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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

Forgive me, but I'm really confused by what you're saying, which means there is clearly a disconnect in our marketing language and understanding with customers as well and I want to get to the bottom of that. Let's try some clarification here: Buddy backup is a feature that will allow two HexOS users (customers) to backup to each other's server in an encrypted fashion. There is no reason you cannot be your own buddy with a second license (e.g. you buy a second server license and put a server at a secondary location). If someone bought two licenses during black friday under two separate accounts, each account can backup to each other just the same (and if they want to merge those two accounts, we can handle that for the user). With this sale, however, we are not allowing someone to buy a second license to transfer to another user (as it would open the door to reselling licenses which we don't support). I get that the term "buddy backup" may not clearly identify that you can be your own buddy, but we thought it would be fairly obvious that if you could backup to someone else on a separate account, you could also backup to yourself on the same account. I think we could loosen the "encryption" requirement in the case of backups between two servers owned by the same account, but that's more of a technical detail than marketing. Let me know what's still unclear or how we can do better on the language here. Sometimes we can be a little too close to the trees to see the forest, so if you can help give us a better perspective, we'll work to improve our messaging in the marketing. Thanks!

OMG, I totally see the confusion now. I have edited that post and reworded it to be more clear. TrueNAS has no built-in means to do backups as part of their OS unless you consider rsync cron jobs/replication tasks as "backup". They don't facilitate the connection between servers or even setup the SSH permissions for you (you have to do all of that yourself). This is where our solution takes things a step further. We intend to make the experience much simpler. First you "friend" someone else that is a HexOS user (if you're doing the "buddy" approach). Then you will grant that user "permission" to backup to your system (and set a quota). Then they accept the request and authorize the backup in return (if you're doing that). Then we do the rest (establishing a secure VPN tunnel between systems, creating appropriate SSH users and handling the key exchange, etc.). You'll definitely be able to leverage the buddy backup system between two systems licensed under the same account. That would be silly of us to prohibit or unnecessarily complicate. I get the confusion. Buddy backup is just the marquee feature name for our backup solution between two servers. Every server needs a license. So if you and a buddy want to backup, you both have to have your own licenses under your own accounts. If you have two licenses for two systems under 1 account, you can use the same "buddy backup" system to handle that job as well. Apologies for muddying the water on my initial response. I can see how that had some folks confused, but I hope this clarifies.

To celebrate the holidays and thank our community for their continued support, we're excited to announce our HexOS Holiday Sale, starting today! Existing customers can purchase additional licenses for just $99 each, perfect for expanding your home server setup. New customers can take advantage of our special two-pack bundle for $298, with additional licenses available at the same $99 promotional price. Single licenses remain available at $199 until our 1.0 release in Q1 2026. This holiday pricing for additional licenses and the two-pack bundle is available through December 31st, so don't miss out on this opportunity to join or expand your HexOS experience. Please note: License transfers are not permitted. All licenses are tied to the purchasing account. Buy now from the HexOS Store!

Buddy backup will definitely work with two licenses under the same account. You will be your own buddy 😉

As of today, yes, you can access your server from anywhere using deck.hexos.com. I have a discussion planned with the team to allow you to disable remote access which would be as simple as us verifying the WAN IP of the client device being used to connect to the deck and making sure it matches the server's WAN IP. When HexOS Local arrives, you will be able to even further reduce your cloud dependency, but there are some features like installing apps/VMs, configuring buddy backups, and e-mail notifications that will require a connection to our deck. Thankfully that connection is outbound from your server, which doesn't require you to open any ports on your firewall and expose the system to the wider net. We also do have plans to implement oAuth and 2FA in the future to further enhance security and options.

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.

