How it works
Your media on your hardware, reachable from anywhere without opening ports. What Free-WAN does, what it’s built with, and how far along it is.
The premise
A self-hosted media server for video and photo libraries spread across lots of drives. It runs at home in Docker and you reach it from anywhere over Tailscale. No port forwarding, no cloud and no subscription.
Video your browser can play directly streams as-is, and everything else gets converted to HLS on the fly. All your drives show up as one library with full-text search and filters, sorted automatically based on your folder structure. You can also put your own branding on it.
What’s included
Plays files directly when it can, and converts to HLS on the fly when it can’t
One searchable library across multiple drives, organized from your folder structure
Embedded and separate subtitle files, playback speed, and pick up where you left off
Reachable from anywhere over Tailscale with no ports forwarded
How it’s built
Free-WAN is built on TypeScript, Docker, ffmpeg, HLS and Tailscale.
The repository is 87% TypeScript, 7% Swift, 4% JavaScript by volume.
It carries 127 commits since Jun 2026, most recently changed in Oct 2026.
How the work is done
Every project here starts as a written spec, and the spec stays the source of truth once there’s code. The repository keeps a build plan with current status, an append-only decision log of where the code departed from the plan, and a handoff document that describes where things stand, including the unfinished parts.
That’s how one person keeps this many projects moving, and it’s what this page is written from.
Current state
In development. Being worked on now.
The source is public, so you can check anything on this page against it.
Next
Get Free-WAN
Ask about availability, a build for your platform, or a license.