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:

1. User Browser makes an HTTP request to the Glance Server (port 8080)
2. The Config Parser reads glance.yml to determine page layout, columns, and widget configuration
3. The Widget Engine fetches data from each configured source (RSS feeds, APIs, etc.)
4. Results pass through the Cache Layer with configurable TTLs per widget
5. The server renders the HTML and serves it to the browser
6. 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 glance

Step 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/Paris

Or 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 2

Step 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 Hub

Step 4: Start Glance

docker compose up -d

Verify it's running:

docker compose ps

You should see:

NAME      IMAGE                      STATUS          PORTS
glance    glanceapp/glance:latest    Up 2 minutes    0.0.0.0:8080->8080/tcp

Open 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-password

Then restart:

docker compose restart

Step 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: true

Widget 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

1. Start simple — Add a few widgets first, then expand. Don't overload your first config file.
2. Use the cache parameter — Set cache: 5m for time-sensitive widgets like markets, cache: 1h for feeds.
3. Create multiple pages — Use the pages array to create separate tabs for different categories (Tech News, Finance, Social).
4. Custom CSS — Create an assets/user.css file to customize colors, fonts, and layout beyond the built-in themes.
5. Pi-Hole users — If requests time out, increase the rate limit in your ad-blocking DNS service, which defaults to a low threshold.
6. 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/glance

Troubleshooting

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.

Resources

• GitHub Repository
• Configuration Documentation
• Themes Gallery
• Community Widgets
• Preconfigured Pages
• Discord Community
• Docker Hub Image