Let's Talk About Immich If you've been running Immich on HexOS this year, you know it hasn't been smooth sailing exactly. We want to talk about what's happened, why it was so challenging, and how we're working to handle these situations better in the future. What Happened? Earlier this year, Immich deprecated their old storage configuration and required all users to migrate to a new structure. For users running Immich through docker-compose or other manual setups, this meant updating some configuration files and running a few commands. Annoying, but manageable. For some HexOS users, the migration was more involved. Because of how TrueNAS SCALE structures application storage, moving to the new configuration required either reinstalling Immich fresh (the simplest solution) or manually migrating existing data between datasets (a process that involved SSH access, rsync commands, and careful attention to permissions). But if you're choosing between "reinstall the app" or "follow a 15-step guide," neither option feels great when you chose HexOS specifically to avoid that kind of complexity. Why Was This So Hard? When Immich made this change, we had a choice to make. We could have built a comprehensive rsync-based migration tool using the TrueNAS API. It has those capabilities. But that would have meant dropping everything else we were working on to build what amounts to using a cannon to kill a mosquito: a massive, complex solution for what we hope won't be a regularly recurring problem with this particular app. Instead, our community stepped up in a huge way. Users like @forsaken and @G-M0N3Y-2503 created detailed guides (to move or rsync your data). These guides walked through the manual migration process to preserve existing data in Immich. They focused on helping users through the immediate problem, while we continue building the platform we need to handle situations like this properly. That platform is HexOS Local: a locally-hosted management application that will let us perform complex operations without being bottlenecked by the engineering overhead of building one-off solutions through the SCALE API every time an application throws us a curveball. This reduces the technical burden on our team and, more importantly, gives us the flexibility to automate maintenance tasks that previously would have required manual intervention or massive engineering investments. This same platform will serve the Local UI/UX feature we've committed to delivering as part of our 1.0 release. We'll be talking a lot more about HexOS Local in an upcoming blog post, but the key takeaway is this: we're building HexOS to handle whatever the open-source ecosystem throws at it, without having to choose between "drop everything and build a custom tool" or "make users SSH into their servers." What About Right Now? If you're currently running Immich on the old storage configuration and haven't migrated yet, you have options: The simple path: Reinstall Immich fresh with the new configuration. Your photos will need to be re-uploaded, but the setup is clean and straightforward. The preservation path: Follow one of the community migration guides to keep your existing data in place. These guides are more technical and require command-line access, but they work. Our recommendation depends on your situation. If you have a manageable photo library and good backups, the fresh install is probably your best bet. If you have years of photos, carefully organized albums, and user configurations you don't want to recreate, the migration guides are there for you. And if this seems to daunting, email support@hexos.com so we can schedule a time to assist you directly. Moving Forward The Immich situation showed us exactly where we need to invest engineering effort. We can't keep facing the choice between building massive one-off solutions or asking users to break out the terminal. That's not sustainable, and it's not the HexOS we're building. Immich is an incredible project. It's exactly the kind of self-hosted solution we want to make accessible to everyone. The team behind it recently released v2.0, marking their stable release with better upgrade paths going forward. We're committed to making sure that when the next complex maintenance task comes up, whether it's Immich or any other application, we have the infrastructure in place to handle it gracefully. That's the HexOS we're building. Thanks for your patience while we get there.

Wait, so if I have two licenses under my account I can't put my second server at eg my parents home for a offsite backup and sync via BuddyBackup?

Another mid-quarter update featuring: New curated app installations Update to the qBittorrent installation Read more about it on our docsite here at Command Deck Update - November 25, 2025 NOTE: This update was applied automatically. You may need to clear your cache.

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

We know about this problem all-too-well. The VM features will come in layers, but our plan is to try and get ahead of those kinds of problems by detecting hardware changes and automatically adjusting device ID mappings to your VMs before they start. This still needs a lot of R&D work and there are lots of potential gotchas, but I bet we can address a lot of common scenarios like what you've described. It gets more tricky when you have multiple GPUs in a system of the same make/model, as it's hard to know which one is which for assignment to VMs. I'd say that's a problem for after the initial VMs feature release for us to investigate further. Ultimately there will be some limits to what we can do, but we're going to do this as best as is humanly possible.

If there are still a plethora of users affected after Local is released, we would consider it. But if not, we would rather spend the time via support helping people up over this fence than engineer an entire solution for a handful of folks. Support@hexos.com is available to you at no cost.

We now have one: Custom Install Scripts - HexOS Hub

Amazing news. I just hope adding HexOS Local will be seamless and won't require a fresh install/rebuild!

Just here to say - you guys are awesome and thanks for keeping your promises! I'm perfectly fine with deck and enjoy being able to pull up the stats quickly anywhere I am, but local hosting is so important to this community, so thank you.

This would require the app data folders themselves to be encrypted. Not impossible to do, but may not be with the first iteration of buddy backup. Definitely something we could consider!

I would like to see first party support for placing any app behind some of the most popular VPNs (PIA, Nord, Express, Proton, Tailscale, etc), as well as custom VPNs (WireGuard, OpenVPN, etc). For example, you may install “The Lounge” IRC client and have all internet communication pass through a PIA VPN so that your home IP is not exposed while chatting. Traditional methods of doing this involve painful configuration of iptables or other firewall rules. I believe this is an area where HexOS could really simplify things: Install a VPN plugin, authenticate with it, and then simply assign an app to a VPN plugin via the app’s settings if desired. It would be fully accessible from the home network without going through the VPN, but all internet traffic would go through the VPN with a kill switch in case the VPN goes down. Thoughts?

