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So I noticed that HexOS requires encryption at the folder-creation stage for future offsite backups. Since Buddy Backup isn't out yet, how will the migration path look for users who have already populated large unencrypted datasets? Specifically: Will there be a built-in 'Migrate to Encrypted' tool to move data into a new encrypted dataset for Buddy Backup? Will Buddy Backup support 'Replication-level encryption' (encrypting the stream during transit/at rest on the destination) without requiring the source folder on my local NAS to be encrypted? What about application data folders that are already not encrypted, how would those be handled?

Hello, It seems the after the update some systems on reboot are reaching out to our server so it doesn't know your there. Try the following. Login to TrueNAS interface. Left side select "system". Then after screen refreshes select "shell" from the list. Paste in the following command. Can't use normal short cuts Will need to use Shift + Insert Key for pasting. sudo python /usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/middlewared/scripts/vendor_service.py If that works within about 1 min you should be able to go to deck.hexos.com and see your server or claim it.

Def not cloud only. If your isp/network supports peer to peer, we can coordinate that and then get out of the way. That is what's included in a lifetime license. If we end up having to relay traffic for some users, that will require a subscription as we will have to pay for the relay traffic, but obviously it will still be encrypted.

Title says it all. Thanks.

I signed up as an early adopter last November, but have not yet installed it (running TrueNAS on an IXSystems Mini 3.0X+ w/a 5x8TB RAIDZ1) I'm building a custom NAS (probably overkill, this is all homelab stuff) now (parts slowly arriving) CPU: Intel 14500 I5 RAM: 128GB DDR4 (ouch!!!!) Mobo: ASUS B760M-A D4-CSM Supermicro 2U chassis 7x12TB (will be a RAIDZ2) with an HBA card and SAS extender in case I want to add more than the 8 drives the chassis supports 1TB Samsung 990 Pro NVME (boot drive, and planning on putting my VMs there, or at least the fast ones I need, w/backup to the big vdev) Intel A380 (hoping it'll work) for transcoding dual 10GBps NIC for connecting to my backbone I'll be reading a ton in the next week here 🙂 ~Horist

Down the Road, it would be really awesome if we would get a curated installation for Paperless-NGX! https://docs.paperless-ngx.com/ Paperless is a really awesome Document Management System for all sorts of things. Paperless have lots of Small Features like full OCR and full in document text search. With a Duplex scanner, you can easly backup ALL of your paper documents and have them automatically sorted - a perfect companion for HexOS that aims to make digital backups a breeze! With a Curated and easy install, it could also help to backup analog paper 🙂

For us to dig deeper, I'd like you to report back with your hardware configuration as well as confirm what version of the OS you are running (25.10.1 or earlier?). There were some issues with the TrueNAS SCALE network reporting graphs in earlier releases. We'd also like to see a packet cap or something more than just a domain to prove what you're claiming here. Maybe wireshark monitor? Did you configure anything within TrueNAS SCALE's UI itself at any point or did you just utilize the HexOS dashboard for all your needs? Lots of things could account for the disk activity itself (such as background tasks or maintenance operations like the scrub that happens by default once a month) but the network activity is not us. StorJ is the used by TrueCloud if you configure your server to use it for backups (not something we support via HexOS today at all). Furthermore, the storj connection and the websocat connections are independent of each other. Websocat is used to make an outbound connection from a HexOS server to our Command Deck as outlined in one of our earlier blog posts here: https://docs.hexos.com/blog/2024-07-30.html. That's it. We do not and cannot transfer your data via that connection. The entirety of that connection is to give us API access to manage your system via our interface at deck.hexos.com. This ties back to something in TrueNAS and not anything with HexOS. Once you've unclaimed your system, we no longer have any access to do anything with your system. Generally speaking, it was quite an alarmist post and makes some pretty aggressive claims about data being "exfiltrated", that we were "misleading" about our product, and that you haven't seen any "meaningful updates." This was stated in our very first blog post that I previously linked but you won't by reliant on deck.hexos.com for long: https://docs.hexos.com/blog/2025-11-25.html. Furthermore, having a management interface hosted via cloud doesn't go against self-hosting as a concept. All of your data and applications are still running local on your LAN, which gives you the value of self-hosting. Management interactions for most customers are limited to initial setup of storage, folders, users, and applications. Once running, users mostly just interact with the applications and data, which run entirely local. Ultimately we want to know if this is a real bug/issue that ties back to TrueNAS SCALE so we can escalate to the right people or if this is simply a misunderstanding or misconfiguration. In reviewing multiple test systems we have configured and going back over a month in the network reporting, we see no significant network activity that matches anything close to what you are reporting.

