Glance — The Ultimate Self-Hosted Dashboard for All Your Feeds in One Place
Glance — The Ultimate Self-Hosted Dashboard for All Your Feeds in One Place
What is Glance?
Glance is an open-source, self-hosted dashboard that aggregates all your feeds and information sources in a single, beautiful interface. Think of it as your personal startpage on steroids — RSS feeds, Hacker News, Reddit posts, YouTube uploads, weather forecasts, stock prices, Docker container status, and much more, all arranged in a customizable multi-column layout.
GitHub: github.com/glanceapp/glance
Stars: ⭐ 34,000+
License: AGPL-3.0
Language: Go (single <20 MB binary)
Why this matters: If you're tired of jumping between tabs to check Hacker News, Reddit, your favorite blogs, YouTube channels, stock prices, and the weather — Glance brings everything together in one page. It's fast, lightweight, and runs on any machine with Docker.
Key Features
| Feature | Details |
|---|---|
| Widgets | RSS, Hacker News, Reddit, YouTube, Twitch, Weather, Markets, Releases, Docker, Calendar, Bookmarks, Custom API |
| Performance | Single <20 MB binary, minimal RAM usage, uncached pages load in ~1 second |
| Customizability | Multi-column layouts, multiple pages/tabs, custom CSS, theming |
| Mobile-friendly | Fully responsive design, works great on phones |
| Auth (v0.8+) | Built-in authentication support, optional |
| Docker-native | Official Docker image, one-liner deploy |
Architecture Overview
Glance follows a clean, simple architecture. A single Go binary serves a web dashboard that fetches data from multiple external sources, caches results, and renders everything server-side into a responsive interface.
Here's how the data flows:
- User Browser makes an HTTP request to the Glance Server (port 8080)
- The Config Parser reads
glance.ymlto determine page layout, columns, and widget configuration - The Widget Engine fetches data from each configured source (RSS feeds, APIs, etc.)
- Results pass through the Cache Layer with configurable TTLs per widget
- The server renders the HTML and serves it to the browser
- Docker Volumes persist configuration and custom CSS/assets
The architecture is intentionally stateless — no database required, no background workers. Data is fetched on page load and cached for the configured duration.
Prerequisites
- A server with Docker and Docker Compose installed
- A domain or IP address to access the dashboard
- 256 MB RAM minimum (512 MB recommended)
- Optional: a reverse proxy (Nginx, Caddy, or Traefik) for TLS and custom domains
Step-by-Step Setup Guide
Step 1: Create the Project Directory
mkdir -p glance/config && cd glanceStep 2: Create docker-compose.yml
Create a docker-compose.yml file:
services:
glance:
container_name: glance
image: glanceapp/glance:latest
restart: unless-stopped
ports:
- "8080:8080"
volumes:
- ./config:/app/config
- ./assets:/app/assets
environment:
- TZ=Europe/ParisOr use the one-liner template from the project:
curl -sL https://github.com/glanceapp/docker-compose-template/archive/refs/heads/main.tar.gz | tar -xzf - --strip-components 2Step 3: Create the Configuration File
Create config/glance.yml with your preferred widgets. Here's a complete example:
pages:
- name: Home
columns:
- size: small
widgets:
- type: calendar
first-day-of-week: monday
- type: rss
limit: 10
collapse-after: 3
cache: 12h
feeds:
- url: https://selfh.st/rss/
title: selfh.st
- url: https://ciechanow.ski/atom.xml
- url: https://www.joshwcomeau.com/rss.xml
title: Josh Comeau
- type: weather
location: Paris, France
units: metric
hour-format: 24h
- size: full
widgets:
- type: group
widgets:
- type: hacker-news
- type: lobsters
- type: videos
channels:
- UCXuqSBlHAE6Xw-yeJA0Tunw # Linus Tech Tips
- UCsBjURrPoezykLs9EqgamOA # Fireship
- UCHnyfMqiRRG1u-2MsSQLbXA # Veritasium
- type: reddit
subreddit: selfhosted
show-thumbnails: true
- size: small
widgets:
- type: markets
markets:
- symbol: BTC-USD
name: Bitcoin
- symbol: ETH-USD
name: Ethereum
- symbol: SPY
name: S&P 500
- type: releases
cache: 1d
repositories:
- glanceapp/glance
- immich-app/immich
- syncthing/syncthing
- type: bookmark
links:
- icon: github
url: https://github.com
text: GitHub
- icon: docker
url: https://hub.docker.com
text: Docker HubStep 4: Start Glance
docker compose up -dVerify it's running:
docker compose psYou should see:
NAME IMAGE STATUS PORTS
glance glanceapp/glance:latest Up 2 minutes 0.0.0.0:8080->8080/tcpOpen your browser and go to http://YOUR_SERVER_IP:8080. You should see your dashboard with all configured widgets.