1 system/installation requires 1 license. And Buddy Backup is between 2 systems requiring a license each. The owner doesn't matter all you need to have is 2 Hexos installations/servers therefor 2 licence in total and you are good to go for buddy backup.

Yes most definitely! We have the underpinnings for a language selector already in place, but we're deferring translation work until after 1.0.

no worries Biem, moved you to the right spot So seems like you have a fairly common use case withI he addition of game servers. The requirements for game servers do differ depending on game and the scale (like if you plan to make a sever say 100+ will join) so you may want to look up that part yourself As for the rest you should easily get by with some of the cheaper intel cpus available something like an intel i5 8400 or 8500 should be more than strong enough those intel cpus have integrated gpus so you don't have to spend extra on a graphics card and they support intel quick sync which just means they are great for plex. Make sure any motherboard you get does not have a realtek nic (network interface card), you can usually find out on the motherboard webpage or on the pcpartpicker page for the motherboard. for cases i like recommending the jonsbo n4 since its a fairly compact case that has 6 hdd bays and a relatively good value. The downside with the n4 is that it will only fit smaller sized power supplies and motherboards which may cost more than full size. for you boot drive i suggest getting a cheap and small ssd. any space left over on it after the os is installed cannot be used. I would suggest no less than 16gb of ram for you. now depending on your budget you could get a stronger cpu or more ram.

I use FeedFlow on my android phone. I see TrueNAS has some alternatives as well though I have no experience with them so that's next after the ARR series of apps.

Correct. The additional licenses is for users that want to setup multiple systems of their own, not for buddy backups. @Todd Miller rightly called this out as confusing. What I meant to say is that you just can't transfer the license to another user. You can use buddy backups (as a feature) between two systems that you own and control (licensed under one account). Sorry for the confusion! Carry on!

At this time the recommended way to update the path is to uninstall and reinstall but you shouldn't lose any data if you uncheck remove app settings and data.

Great to see the progress being made compared to the early launch last year, I'm exited to see where it goes with the new upcoming roadmap. While I'll personally will be waiting till a few more curated apps will be available (such as Kometa and Bazarr) it seems at least a good solid foundation will be standing with the 1.0 launch. Keep it up guys!

I have the Intel X520 card in mine (SFP instead of RJ45) and it worked after a reinstall of HexOS. I recommend using Fiber when you can because RJ45 gets hot quickly, Also make sure it's not a clone card, they seem to be out there in the wild quite often. One final thing - with mine it only wanted to use the Intel SFP modules, probably not an issue with just RJ45 though if you run into it you can flash the EEPROM on the to accept any modules.

I tried following the recommended guides - frankly too time consuming/complicated for a non-technical person. Instead I went the uninstall/reinstall route, it's very easy if you can backup/re-upload your content (which takes forever 😑). The below post explains how to reinstall. It requires re-creating users/settings and logging in again on the mobile app.

If you guys are stuck, please email support@hexos.com and we will schedule a time to work with you on this.

It did. We wanted to build in a better solution to address this, but as I stated in the OP, it would have required a massive divergence of focus from our team to build a solution within the UI itself. We ultimately decided putting out this post and offering 1:1 assistance to those affected was the best course of action. We are offering 1:1 support to anyone that needs it. Just email support@hexos.com and we'll schedule a time. I mention in the OP our plans to be able to better address this in the future via HexOS Local.

First, a huge thank you to @lnkd for posting the actual steps to do this. All I did was follow everything they said and take pictures, so really all credit goes to them. Original post here: Prepare TrueNAS for reinstall: 1. Login to TrueNAS web interface – go to deck.hexos.com and click Settings: Then click the TrueNAS icon: 2. Once logged into TrueNAS, go to System > General Settings > Manage Configuration > Download File: 3. Read the note presented when you click Download File: 4. Click Save: 5. If you have encrypted datasets, go to Datasets > select the encrypted dataset > Export Key: 6. Now it is time to shutdown the server. In the top right of the TrueNAS web UI click the power icon and click shutdown: 7. Make your changes to the hardware that you would like – for me I added a 10 GB network card to run off fiber. 8. Prepare the HexOS installation drive by following these steps: https://hub.hexos.com/topic/103-illustrated-installation-guide-start-here/ 9. In your router settings, give the new hardware the same IP as your old one, then restart TrueNAS to grab the correct IP. 10. Once rebooted you can confirm on the server the IP address is correct: 11. Login to the TrueNAS web interface with the username and password you set during install (username should be truenas_admin). 12. Confirm your version on the dashboard – if needed, apply the update to the server: a. To confirm what version you need check the filename of the .tar file you downloaded from your configuration. It will have the version number on the end of it. b. Select the same version from the upgrade screen and confirm you want to switch to that upgrade train. c. Apply the pending updates and the system will reboot. 13. Go to Storage > Import Pool > find your zpool: 14. I have two pools so I will import them both. 15. Go into System > General Settings > Manage Configuration > Upload file: 16. The server will reboot after the configuration is applied. Log back into the TrueNAS server once the reboot is finalized. 17. If, like me, you replaced the network cards you will need to login directly to the server and adjust the IP settings: 18. Setup your new interface with the primary IP in CIDR notation, then you can log back into the TrueNAS server. 19. To setup apps, you need to go to Apps > Configuration > Unset Pool: 20. Restart your TrueNAS server then go back into Apps > Configuration > Choose Pool: 21. Once the pool is set you will see your apps again and be able to start them. 22. Navigate to the HexOS Interface (http://deck.hexos.com), unclaim your old server and claim your new one: 23. I ran into an issue where no matter what password I input it would not take it: 24. Currently troubleshooting that to be able to claim my HexOS server in the deck. All of my apps and storage are up and running so I will report back here when I fix this issue.

