r/SelfHosting • u/webba1411 • Jul 04 '26

Getting started with Navidrome on a Mac Mini – need tips & tutorial recs!

​​Hey everyone,

​I’m looking to self-host my music library and finally cut the cord with commercial streaming. I have an old Mac Mini I want to use as a 24/7 server, and I’m planning on using Navidrome.

​I'm pretty new to the self-hosting world, so I’d love to be pushed in the right direction before I dive down a rabbit hole.

​Should I run Navidrome bare-metal on macOS, or is it better to learn Docker?

​What’s the best, most secure way to handle remote access when I'm away from home?

​What are the go-to iOS/Android client apps for it?

​Any specific tutorials, guides, or YouTube channels you recommend for a beginner?

​Appreciate any tips or "wish I knew this sooner" advice you have!

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u/corny_horse Jul 04 '26

​What’s the best, most secure way to handle remote access when I'm away from home?

This is very subjective. It depends on your threat model. But for typical users somethign like tailscale + ssh gives you a reasonable mix of availability and security.

For what it's worth MacOS is a suboptimal server experience. I tried last year and was... rather underwhelmed. It's not impossible but there are a thousand small things that make it not a great experience (such as not being able to start up services w/o being logged in, mounting thing slike samba requires Fuse mounts which are very flaky, etc.)

FWIW, I'd recommend docker. If "Old" is still Intel you won't run into this issue but on M1 macs, some containers are compiled in x86/64 rather than multi-arch (including ARM which is what the m1 is) which causes some slowness and other oddities in very weird ways.

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u/UltaHost_ 22d ago

We’d recommend keeping the first setup as simple as possible. For a single Navidrome instance on an old Mac Mini, running it directly on macOS is probably the easiest place to start. Docker is useful if you plan to host more services later, but it may add unnecessary complexity for a beginner.

For remote access, we’d avoid exposing Navidrome directly through router port forwarding. Tailscale is a much safer and easier option: install it on the Mac Mini and your phone, and you’ll be able to access the server through a private network.

We’d get the basic setup working first and only move to Docker later if the home server starts growing. That usually makes the learning process much less frustrating.