It's hard to believe it's already been a year since we launched the HexOS Beta and the early access campaign. What a journey it's been! In today's blog post, we're going to provide a summary of this past year's accomplishments, a run-down of what's left to achieve our 1.0 release, what's coming next, an update on the AnyRaid project, and our HexOS Holiday Sale! Read all about it in our latest blog post: https://docs.hexos.com/blog/2025-11-26.html

Hello, not sure if it was requested already, but a curation for the "Actual Budget" app would be greatly appreciated. I found it by looking at the apps tab, and did some more research on it and i would love to switch to it instead of my current app of Quicken since I pay yearly to use it. I think it would help many nowadays due to inflation. Thanks!

Would be great if we could get ente photos support just like immich. I tried to set it up myself but couldn't. Here's the link: https://ente.io/help/self-hosting/

Thanks for sharing. X is one account that does not interest me.

I ran into the same problem, and this fixed it. I think the install script for HexOS for this app needs to be modified slightly. Made a data set in the home-assistant folder, give it a name like "config" or "data", and modify the "Host Path" for "Home Assistant Config Storage" to be in that new dataset. Now I need to look at how to remove a bunch of junk from a folder without removing the datasets I want.

Every time I update Hexos to latest version the website stops working. I can still login via TrueNAS but hexos is broken.

can you try doing this

Update: I think I was able to get to the bottom of it. A while ago, after upgrading the server, I set a bunch of power efficiency options in BIOS to minimise the hardware impact on the power bill. However, it seems these settings may impact the system stability at high loads, which is what I've been experiencing. I also played around with the EXPO profile a little bit since I've seen system instability with some stock profiles in the past.

Oh and regarding this: You can unclaim your system from the Settings -> Reset page without losing any data.

Hello, At this time HexOS is still in beta so by purchasing a lifetime license you will get access to our beta software and all updates are included with the lifetime license at no additional cost. In the future there may be some features that are not included with the lifetime license but that is limited to features with an ongoing cost. For example if we decided to offer a cloud storage solution.

to the best of my knowledge immich does not encrypt photos. Have you encrypted them another way? If you would like i can try to set up a support meeting with you where we install a fresh installation of immich and help you reprocess all the media you had in your previous immich installation

As much as I like the idea of encrypted datasets (i'm using them myself), I fear that it will cause a not insignificant amount of headaches and data loss. Seeing how many users currently are just reinstalling Hexos if something is not working as they expect, currently, they just nees to mount the pools again and no harm no foul. But with encrypted datasets, where they didn't save the keys or have the keys saved on the encrypted dataset themselves it's bye bye data. So if we go done the path of encrypted datasets, we need to have a way to easily manage the decryption keys. Maybe there will be an option to store them on the Hexos Server and use them from there if anything ever goes wrong with a server. If not, a lot of people are not going to remember where they put those keys X years ago, which are now standing between them and their data. Don't get me wrong, I think those are definitely valid points, but such a crucial part requires a basically fool proof setup to not cause any harm. 🙂

When user clicks a notification for an App Update and the slide-in panel shows on the right of the page, it would make sense to have a link in the Notification to the App which requires an update. Today I have to navigate to the App listings and then into Installed Apps. But even *then* I don't have any indication which app requires an update. I have to click on each of them to find out which App requires an update. Am I missing something which indicates the app requiring update?

It is a must these days to have TailScale support, especially for secure remote access. It is far too easy to mess up a WireGaurd/OpenVPN Config, if the goal is security and simplicity, Tailscale VPN access should be a high priority.

I can confirm that this was, in fact the issue. One other struggle I had along the way was getting into the BIOS. It isn't just hitting Delete, F12 or any other F-key. You have to hold Ctrl + F12 to get there. Otherwise you'll always see GRUB with no option to boot from USB, at least in my experience.

I totally hear you on this. Alert Fatigue is a real thing AND a risk. If the dashboard is always red, you eventually stop looking at it, which is exactly when a second drive will fail. That said, please avoid disabling SMART entirely. It’s better to have a "noisy" warning than to be completely blind to a total disk collapse. Here is my take on how to handle this: The risky move is disabling SMART for the disk doesn't just hide the old errors... it stops the system from telling you if the drive starts developing new problems. The reality is HexOS/TrueNAS reports the drive as "Unhealthy" because the drive's own firmware has tripped a threshold. The OS can't "clear" a hardware flag that the disk itself is reporting. The advisement is instead of disabling the service, check the specific SMART attributes (like Reallocated_Sector_Ct). If that number stays static for a few weeks, you might be okay. But if that number is climbing, the drive is a ticking time bomb regardless of the data importance.... replace.... IT.... ASAP. I would recommend you run a long SMART Test. If it passes and the error count doesn't increase, you can sometimes manually tune the alert thresholds in the Disk Settings of TrueNAS to silence that specific error, while keeping the monitor active for new ones. Though that goes against every admin bone in my body. Stay safe with that data my friend.

