Install
You run it. Here's exactly what that means.
"Self-hosted" is the whole product and it's also the word most likely to put you off, so this page explains it as if you've never done it — what a server is here, what it costs, how long it takes, and the actual commands, so you can decide before you're invested rather than after.
Not downloadable yet
There's no download link on this page, because there isn't one to give you.
DoveBoard isn't on sale and isn't published yet. Everything described here is how it installs — it's how the person who builds it runs it every day — but the repository isn't public, so today this page is something to read rather than something to follow. The waitlist is how you find out when that changes.
First, the word
A "server" is just a computer that stays on.
It isn't a rack, it isn't noisy, and it doesn't live in a data centre unless you want it to. It's a computer that is switched on when you want to reach your stuff. That is the entire requirement.
Option one
A small computer in your house
A mini PC — the palm-sized kind that costs a couple of hundred dollars new and much less used. It sits on a shelf, draws less power than a lightbulb, and never has to be looked at again. A spare laptop with the lid shut works exactly as well.
Option two
A rented machine somewhere else
A VPS — a virtual server you rent by the month from a hosting company. You never see it; you get an address and a password. It's the option if you don't want a box in your house or you want it reachable from anywhere without any network setup.
Which one
The one you'll actually maintain
Your own machine means the data never leaves your building, and you're responsible for the power and the disk. A VPS means somebody else keeps it running, and the disk is theirs. Both are self-hosting in the sense that matters: no account on our servers, no copy of your data anywhere but yours.
What it costs
Roughly, and honestly.
Approximate figures at the time of writing, in US dollars. They move, and nobody here controls them — check before you buy anything.
Your own machine
Roughly $150–$300 once, then a few dollars a year
A new mini PC lands in that range; a used office one is often well under it. Running continuously at around 10 watts costs on the order of $10–$20 a year in electricity in most of the US. After the first purchase there is no recurring bill at all.
A rented VPS
Roughly $5–$7 a month
The smallest tier most hosts sell — 1 GB of memory and 20 GB or so of disk — is enough, and that's about $60–$85 a year. You're renting the hardware, not the software: nothing about DoveBoard is metered, per-seat, or charged by storage.
Either way, the software cost is on the pricing page and it isn't a subscription to us.
System requirements
Measured, not estimated.
These numbers come from reading them off a real DoveBoard install in daily use, not from a spec sheet somebody guessed at.
Memory
1 GB is enough
A running install measures around 240 MB in use. 1 GB gives the operating system room to breathe; 2 GB is comfortable and is what most people will end up with anyway.
Disk
About 2 GB, plus your data
The container image is around 170 MB; Docker and its layers want a gigabyte or so around it. Your own data is the part that grows, and it grows slowly — a database after long daily use measures in the tens of megabytes. Photos and uploaded files are the thing that would ever change that.
Processor
Anything from the last decade
Idle CPU use is effectively zero. Any 64-bit x86 or ARM machine that runs Docker will run this; there is no GPU requirement and nothing to compile on your side.
Operating system
Whatever runs Docker
Linux is the obvious host. macOS and Windows both run it through Docker Desktop, Windows via WSL2. The application itself doesn't care — it only ever sees the container.
The actual shape of it
Four commands, and then it's running.
If you're technical, this is the whole thing and you can stop reading. If you're not, the point of showing it is that it's finite — there is no step five hundred, and nothing here asks you to understand Docker to type it.
# 1. Get the code onto the machine. $ git clone <the repository> doveboard && cd doveboard # 2. Build it and start it. This is the long one — a few minutes, # once, while it downloads and builds. Everything after is seconds. $ docker compose up -d --build # 3. First boot prints a one-time admin password. Grab it. $ docker compose logs hq | grep -A 4 "Initial admin account" # 4. Open it. $ open http://localhost:3000 → sign in, and a setup wizard asks your name, your time zone, which of the 37 spaces you want, and how it should look.
What you didn't have to do
No database to set up
There's no separate database server to install, configure or connect. It's one SQLite file inside the folder you cloned, and the migrations that create it run themselves on first boot.
Where your data is
./data, next to the code
The database is ./data/app.db and your uploaded files are blobs in ./data/files/ — bytes on disk, never buried inside the database. Copy that folder and you have copied everything.
Restarting
Loses nothing
All state lives in ./data. Rebuilding the container, updating, or pulling the power out and putting it back leaves the workspace exactly where it was.
Reaching it
From the sofa, and from anywhere else.
On the machine itself it's just a web address. Getting to it from a phone in another country is the part that needs a decision, and there are three reasonable ones.
Simplest
Only on your own network
Do nothing. It answers on your home network at the machine's address, and that's it. Nothing is exposed to the internet at all, which is the most private option and the least convenient one.
Recommended
A tunnel, with no open ports
DoveBoard ships with a Cloudflare Tunnel sidecar. You create a tunnel, paste one token into a file, and it publishes at a domain you own without opening a single inbound port on your router. This is how the author reaches his own.
Private mesh
Tailscale, with a real certificate
One command exposes it to your own devices over HTTPS with a valid certificate and nothing on the public internet. Good if you never want an address a stranger could type.
Where you use it
In a browser. Or in a window, if you'd rather.
Today
Any browser, any device
It's a website your server serves, so anything with a browser reaches it — laptop, tablet, phone. Nothing to install on the device.
Today
Installable as an app
DoveBoard ships a manifest and a service worker, so any Chromium browser can install it as a standalone window, and iOS Safari can add it to the home screen. Pages you've visited fall back to their last-seen copy if the network goes away; online you always get live data.
Planned, not built
A desktop application for Windows
The intention is a desktop app so running your own copy stops meaning opening a terminal. It does not exist. There is no date, no beta, and nothing to sign up for — and the day it's real, this card changes.
There is no mobile app and none is promised. There are no app store listings, and none are promised.
Living with it
What you're signing up to maintain.
Being straight about this is more useful than making it sound like nothing. It is not nothing. It is small, and it is finite.
Backups happen without you
It backs itself up every night at 03:30 into a rotating set — the newest of each of the last seven days plus the last four weeks — and takes an extra verified snapshot before any update is allowed to touch the database. Your one job is to keep a copy somewhere that isn't the machine it lives on, because a backup on the disk it protects is not a backup.
Updating is a written procedure
Five commands, documented, with the backup step first. It is deliberately manual: nothing in this application downloads an image or restarts anything on the strength of a release feed. Updates happen when you decide they happen.
If you lock yourself out
There's a break-glass script that resets any account's password and prints a new one once. You are the administrator, so there is no support queue between you and your own workspace — and no support queue that could be socially engineered into it either.
If you want out
Settings → Export writes one archive with every record you own as JSON, your prose as markdown, your tables as CSV, and your actual files — with a manifest that counts every table twice and reports any disagreement by name. Then delete the folder. How that works.
Pre-launch
Tell me when I can install it.
One email when DoveBoard is ready to install and ready to buy. Early access goes out in waitlist order.