What is Heimdall used for?

Heimdall is listed as a Productivity tool on TiloBox. Review the overview, features, and official documentation on this page to decide whether it solves your specific workflow.

How do I get started with Heimdall?

Start with the project's GitHub repository and official website for supported installation and deployment instructions. Test the setup with representative data or a small project before rolling it out more widely.

What license does Heimdall use?

Heimdall is listed under the MIT license. Read the complete license text and the project's notices before using, modifying, or distributing the software.

Is Heimdall ready for production use?

Production readiness depends on your requirements. Review maintenance activity, security practices, documentation, backup and upgrade procedures, and compatibility with your stack; then validate it in a non-production environment.

Is Heimdall an alternative to Dashy?

Heimdall is listed as an alternative to Dashy. Compare the core workflow, deployment model, integrations, and licensing against your must-have requirements before switching.

Productivity Alternative to Dashy Alternative to Homer

Heimdall

An elegant, simple application dashboard and launcher for all your web links and services.

View on GitHub Visit website

LicenseMIT

GitHub stars9.3k

Last commit2 weeks ago

Tags6 topics

LaravelDashboardSelf HostedPhpBookmarksStartpage

Overview

Why consider Heimdall?

Heimdall is an open-source application dashboard and bookmark manager. It organizes web services with Enhanced Apps support for displaying live stats from Plex, Pi-hole, and Transmission.

Guided learning

Learn Heimdall by building

Practical setup notes, real use cases, and copy-ready examples in one focused guide.

3 min read 10 sections

In this guide10 sections

What is Heimdall?

Heimdall is an open-source, elegant application dashboard and bookmark manager developed with PHP, Laravel, and Vue.js by the LinuxServer.io team. It operates as an uncomplicated, lightweight alternative to complex dashboard suites like Dashy and Homer.

Heimdall acts as an organized startpage for all your self-hosted web applications and favorite internet bookmarks. With its "Enhanced Apps" ecosystem, Heimdall connects directly to supported APIs (Plex, Deluge, Transmission, Pi-hole, NZBGet, Sonarr) to display live data badges (e.g. active streams, torrent download speeds, ad queries blocked) right on the app tile.

Who Is It For?

Homelab Beginners: Wanting an easy-to-configure visual startpage without editing YAML or JSON configuration files.
Family Households: Providing family members with a clean, attractive browser homepage to access local network media servers.
System Administrators: Grouping internal tools and administrative consoles into organized categories.

Key Features

Zero-code configuration: Add, organize, and edit application tiles entirely through the web interface.
Enhanced Apps ecosystem: Display live stats and badges from popular self-hosted software APIs.
Built-in multi-search provider bar: Search Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo, or custom search engines directly from the homepage.
Multi-user support with private and public item visibility settings.
Customizable visual tags, backgrounds, colors, and application icon search.

Deploying Heimdall with Docker Compose

yaml

1version: '3.5'

3services:

4 heimdall:

5 image: lscr.io/linuxserver/heimdall:latest

6 container_name: heimdall

7 restart: unless-stopped

8 environment:

9 - PUID=1000

10 - PGID=1000

11 - TZ=UTC

12 volumes:

13 - ./config:/config

14 ports:

15 - "8080:80"

16 - "8443:443"

Start the container:

bash

1docker compose up -d

Navigate to http://localhost:8080 in your web browser. Click the Items list button in the bottom right corner to begin adding your application bookmarks.

Practical Use Cases

1. Family Media Homepage

A user configures Heimdall as the default browser startpage across home computers, with large clickable icons for Jellyfin, Nextcloud, and Home Assistant.

2. Live Torrent Bandwidth Indicator

A user adds Transmission as an "Enhanced App" in Heimdall; the tile displays live download speed and active torrent counts in real time.

3. Multi-Category Infrastructure Portal

A sysadmin categorizes 30 infrastructure tools into "Monitoring", "Databases", and "Networking" tag groups for rapid navigation.

Troubleshooting and Limitations

Enhanced App API Tokens: For Enhanced Apps to fetch live stats, ensure you configure the service API key and verify network connectivity between Heimdall and the target container.
Storage Persistence: Mount /config to persistent storage so added items, custom background images, and SQLite databases persist across container updates.

Official Resources

Official Website: https://heimdall.site
GitHub Repository: https://github.com/linuxserver/Heimdall
Documentation: https://heimdall.site/docs

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