One-click self-hosting on your Mac

Self-hosting has a reputation problem. People hear "run your own photo backup" and picture a mess of terminal windows and YAML files. Honestly, until now, that was pretty accurate.

We kept asking the same question: why can't installing a self-hosted app be as easy as installing a Mac app? So we built that.

Introducing Lawn

Lawn is a menu bar app for your Mac. You browse a catalog of self-hosted software, pick something, click install, and it runs locally. Your data never leaves your machine.

What it looks like

No need to learn Docker, fiddle with the terminal, edit config files, and manually set up the database.

What you can install today

• Immich — photo and video backup
• Paperless-ngx — document management
• Vaultwarden — password management
• Jellyfin — media streaming
• Pi-hole — network-wide ad blocking
• Audiobookshelf — audiobooks and podcasts
• Nextcloud — files, calendars, contacts
• Mealie — recipe management

And more in the catalog.

What Lawn handles for you

Installing a self-hosted app normally means pulling Docker images, writing a compose file, mapping ports, setting up volumes, and debugging why it won't start. Lawn does all of that behind the scenes. You pick an app, it works. Updates, networking, storage — handled.

Try the beta

It's free and you don't need an account.

If you run into anything or have ideas, reach out at lawn@unbeatable.software.

The technology

Lawn is built on Apple's Containerization framework, which Apple open-sourced at WWDC 2025. Docker on Mac runs all your containers inside a single shared Linux VM. Apple took a different approach: each container gets its own lightweight VM with its own kernel. If one app crashes, nothing else is affected. They still boot in under a second.

It runs standard OCI images (the same format Docker uses), so the entire existing catalog of self-hosted software just works.