this post was submitted on 20 Feb 2026
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A place to share alternatives to popular online services that can be self-hosted without giving up privacy or locking you into a service you don't control.

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Interesting tool based on blocks to tag any document for photos you own. With app to allow access from any device. Blocks contains tags and links between them to organize all like a heap.
I haven't installed the self-hosted version yet to see how it can interact with an existing Obsidian vault. Next step.
Site: https://heaper.de/

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[–] beegnyoshi@lemmy.zip 1 points 21 minutes ago

Tags aren't categories you create — they're patterns you notice.

Yes AI daddy 🤤

[–] non_burglar@lemmy.world 17 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Sigh....

That stupid way of explaining the license plan aside, are we again having to explain that we don't want our data locked into yet another db format?

[–] EncryptKeeper@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Can't really tell if that's the case or not. It looks like the base files you upload are stored on the filesystem as normal, and the "blocks" (metadata) is what's stored in the DB?

[–] non_burglar@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Yes, that's what I get from that as well.

I guess as long as users get some options for import/export/backup then it isn't that bad. I'm reading over the docs again and I don't think it's as bad as I initially read into it.

This project would benefit from some documentation curation.

Edit: which I suppose I could offer to help with to put my money where my mouth is.

[–] ClownStatue@piefed.social 6 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Some notes:

  • This can be self-hosted. My working compose.yml is below
  • Free until August, and he has a discord for feedback, but I can't find the invite. It was in the live-stream he did.
  • He said in the stream that he's open to open sourcing the project. Just not there yet.
  • He admits the licensing is a little confusing. He stressed that self-hosting does not have a storage or block limit. Also, self-hosting is possible with all licenses (I think).
  • Supports macOS, Linux, Windows, iOS, and Android (in beta I think)

My compose file:

services:  
  heaper-postgres:  
    image: ghcr.io/janlunge/heaper-postgres:latest  
    container_name: heaper-postgres  
    environment:  
      POSTGRES_USER: $POSTGRES_USER  
      POSTGRES_PASSWORD: $POSTGRES_PASSWORD  
      POSTGRES_DB: $POSTGRES_DB  
    ports:  
      - "5432:5432"  
    volumes:  
      - /path/to/heaper/postgres:/var/lib/postgresql/data  
    networks:  
      - heaper  
    healthcheck:  
      test: ["CMD-SHELL", "pg_isready -U heaper -d heaper || exit 1"]  
      interval: 10s  
      timeout: 5s  
      retries: 5  
      start_period: 20s  

  heaper:  
    image: ghcr.io/janlunge/heaper:latest  
    container_name: heaper  
    platform: linux/amd64  
    environment:  
      HOSTNAME: heaper.caruthers.us  
      ENABLE_INTERNAL_POSTGRES: "false"  
      DB_HOST: heaper-postgres:5432  
      DB_USER: $POSTGRES_USER  
      DB_PASS: $POSTGRES_PASSWORD  
      DB_NAME: $POSTGRES_DB  
    ports:  
      - "3000:443"  
      - "4499:80"  
    volumes:  
      - /path/to/heaper/config:/usr/src/app/config  
      - /path/to/heaper/thumbnails:/mnt/thumbnails  
      - /path/to/heaper/storage:/mnt/storage  
    networks:  
      - heaper  
    depends_on:  
      heaper-postgres:  
        condition: service_healthy  
    healthcheck:  
      # Docs show example health probes; adjust host/port if your container differs.  
      test: ["CMD-SHELL", "curl -fsS http://localhost/api >/dev/null || exit 1"]  
      interval: 15s  
      timeout: 5s  
      retries: 5  
      start_period: 30s  

networks:  
  heaper:  
    name: heaper  

I have the DB, config, and thumbnails on local NVME, and storage on NFS-mounted NAS. Working fine so far.

ETA: Correction in compose file.

[–] EncryptKeeper@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Does it store uploaded files in plain text on the file system?

[–] ClownStatue@piefed.social 1 points 1 day ago

From what I can tell, notes are stored in the DB, but can be exported as JSON, or I think markdown. It sure about markdown. I’ve only been able to export JSON, and it didn’t include the image I had embedded in the note. Whatever isn’t a note (images, movies, pdf, doc, etc.) is stored on the file system in a directory structure that files them under heap -> asset checksum. Thumbnails are included there if applicable. In that regard, it kind of forces you to use its folder structure.

[–] themachine@lemmy.world 4 points 1 day ago

To each their own but I think I prefer to stick to Nextcloud and just continue to keep things organized the old fashioned way for the most part.

Though for documents those all get fed to paperless-ngx

[–] Prunebutt@slrpnk.net 4 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Postgres? Sorry. If it needs a database, it's probably not for me. Can't be asked to keep another database backed up.

[–] WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.works 1 points 53 minutes ago (1 children)

almost every self hosted service needs a database. and what "another" database? are you keeping separate postgreses for each service that wants to use it? one of the most important features of postgres is that it as a single database server can hold multiple databases, with permissions and whatnot

[–] u_tamtam@programming.dev 1 points 10 minutes ago

From previous interactions in this community, it seems all but obvious nowadays, when peoples' experience with sysadmin in average amounts to running scripts running docker in some form.

[–] Mora@pawb.social 6 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

What is your struggle with db backups? Databasus makes it so trivial for me personally.

[–] Prunebutt@slrpnk.net 3 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

The fact that I have to use a more complicated tool than cd.

[–] totally_human_emdash_user@piefed.blahaj.zone 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

The fact that I have to use a more complicated tool than cd.

But how does changing the current directory backup your files???

[–] Prunebutt@slrpnk.net 5 points 1 day ago

Sorry, meant cp.