I’ve been thinking about this stuff for a few years now but never actually put any effort into looking it up until now, I wanted to know what is out there in terms of self hosting services for kids, not necessarily just parental control but rather stuff for kids to do that aren’t just device isolated apps.
To get the conversation started, I’ve had the idea floating around my head for a few years of making some local “youtube” for my kid to upload their own videos at some point, maybe throw in some family edits and stuff like that to get the feeling of YouTube without the exposure, same with some sort of social network like a basic blog (wouldn’t have much interaction, I know, but at least have the option)
Then, I just found this video on youtube (vertical video warning for anyone who cares) which seems to do a few things of that nature, doesn’t seem like it will be foss, personally that’s not a requisite for me to use stuff but given its for children focused stuff it doesn’t sound great to me at first glance.
What else is out there? What do people piece together out of general projects? Do people even go anywhere beyond hosting their kids dvds on jellyfin/plex and calling it a day?
Jellyfin for control over what your child can watch. Qbittorrent for getting the media. Immich for organizing their photos—way better than iphone images by a landslide. Jellyfin also for music. Babybuddy for infant tracking needs. I would use ghost for blogging. I also appreciate mediawiki for a family genealogy wiki. Wireguard/Tailscale for safety. Adguard for controlling what comes into the house. Stash for keeping parents happy.
Depending on age/interest there’s stuff like luanti
Jellyfin needs a client with a YT Kids UI with auto-downloads. I haven’t found one yet. As for kidney, it looks so simple to replicate that I really can’t believe they are expecting to make money from it.
You could auto download channels with YouTube-DL, which can sort them automatically into folders that Jellyfin is pointed to as a YT Kids library, then make the kids an account that can only access that Jellyfin library.
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I’ve seen in this thread:
Fewer Letters More Letters PIA Private Internet Access brand of VPN SBC Single-Board Computer VPN Virtual Private Network
[Thread #251 for this comm, first seen 21st Apr 2026, 22:40] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]
I would consider jellyfin + ersatztv. ersatztv lets you create “live” channels and define your own programming. Instead of the kids having a free for all of being any to stream any of the media you give them access to, you instead give them access to a few channels.
One of the nice things about it, is the channel can go “offline” at certain times. So, if you have a strict bedtime of 8pm, the shows will literally finish at 8pm, and the channel will stop. No more “let me watch on more video!”
I have several channels like:
- Cartoons
- Education
- Sing alongs
- History
that they can switch between, but that is all I give them.
here’s what i’ve spun up so far that ive gotten the kids using
- xmpp for chats,
- emby/jellyfin
- luanti
- mealie
- calendars
- webdav for retroarch cloud
- home assistant/mopidy/navidrome for music (all they see is home assistant).
probs more but can’t think right now
That’s pretty much my list, as well!
Luanti is great, and the server can nearly run on a potato. Maybe literally, I should try it on a LePotato (Raspberry Pi II ish SBC) some time.
Jellyfin for guiding the kids to a more thoughtful non-algorithm set of things to watch has been great.
Although, for as much effort as I put into Jellyfin, my kids are as likely to drop a DVD into the DVD player, anyway.
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