Glance Dashboard. Self-Hosted Feed Dashboard Setup

Glance is the dashboard that replaced five apps on my second monitor. What it is, what it does, and why your workflow is incomplete without it.

Apr 20, 2025

What if you could see everything at a glance

Your information sits in a dozen tabs and a dozen apps. A unified dashboard is an old idea. NewsNow (https://github.com/ourongxing/newsnow) pulls many feeds into one page, and the screenshot below shows the result. NewsNow targets Chinese sources and ships Chinese documentation, so most people find the setup hard.

What if you could see everything at a... glance? ?

Glance is a self-hosted dashboard that renders all of those feeds on one page. Why open five sites when one page does the job?

Aggregate everything. Glance pulls RSS feeds, subreddits, Hacker News, weather, YouTube channels, market prices, server stats and Docker containers into one view.

Customize your world. Pick the exact widgets you want. Arrange them, then build separate pages for work, personal life and tech news.
Always-on information. Run Glance on an old tablet, a Raspberry Pi or a dedicated monitor. Your key data stays visible with no interaction.
Light and fast. Glance serves the data hoarder and the person who wants one quick update. It stays light on your system.

How to Set One Up (It's Easier Than You Think!)

The setup is short, and Docker does most of the work. Use Docker Compose. Follow these four steps.

Installation Guide

Create the project directory and download the template files.

mkdir glance && cd glance
curl -SL https://github.com/glanceapp/docker-compose-template/archive/refs/heads/main.tar.gz | tar -xz --strip-components=1

Configure the application.

Edit docker-compose.yml when you need different ports or volumes.
Define your pages, columns and widgets in config/glance.yml. The template default is config/home.yml. Read the configuration documentation for every available option.

Your setup should look something like this

Start the application.

docker compose up -d

Read the logs when a step fails.

docker compose logs

You can also ditch the command line and restart, start, or stop the server via the Docker Desktop app. That’s what I do!

My Dashboard View Showcase

My dashboard shows the clock, the calendar and the weather in one place. It also shows my subreddits, r/Technology and r/Selfhosted. The latest news from Hacker News, run by Y Combinator, sits beside them. I subscribe to many RSS feeds and read them all in one column.

My favorite customization handles YouTube. I built four tabs for channel uploads: Technology, Gaming, Comedy and Watch Later. Each tab replaces the mixed default feed. I watch in order, and I open no other browser tab.

Here is my personal Glance dashboard.

Configure, Commit, Conquer!

You edit the YAML configuration files often, and glance.yml is the main one. The option list is long. Read the official configuration docs for widget types, layouts and themes.

Highly Recommended: Commit your configuration files to a Git repository. The repository backs up your setup. On any new device or server, clone the repository and run docker compose up. My own setup and its configuration history sit here.