Sem problema, meu amigo, eu só queria ter certeza de que entendo o nível de NECESSIDADE vs. DESEJO. 😄 So I will be upfront, I am new to Nextcloud also, but I've read some of the documentation and have gleaned the following to your questions. Yes, it would seem ExApps need to un as their own separate containers. They don't run into the Nextcloud app itself. You do need a separate service called HaRP proxy to act as the bridge. Since HexOS is based on TrueNAS SCALE, you usually have to deploy HaRP as a Custom App using the the image found at, ghcr.io/nextcloud/nextcloud-appapi-harp:release. I did find this video helpful, maybe this could be your starting off point. I would highly suggest that you spin up some sort of sandbox environment to play around with. Not sure if forcing this rather messy setup into HexOS right now. Maybe in the future someone will develop an automation for it but... couldn't even guess when that could be. Sorry I don't have much to offer at this time. I'm not able to play around with Nextcloud to that depth until i get some other things figured out.

I emailed the hexos support team mid December about adding ARM as a curated app because I was never able to get it to run on my own... This was the response I got, so I am hopeful! Hello, Thanks for writing us. I've taken the app and passed it on to the app people. It looks like a perfect app for how we all want to automate backing up of our collections. We will look into adding this to our collections. Thank you for supporting HexOS! HexOS Team

Very good chance the one drive that is preventing you from booting has gone bad. I would also try to double check if all the cables are connected to the 2nd drive that is not showing up in hopes that it has not gone bad as well.

+1 is there any plans regarding ARM as of today ?

i would start troubleshooting my unplugging all drives other than your boot drive and see if you can boot into HexOS/TrueNAS

HexOS Gets a Major Upgrade This release introduces an improved Apps experience, new apps, two-factor authentication support, improved GPU support, and Goldeye compatibility. Read more about it on our docsite here at Command Deck Update - December 26, 2025 Also check out our latest blog for even more details! NOTE: This update was applied automatically. You may need to clear your cache.

Thank you! I did not even try it with my OTP app since it states in the settings you specifically need Google Authenticator. That threw me off. But it works. Maybe they can re-word the setting description.

Hello all! We are excited to announce HexOS Local, powering the new local UI/UX for HexOS and capable of so much more. Read more about it on the Blogpost - Introducing HexOS Local

I also would love to see paperless ngx curated!

I'd also hugely appreciate this feature with the ability for a UPS to trigger a system shutdown.

Where can one see the number of licenses on thier account? I just bought a second lics for $99 as I would like to setup an off-site backup down-the-road, once you have settled into a non-beta version. I have been playing a bit with my current setup, but haven't committed all my files over from my Synology NAS until you move to Prod/final version. (I guess that is in Q1 of 2026!!) I will be looking at setting up a very simple HexOS offsite box, just bare system with a few large HD's in it for backing up my more important data. I am just waiting till you have moved out of beta. Thanks for the sale and the cool interface!! Merry Christmas all!

Another quarter until version 1.0. Can't say I'm not disappointed, but I get that quality takes time. At least give us a bone in the meantime.

The difference is pretty big, while they do the same thing, they do it very differently. Immich just stores all the images in plain on the file system, all the processing is done on server side, you can connect an external library and if your Immich DB or installation becomes corrupted or breaks and there is no more support for Immich you just take the photos folder and move on. But the admin and everyone who's access to the folder can see all the photos of everyone, so privacy is not that great, but administration is easier and recovery in case of an issue is easy. Ente (FunFact: Ente is German for Duck) is all about privacy. The photos are all encrypted on the server and only the client side can decrypt/see the photos. This also means that the client side needs to do all the processing, but therefore the server can be very low spec (although this doesn't matter in our case, because Hexos needs to run in the first place, so HW specs is not really a concern in any way) and it needs S3 storage and requires more setup an administration. However if your Ente DB becomes corrupted or the Ente app breaks or the Ente dev stops and your app becomes unusable, you lose all your photos, because you cannot access it any other way. But until that happens only your client side device can access the photos and no-one else can.

