-page	Yes	No	Yes (boards)
Authentication	Built-in	No	Built-in
Search	Fuzzy search	Search	Search
Resource usage	~50MB	~50MB	~200MB

Part 1: Docker Setup

# docker-compose.yml
services:
  dashy:
    image: lissy93/dashy:latest
    container_name: dashy
    restart: unless-stopped
    ports:
      - "4000:8080"
    volumes:
      - ./dashy-config.yml:/app/user-data/conf.yml
    healthcheck:
      test: ['CMD', 'node', '/app/services/healthcheck']
      interval: 1m30s
      timeout: 10s
      retries: 3
      start_period: 40s

# No volume needed for data — configuration is the YAML file

# Create a minimal config:
cat > dashy-config.yml << 'EOF'
pageInfo:
  title: My Homelab
  description: Dashboard for self-hosted services
  navLinks: []

appConfig:
  theme: one-dark
  statusCheck: true
  statusCheckInterval: 30
  layout: auto
  iconSize: medium
  language: en

sections:
  - name: Media
    icon: fas fa-play
    items:
      - title: Jellyfin
        url: https://jellyfin.yourdomain.com
        icon: hl-jellyfin
      - title: Navidrome
        url: https://music.yourdomain.com
        icon: hl-navidrome

  - name: Productivity
    icon: fas fa-briefcase
    items:
      - title: Nextcloud
        url: https://cloud.yourdomain.com
        icon: hl-nextcloud
      - title: Vaultwarden
        url: https://vault.yourdomain.com
        icon: hl-vaultwarden
      - title: Gitea
        url: https://git.yourdomain.com
        icon: hl-gitea

  - name: Monitoring
    icon: fas fa-heartbeat
    items:
      - title: Uptime Kuma
        url: https://uptime.yourdomain.com
        icon: hl-uptime-kuma
      - title: Grafana
        url: https://grafana.yourdomain.com
        icon: hl-grafana

  - name: Management
    icon: fas fa-cogs
    items:
      - title: Portainer
        url: https://portainer.yourdomain.com
        icon: hl-portainer
      - title: Proxmox
        url: https://proxmox.yourdomain.com:8006
        icon: hl-proxmox
EOF

docker compose up -d

Part 2: HTTPS with Caddy

start.yourdomain.com {
    reverse_proxy localhost:4000
}

Part 3: Configuration

Item properties

items:
  - title: Jellyfin          # Display name
    url: https://jellyfin.yourdomain.com   # Link URL
    icon: hl-jellyfin         # Icon (see icon options below)
    description: Media server  # Subtitle text
    target: newtab            # newtab | sametab | modal | workspace
    statusCheck: true         # Enable health check
    statusCheckUrl: https://jellyfin.yourdomain.com/health  # Custom check URL
    statusCheckAcceptCodes: "200,401"   # Accept auth redirects as "up"
    color: "#6B4CE6"          # Custom color
    tags:
      - media
      - streaming

Icon options

# Homelab icons (recommended — 500+ self-hosted app icons):
icon: hl-jellyfin
icon: hl-nextcloud
icon: hl-portainer
icon: hl-grafana

# Font Awesome:
icon: fas fa-server
icon: fab fa-docker

# Simple Icons (brand logos):
icon: si-github
icon: si-docker

# Favicon (auto-fetch from URL):
icon: favicon

# URL (custom image):
icon: https://example.com/logo.png

# Generative (unique pattern from title):
icon: generative

Part 4: Themes

Switch themes

appConfig:
  theme: one-dark     # Change this to any theme name

Popular themes

Theme	Style
`one-dark`	Dark with syntax-highlight colors
`dracula`	Purple-accent dark theme
`nord`	Cool blue minimal
`material-dark`	Google Material dark
`matrix`	Green-on-black terminal
`cyberpunk`	Neon pink/yellow cyberpunk
`lissy-dark`	Clean dark gradient
`vaporwave`	Retro 80s aesthetic
`minimal-light`	Clean white minimal

Custom CSS

appConfig:
  customCss: |
    .item-wrapper {
      border-radius: 12px;
    }
    .section-title {
      font-family: 'JetBrains Mono', monospace;
    }

Part 5: Widgets

Add widgets to any section:

sections:
  - name: System Info
    icon: fas fa-microchip
    displayData:
      collapsed: false
    widgets:
      - type: clock
        options:
          timeZone: America/Los_Angeles
          format: en-US
      - type: weather
        options:
          apiKey: your-openweathermap-key
          city: San Francisco
          units: imperial
      - type: system-info
      - type: rss-feed
        options:
          rssUrl: https://news.ycombinator.com/rss
          apiKey: your-rss2json-key   # Optional for parsing
          limit: 5
      - type: crypto-watch-list
        options:
          assets:
            - bitcoin
            - ethereum
      - type: public-ip
      - type: iframe
        options:
          url: https://grafana.yourdomain.com/d/dashboard?kiosk

Part 6: Multi-Page Layout

pages:
  - name: Home
    path: /
    sections:
      - name: Quick Access
        items: [...]
  - name: Media
    path: /media
    sections:
      - name: Streaming
        items: [...]
      - name: Downloads
        items: [...]
  - name: DevOps
    path: /devops
    sections:
      - name: CI/CD
        items: [...]
      - name: Monitoring
        items: [...]

