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Remote Access

By default, discovered services point to localhost. When you access your dashboard remotely (e.g., via a VPS IP or domain), clicking a link to localhost will fail because your browser tries to find the service on your laptop/phone, not your server.

homectl provides two main ways to solve this.

Tailscale allows you to access your server using a private IP address (e.g., 100.x.y.z) that works from anywhere.

Automatic Detection

The homectl backend automatically scans your server for Tailscale. If it detects a Tailscale IP, it will use that IP for all auto-discovered Docker containers instead of localhost.

Setup

  1. Install Tailscale on your server and your client device.
  2. Log in to both.
  3. Access your dashboard using the server's Tailscale IP.

Manual Override (Priority)

If automatic detection fails or you want to use a specific IP for all services: 1. Go to Settings > Discovery. 2. Enter your IP (e.g., 100.67.67.67) into the Host IP Override field. 3. Click Save & Rescan. 4. Every discovered Docker container will now use this IP for its generated URL.

2. Reverse Proxy (Split-DNS)

If you have a public domain (e.g., example.com), you can assign subdomains to each service.

  1. Set up Nginx Proxy Manager or Traefik.
  2. Create a proxy host for each service (e.g., plex.example.com -> localhost:32400).
  3. In your homectl settings, manually update the service URL to use the public domain instead of the discovered IP.

3. Manual Overrides

For any service, you can manually override the discovered URL in the Settings page. Simply click Configure on a service card and enter the URL you wish to use globally.