I wonder if Eshtek is ready to have an app store separate of TrueNAS. This would require them to have a much larger responsibility in situation where an apps author make a move like the Immich issue. This doesn't seem to be likely because what does Eshtek get for this immense extra effort? Just more work and responsibility it seems.

I think if we are honest almost everyone would say they were disappointed in how this startup has gone including Eshtek. I don't think all of our disappointment is justified because it has nothing to actually do with HexOS. However, you have hit on two points that are hard to argue with. Why are we paying up to $200 to test this application? And TrueNAS what? As for the paying to test question, I guess I am starting to do the same (well kind of) as you because I have set it aside to wait for go live. Plex and Immich are the only current curated apps I would ever use and until the serious discussions on how to secure the NAS start my machine is just a giant backup drive. And as for the current absolute requirement to use TrueNAS to do ALMOST anything including troubleshooting curated app failures. Well, if I am going to have to hire TrueNAS support to properly setup all non curated and some curated apps, I'm probably better off buying beer for my current Unraid support buddy. Like many others, I saw the LTT video and thought "Holly crap, someone finally built a system I can manage myself. I got in at the Black Friday price so HexOS on a mostly recycles server is still cheaper that a Synology or Ugreen prebuilt server. Storage seems to be the biggest cost but I have to pay that either way. I'm sure I will keep checking in and looking at the officially curated apps to see if anything looks interesting but unless there is a solid security option, it's all pretty irrelevant to me. My problem is that if I had to pay $299 what would I need to pull the trigger? That may be a tough uphill struggle for Eshtek if they want to attract people who are not at least serviceable in TrueNAS. So instead of looking at an the app we have today and deciding what it must be going to look like in 1, 2 and 5 years, we can wait and see what 1.0 looks like. I doubt though it will ever just be point and click.

Could we get a forum section for install scripts? That way as a community we can post a thread for a specific app and people can share their scripts and ask for feedback? I think that'd be handy, but I don't think it needs to go in the normal Applications support forum because that might confuse people as it's definitely a more advanced thing at the moment! Thanks

Right side but the toggles should closer to the words like they are on the Left version. half the width of a monitor is too far away

I believe integrating Home Assistant with HexOS could be a game-changer for the operating system, offering functionality that is sorely lacking in almost all other OS platforms today. A Home Assistant integration would allow users to monitor and manage their NAS more effectively. Imagine being able to track critical metrics such as system uptime, array health, disk health checks, and the overall status of your storage systems — all from within Home Assistant. Furthermore, adding control features would significantly enhance the user experience. It would be fantastic if users could automate tasks like rebooting or stopping/starting applications, VMs, or containers directly through Home Assistant. Additionally, automating disk spin-downs during off-peak hours for power savings would be a powerful and eco-friendly feature. The potential of Home Assistant integration is vast, and it's difficult to fully capture all the possibilities in a single topic. However, the core idea is simple: having such an integration, with continuous updates and new features, would be a major advantage for HexOS. While most other operating systems either lack similar functionality or offer only basic, limited capabilities, HexOS could stand out by providing a more comprehensive, user-friendly, and flexible solution.

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 would also want to do this on a router level But for this the 'Apps' should get it's own IP address, then in the router (unifi) i can traffic them trough the VPN So I would love to be able when installing an app, to have the possibility to let it get it's own IP Then i could make a VLAN for al the devices that needs to go over the internet trough an VPN

I’m hoping that Tailscale support is also in the works - 🤞yes?

Agreed. When creating a VPN connection, have options to route specific apps with this connection, or the whole system, or whole system but exclude specific apps.