Pages appear as tabs in the navigation bar.

Part 7: Authentication

Built-in auth

appConfig:
  auth:
    enableLogin: true
    users:
      - user: admin
        hash: "$2b$10$..."   # bcrypt hash
        type: admin
      - user: guest
        hash: "$2b$10$..."
        type: normal
    enableGuestAccess: false

# Generate bcrypt hash:
docker exec dashy node -e "const bcrypt=require('bcrypt');bcrypt.hash('password',10).then(h=>console.log(h));"

Keycloak/Authentik SSO

appConfig:
  auth:
    enableKeycloak: true
    keycloak:
      serverUrl: https://auth.yourdomain.com
      realm: dashy
      clientId: dashy-client

Part 8: Visual Editor

Don't like editing YAML? Use the built-in visual editor:

Click the wrench icon → Config Editor
Drag-and-drop sections and items
Edit properties in form fields
Save → updates the YAML file automatically

The visual editor and YAML stay in sync — use whichever you prefer.

Maintenance

# Update:
docker compose pull
docker compose up -d

# Backup (just the config file):
cp dashy-config.yml dashy-config-backup-$(date +%Y%m%d).yml

# Validate config:
docker exec dashy node /app/services/config-validator.js

# Logs:
docker compose logs -f dashy

Why Self-Host Dashy?

The case for self-hosting Dashy comes down to three practical factors: data ownership, cost at scale, and operational control.

Data ownership is the fundamental argument. When you use a SaaS version of any tool, your data lives on someone else's infrastructure subject to their terms of service, their security practices, and their business continuity. If the vendor raises prices, gets acquired, changes API limits, or shuts down, you're left scrambling. Self-hosting Dashy means your data and configuration stay on infrastructure you control — whether that's a VPS, a bare metal server, or a home lab.

Cost at scale matters once you move beyond individual use. Most SaaS equivalents charge per user or per data volume. A self-hosted instance on a $10-20/month VPS typically costs less than per-user SaaS pricing for teams of five or more — and the cost doesn't scale linearly with usage. One well-configured server handles dozens of users for a flat monthly fee.

Operational control is the third factor. The Docker Compose configuration above exposes every setting that commercial equivalents often hide behind enterprise plans: custom networking, environment variables, storage backends, and authentication integrations. You decide when to update, how to configure backups, and what access controls to apply.

The honest tradeoff: you're responsible for updates, backups, and availability. For teams running any production workloads, this is familiar territory. For individuals, the learning curve is real but the tooling (Docker, Caddy, automated backups) is well-documented and widely supported.

Server Requirements and Sizing

Before deploying Dashy, assess your server capacity against expected workload.

Minimum viable setup: A 1 vCPU, 1GB RAM VPS with 20GB SSD is sufficient for personal use or small teams. Most consumer VPS providers — Hetzner, DigitalOcean, Linode, Vultr — offer machines in this range for $5-10/month. Hetzner offers excellent price-to-performance for European and US regions.

Recommended production setup: 2 vCPUs with 4GB RAM and 40GB SSD handles most medium deployments without resource contention. This gives Dashy headroom for background tasks, caching, and concurrent users while leaving capacity for other services on the same host.

Storage planning: The Docker volumes in this docker-compose.yml store all persistent Dashy data. Estimate your storage growth rate early — for data-intensive tools, budget for 3-5x your initial estimate. Hetzner Cloud and Vultr both support online volume resizing without stopping your instance.

Operating system: Any modern 64-bit Linux distribution works. Ubuntu 22.04 LTS and Debian 12 are the most commonly tested configurations. Ensure Docker Engine 24.0+ and Docker Compose v2 are installed — verify with docker --version and docker compose version. Avoid Docker Desktop on production Linux servers; it adds virtualization overhead and behaves differently from Docker Engine in ways that cause subtle networking issues.

Network: Only ports 80 and 443 need to be publicly accessible when running behind a reverse proxy. Internal service ports should be bound to localhost only. A minimal UFW firewall that blocks all inbound traffic except SSH, HTTP, and HTTPS is the single most effective security measure for a self-hosted server.

Backup and Disaster Recovery

Running Dashy without a tested backup strategy is an unacceptable availability risk. Docker volumes are not automatically backed up — if you delete a volume or the host fails, data is gone with no recovery path.

What to back up: The named Docker volumes containing Dashy's data (database files, user uploads, application state), your docker-compose.yml and any customized configuration files, and .env files containing secrets.

Backup approach: For simple setups, stop the container, archive the volume contents, then restart. For production environments where stopping causes disruption, use filesystem snapshots or database dump commands (PostgreSQL pg_dump, SQLite .backup, MySQL mysqldump) that produce consistent backups without downtime.