Step 5: Add Authentication (Optional)
Since v0.8.0, Glance supports built-in authentication. Add this to your glance.yml:
theme:
light: dark
authentication:
method: basic
users:
- username: admin
password: your-secure-passwordThen restart:
docker compose restartStep 6: Set Up a Reverse Proxy (Recommended)
For production use, put Glance behind a reverse proxy with TLS. Here's a Caddy example:
dashboard.yourdomain.com {
reverse_proxy glance:8080
}And update your docker-compose.yml to join the proxy network:
services:
glance:
# ... existing config ...
networks:
- proxy
- default
networks:
proxy:
external: trueWidget Reference
Here's a quick reference of all available widgets:
- RSS — Subscribe to any RSS/Atom feed
- Hacker News — Top stories from news.ycombinator.com
- Reddit — Posts from any subreddit
- Lobsters — Top stories from lobste.rs
- YouTube — Latest uploads from any channel
- Twitch — Online status of Twitch channels
- Weather — Forecast from Open-Meteo (no API key needed)
- Markets — Stock prices and crypto quotes
- Releases — Latest GitHub releases for tracked repos
- Docker Containers — Status of running Docker containers
- Calendar — A simple monthly calendar
- Bookmarks — Custom link collections
- Monitor — HTTP endpoint health checks
- Server Stats — CPU, RAM, disk usage
- Custom API — Fetch JSON from any API and render custom HTML
- HTML — Embed arbitrary HTML content
- iFrame — Embed external websites
Verification Checklist
- Dashboard loads at
http://YOUR_IP:8080 - All configured widgets display content
- RSS feeds show recent articles
- Weather widget shows correct location and forecast
- YouTube widget shows latest videos
- Markets widget shows current prices
- Calendar widget displays current month
- Mobile viewport is responsive and readable
- (Optional) Authentication works on page refresh
- (Optional) TLS certificate works via reverse proxy
Tips & Best Practices
- Start simple — Add a few widgets first, then expand. Don't overload your first config file.
- Use the
cacheparameter — Setcache: 5mfor time-sensitive widgets like markets,cache: 1hfor feeds. - Create multiple pages — Use the
pagesarray to create separate tabs for different categories (Tech News, Finance, Social). - Custom CSS — Create an
assets/user.cssfile to customize colors, fonts, and layout beyond the built-in themes. - Pi-Hole users — If requests time out, increase the rate limit in your ad-blocking DNS service, which defaults to a low threshold.
- GitHub token — Add a read-only token for the releases widget to avoid hitting the 60 req/h unauthenticated limit.
# In glance.yml, under releases widget:
- type: releases
token: ghp_your_readonly_token
repositories:
- glanceapp/glanceTroubleshooting
Dashboard loads but widgets are empty
→ Check the logs: docker compose logs. Most issues are DNS-related or the external source being unreachable.
"cannot unmarshal !!map into []glance.page" error
→ You have a pages key at the top of an included page file. Remove it — included pages should only contain column definitions.
Broken layout with Dark Reader extension
→ Add dashboard.yourdomain.com to Dark Reader's ignore list, or disable it for the site.
Requests timing out
→ Common with Pi-Hole/AdGuard Home. Increase the rate limit in those services, or add networks: podman: external: true if using Podman.