Forget streaming, my NAS now powers everything from gaming to my AI assistant

A NAS is a wonderful thing; it’s the perfect place to back up your precious memories, share content across your home, and even allows you to break the vicelike grip of cloud and streaming services. But while installing Plex,  Home Assistant, and Pi-Hole might be rights of passage for every new NAS owner, there are far more exciting and useful things you can run on your home server, too.

I’ve grown a good-sized library of weird and wonderful tools on my DIY NAS, which allows me to access consistent software across all the devices in my home (and sometimes outside of it, too). Even though I’ve barely scratched the surface, I want to share a list of apps I’ve tried and some of the ones on my to-do list that you might never have heard about.