Pretty disappointed with this limitation. I understand the reason to avoid unscrupulous reselling, but I do think there are better ways of avoiding that without these issues. There are probably a lot of people in a similar situation as me; wanting to get a license for a relative as the family tech guy, but not wanting to have to be the sys admin for everyone. I bought a license at release because I support the mission, with no intention of using it until the features got more flushed out (still on plain TrueNAS). I am in the process of building a NAS for my father, which I intended to set up with a HexOS license so he could use buddy backup and some apps as a relatively nontechnical user. The HexOS interface is simple enough I think he can grasp it. But if I have to be an admin for his NAS anyway I might as well just set up Tailscale and rsync on TrueNAS. I understand it's a sale price and I'll probably end up getting him his own but it just feels like a slap for people that bought in to support and I hate feeling like I'm throwing money away. I'm no business major but it seems like expanding the user base would be prioritized given the possibility of genuinely useful subscription features coming down the pipe. Anyways. Just my $0.02. Still love what you guys are building.

So the difference really comes down to the account you use to login and manage each system . if you want to give someone else access to manage one of the systems. If the license is on your account, you have to give them your login. Otherwise, buying on a seperate account you have to give them the seperate login. The latter not being as cheap as the former.

HexOS would greatly improve by offering VPN services as curated one‑click apps, similar to Jellyfin or Nextcloud. Support for all major commercial VPNs with GUI and their signature features: NordVPN (Meshnet & dedicated IP), ExpressVPN, Surfshark, ProtonVPN, Private Internet Access (PIA), CyberGhost, Mullvad, VyprVPN, TunnelBear, and others. Support for open‑source solutions: WireGuard and OpenVPN. One‑click installation and configuration without complex manual steps. Option to route traffic from specific containers or apps through the chosen VPN, or all server traffic via VPN or a dedicated IP (useful for game servers). Include key features offered by these VPNs, such as a killswitch to block traffic if the VPN connection drops (preventing leaks), split tunneling, multi‑hop, obfuscation, and other advanced options. Ideally, make all NordVPN features available, since NordVPN is widely used and unique features like Meshnet are especially valuable for secure access outside the home network. This would enhance usability, privacy, and flexibility. If these features are implemented, I am ready to migrate my TrueNAS pools to HexOS.

I think we are mostly on the same page with your response so let me throw out some scenarios to make sure we are all clear. 1) I was not a lifetime owner. I bought the $199 because I want to own a NAS and am joining the Beta though pretty late. I am now the proud owner of a HexOS NAS. and have built a machine and loaded the product. 1 license on 1 account and 1 server. 2) I see the two server option $298 option. That is equal to the original $99 deal plus the $199 current and long standing post black friday 2024 advertised price. I have 2 licenses on 1 account and up to 2 servers either physical or virtual including a mix of the two. If I don't know about the original black friday sale I simply see a (currently) full price license and a packaged reduced option for a second. 3) I bought in at the original black friday price and want a second license for another server. I am also 2 licenses on 1 account because there was no way to buy a second $99 black friday license on any account but the original. 4) People with vision (not me) who bought multiple licenses. Not sure I will get this right so please strike out what is incorrect. Those folks would have 2 licenses on 1 account. 5) Same as four except they bought multiple licenses on multiple accounts. For simplicity let's call it 2 licenses on 2 account. Assuming all these are valid (and someone exercised the options) it appears the buddy backup definition is really the hangup. I only see one reference to the buddy backup on the HexOS.com website (and no folks, I did not do an exhaustive search looking for more information). The site says "Buddy backups and replication Easily transfer data between two HexOS systems. Backup your data to a friend’s remote server using a secure connection". Since it only says systems and not licenses or accounts, I think that is a little confusing when held up against your above statement "The additional licenses is for users that want to setup multiple systems of their own, not for buddy backups.". I am guessing the confusion may simply be how will the buddy backup be executed. I believe TrueNAS already has ways to do backups. As well there are lots of apps that will do it if I say I don't like the way TrueNAS does it. So going out on a limb here I hope this backup is seup in the dashboard by identifying the second system. I hope it is along the line of I list the second license I want to backup to and when built (of course) I do the same in reverse order listing license 1 to connect to. I am setting aside encryption and size allocation because that is secondary to me but it must be managed somewhere. If it's account and license in that crosslinking process that will complicate or possibly eliminate the backup buddy option. I believe that is what we loyal but extremely ambitious are trying to understand. Is backup buddy system to system, license to license or account to account. Oh and for clarity I am thinking my userid or email represents my account and something else is my license. The statements that the second $99 license is not for backup buddy but you can be your own backup buddy (as sad as that sounds) might just need clarification in the future like before the sale ends for those just seeing this conversation and thinking I didn't think about being my own backup buddy. Way more than enough said and I will bow out now.

