Introducing Lawn

Robbert and I are building Lawn, a native Mac app for installing and running self-hosted software. You choose an app from a catalog, click Install, and Lawn sets it up on your Mac. The software runs on your computer, with its data stored there.

We want more people to be able to use software this way. There are already apps like Immich for photos and Paperless-ngx for documents. You can run them on hardware you own, but getting them installed often means learning about containers and configuring databases. That's a lot to ask of someone who just wants to organize their photos while keeping control over their data.

We both know our way around that setup. We'd still like software to do it for us. Lawn comes from that wish, and from wanting the same experience for people who wouldn't know where to start with a terminal.

What we're building

Lawn handles the setup that each app needs, including its database and storage. Once an app with a web interface is running, Lawn gives you a link to open it in your browser. You don't need to write a configuration file first.

We're designing Lawn around defaults we'd want to use ourselves. If you want to inspect logs or change a port, you can. Those choices should be available when you need them, without becoming questions everyone has to answer during installation.

We like well-made Mac apps, and we want Lawn to be one of them. Building exclusively for macOS lets us follow its interface conventions and use the system's native technologies, including Apple's virtualization framework. We want to put that care into how Lawn works with your Mac as well as how it looks. The apps Lawn hosts keep their own interfaces and settings.

Installation is where we're starting. Our aim is for Lawn to take care of the ongoing work of hosting these apps too, so keeping them on your Mac is practical over time.

A place to share software

We're starting with a catalog of software we think people would find useful in everyday life, including apps for their photos and documents. We want someone new to self-hosting to find something worth trying without first having to research how to run it.

We want Lawn to empower developers to share their work with people who wouldn't know how to set up a server. They should be able to publish a web app or server application in a catalog, so others can easily install and run it with Lawn. Over time, we want developers and communities to maintain catalogs of their own, so the software available through Lawn isn't limited to what we choose. Making software easier to share and run is how we hope to bring self-hosting to more people.

We'll use these field notes to share what we're building and the decisions we make along the way.

Try Lawn

You can try Lawn now and browse the apps in our catalog.

The current preview is free and doesn't require an account. You'll need an Apple silicon Mac running macOS 26 or newer.

If you run into a problem or there's an app you'd like us to add, reach out at lawn@unbeatable.tools.