For a complete automated backup workflow that ships snapshots to S3-compatible object storage, see the Restic + Rclone backup guide. Restic handles deduplication and encryption; Rclone handles multi-destination uploads. The same setup works for any Docker volume.

Backup cadence: Daily backups to remote storage are a reasonable baseline for actively used tools. Use a 30-day retention window minimum — long enough to recover from mistakes discovered weeks later. For critical data, extend to 90 days and use a secondary destination.

Restore testing: A backup that has never been restored is a backup you cannot trust. Once a month, restore your Dashy backup to a separate Docker Compose stack on different ports and verify the data is intact. This catches silent backup failures, script errors, and volume permission issues before they matter in a real recovery.

Security Hardening

Self-hosting means you are responsible for Dashy's security posture. The Docker Compose setup provides a functional base; production deployments need additional hardening.

Always use a reverse proxy: Never expose Dashy's internal port directly to the internet. The docker-compose.yml binds to localhost; Caddy or Nginx provides HTTPS termination. Direct HTTP access transmits credentials in plaintext. A reverse proxy also centralizes TLS management, rate limiting, and access logging.

Strong credentials: Change default passwords immediately after first login. For secrets in docker-compose environment variables, generate random values with openssl rand -base64 32 rather than reusing existing passwords.

Firewall configuration:

ufw default deny incoming
ufw allow 22/tcp
ufw allow 80/tcp
ufw allow 443/tcp
ufw enable

Internal service ports (databases, admin panels, internal APIs) should only be reachable from localhost or the Docker network, never directly from the internet.

Network isolation: Docker Compose named networks keep Dashy's services isolated from other containers on the same host. Database containers should not share networks with containers that don't need direct database access.

VPN access for sensitive services: For internal-only tools, restricting access to a VPN adds a strong second layer. Headscale is an open source Tailscale control server that puts your self-hosted stack behind a WireGuard mesh, eliminating public internet exposure for internal tools.

Update discipline: Subscribe to Dashy's GitHub releases page to receive security advisory notifications. Schedule a monthly maintenance window to pull updated images. Running outdated container images is the most common cause of self-hosted service compromises.

Troubleshooting Common Issues

Container exits immediately or won't start

Check logs first — they almost always explain the failure:

docker compose logs -f dashy

Common causes: a missing required environment variable, a port already in use, or a volume permission error. Port conflicts appear as bind: address already in use. Find the conflicting process with ss -tlpn | grep PORT and either stop it or change Dashy's port mapping in docker-compose.yml.

Cannot reach the web interface

Work through this checklist:

Confirm the container is running: docker compose ps
Test locally on the server: curl -I http://localhost:PORT
If local access works but external doesn't, check your firewall: ufw status
If using a reverse proxy, verify it's running and the config is valid: caddy validate --config /etc/caddy/Caddyfile

Permission errors on volume mounts

Some containers run as a non-root user. If the Docker volume is owned by root, the container process cannot write to it. Find the volume's host path with docker volume inspect VOLUME_NAME, check the tool's documentation for its expected UID, and apply correct ownership:

chown -R 1000:1000 /var/lib/docker/volumes/your_volume/_data

High resource usage over time

Memory or CPU growing continuously usually indicates unconfigured log rotation, an unbound cache, or accumulated data needing pruning. Check current usage with docker stats dashy. Add resource limits in docker-compose.yml to prevent one container from starving others. For ongoing visibility into resource trends, deploy Prometheus + Grafana or Netdata.

Data disappears after container restart

Data stored in the container's writable layer — rather than a named volume — is lost when the container is removed or recreated. This happens when the volume mount path in docker-compose.yml doesn't match where the application writes data. Verify mount paths against the tool's documentation and correct the mapping. Named volumes persist across container removal; only docker compose down -v deletes them.

Keeping Dashy Updated

Dashy follows a regular release cadence. Staying current matters for security patches and compatibility. The update process with Docker Compose is straightforward:

docker compose pull          # Download updated images
docker compose up -d         # Restart with new images
docker image prune -f        # Remove old image layers (optional)

Read the changelog before major version updates. Some releases include database migrations or breaking configuration changes. For major version bumps, test in a staging environment first — run a copy of the service on different ports with the same volume data to validate the migration before touching production.

Version pinning: For stability, pin to a specific image tag in docker-compose.yml instead of latest. Update deliberately after reviewing the changelog. This trades automatic patch delivery for predictable behavior — the right call for business-critical services.

Post-update verification: After updating, confirm Dashy is functioning correctly. Most services expose a /health endpoint that returns HTTP 200 — curl it from the server or monitor it with your uptime tool.

See also: Homarr — dashboard with deep Docker integration and drag-and-drop

See all open source homelab tools at OSSAlt.com/categories/homelab.

The SaaS-to-Self-Hosted Migration Guide (Free PDF)