I am an idiot😅 Way back, I bought two licenses because I thought I could then build a second server, install it at my parents' house that my dad could use for picture storage, and have a buddy back up to and from that second server.

I believe the distinction is that Buddy backups, etc, will need to connect to the cloud for configuration, but not for ongoing use. I can see how that could be confusing for some people.

I would like to propose a pair of features that would work in tandem. A dynamic DNS system (like DuckDNS) run by Eshtek could work wonders for users that have not purchased a domain name and might find it confusing to set up CNAME records to point multiple services to the same address. The cost of running DuckDNS is apparently negligible, so hopefully there would not need to be a subscription for the service (or if so, then maybe only a few pounds per year). Combine this with a built-in reverse proxy like Caddy -- which can automatically provision LetsEncrypt SSL certificates -- and curated apps would then be able to be made securely accessible over the internet via an address like: ${service-name}.${user-chosen-name}.hexos.com Apps could then advertise this as their address in the dashboard, making secure configuration of user apps significantly easier. The only user-configurable step that would be required would be to open ports 80/443 on the user's router, something that Eshtek cannot control, but crucially, something that the HexOS Deck *would* be able to check for, notifying users if their router is configured correctly. Since there is already a web service running on ports 80/443, this reverse proxy would need alternative ports, but most routers can receive a connection on one port and map it to a different port internally, so this is unlikely to present a major problem.

honestly we don't much about when its coming just that it has started development. it was probably more about setting proper expectations that its not gonna come anytime soon. probably best not to build off of beyondRAID since it was slow. slow is bad in so many ways. resilvering is longer, giving drives a longer window where failure would be catastrophic expansion and scrubbing would also take forever. plus don't we all want our systems to be as fast as they could be just a guess but i would assume it has to do with the parity calculations and making sure the zfs stuff works correctly. the forums are here for all your questions so don't be sorry. local interface is definitely still coming. I just don't have an eta to give you.

I’ve changed the default port numbers on my TrueNAS web server to free up ports 80 and 443 for other services. However, from the HexOS portal, it still tries to connect using the standard ports when interacting with TrueNAS. For example, if I try to edit an app’s configuration or launch the TrueNAS configuration from the portal, I don’t get the correct interface. It would be great if the portal could detect the configured port numbers via the API, or allow these to be set manually in the HexOS settings.

Hey all, as the name implies I would like to see a simple checkbox to make folders available via nfs. As a bonus a list of IP ranges that are allowed to access the share would be perfect. The user mapping to the user owning the folder so that I do not need to care about permissions and just access the data via NFS could be handled automatically as a default. Please feel free to ask for clarification and to add your ideas below!

So I decided to throw together a quick video for thoes that are questioning hardware when it comes to building their HexOs build. This is something i put together in a short time with my 20+ years in the used parts game. Feel free to give me pointers or opinions on things i may have missed and if there is a need ill create a part 2 with used enterprise gear..

DIsregard, I have worked out how to do this in the global network settings! Thanks!

You need to login into Truenas, go to storage -> Manage Devices -> select your pool and then the first drive. On the right side on the Disk Info part press "Edit" and there you have the possibility to set the HDD Standby and/or Advanced Power Management. Under Advanced Power Management everything from Level 1 to 127 will spin down the drive, from 128 to 254 will not spin down the drive. You have to do this for every HDD. I don't know how Hexos is reacting to this and which side effect it can have, also for other people reading this, spinning down drives is generally not recommended because the spin ups are putting wear on the drives, and drives are vulnerable during spin ups. When drives are spinning there is an air cushion which is keeping the head of the disks, while this is not the case during a spin up and a head crash can occur. Also when leaving a drive sitting without spinning it can have a negative impact on the lubrication of the bearing. Also make sure that the drive doesn't not cool down to much, this is especially import in the winter if the server is sitting in a cellar or basement where the air temperature can drop and this can also cool down your drive significantly, depending on your setup. There have been plenty of perfectly working drives without issues, which did not recover from a spin up. So be warned, that it might shorten the lifespan of a drive. Also you might want to look into enabling the different C-States in the Bios, this can also save a significant amount of energy.

Yup! We went through great pains to make our UI mobile responsive, and this will make porting it to mobile apps easier in the future. For now, navigating to the deck from mobile is already a pretty pleasant experience.