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Gerbera

Gerbera is a lightweight UPnP (Universal Plug and Play) and DLNA (Digital Living Network Alliance) media server for streaming local media on your home network.

  • Media Applications
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Gerbera is a lightweight UPnP (Universal Plug and Play) and DLNA (Digital Living Network Alliance) media server for streaming local media on your home network. It publishes music, video, and photo libraries to compatible smart TVs, media players, and mobile apps. Home-lab users can choose it for a low-maintenance, self-hosted media endpoint that avoids cloud dependencies.

Platform availability

Available on 1 of 9 platforms

  • Unraid
  • TrueNAS (not listed)
  • Umbrel (not listed)
  • ZimaOS (not listed)
  • Proxmox (not listed)
  • Helm (not listed)
  • Mac (not listed)
  • Windows (not listed)
  • Linux (not listed)

Health score?A 0-100 score computed nightly from four factors: maintained (40%: recent commits and steady activity), popular (25%: GitHub stars, log scale), easy to install (20%: platforms, install notes, setup guides, Docker image) and light to run (15%: minimum RAM, ARM support). When the source code has been checked, a fifth factor, security check (20%: automated scan for committed secrets, unsafe desktop-app settings, known-vulnerable dependencies and project hygiene; any serious finding caps it at 20), is added. Factors without data are left out and the rest are rescaled.

70/100 Good

Maintained
100last commit 17 days ago
Popular
631,395 GitHub stars
Easy to install
201 install platform, Docker image
Light to run
No data

Based on 3 of 4 factors.

Availability: platform listings confirmed today, links checked 17 days ago

GitHub stars
1,395
Open issues
62
Last commit
2026-09-28
Latest release
v3.3.0
Activity
rising

Checked 15 days ago - source: GitHub (gerbera/gerbera)

Resources & Compatibility

ARM (e.g. Raspberry Pi) is supported.

Checked 16 days ago - source: Docker Hub image tags and published docs

First-install notes

No first-install notes yet.

Alternatives (8)

  • Infuse - Ignite your video content with Infuse – the beautiful way to watch almost any video format on your iPhone, iPad, and Apple TV.
  • MediaTomb
  • MiniDLNA - MiniDLNA (aka ReadyDLNA) is server software with the aim of being fully compliant with DLNA/UPnP-AV clients.
  • Plex - Plex is a LinuxServer.io Docker container that runs Plex Media Server so home users can organize and stream personal video, music, and phot…
  • Serviio - Serviio is a free media server that streams music, video, and images from a home network to DLNA (Digital Living Network Alliance) complian…
  • Universal Media Server - Universal Media Server is a media server capable of serving videos, audio and images to any DLNA-capable device.
  • VLC Streamer - Sit anywhere in your house and watch movies or TV shows on your iPhone, iPod or iPad.
  • VidHub - Video Library & Player - Video Player to play video files from all kinds of source, local file, smb file on nas, webdav service, cloud driver etc.

Checked 14 days ago - source: AlternativeTo

Common questions

How can I recover from a Gerbera configuration that is not behaving as expected?

Generate a new config file with --create-config or --create-example-config. Then apply your needed settings to the new config version.

Can I self-host Gerbera with Docker?

Yes, Gerbera can be self-hosted with Docker.

Can Gerbera pick up new or changed files without manual rescans?

Yes. It supports automatic directory rescans using timed or inotify triggers.

Does Gerbera support converting media to formats that clients do not play?

Yes, optional transcoding support can convert media on the fly to a format supported by your devices.

Can I customize the media layout shown to UPnP clients?

Gerbera supports a user-defined server layout based on extracted metadata. JavaScript can also be used to shape the collection layout.

Answers sourced from docs.gerbera.io, gerbera.io, github.com, selfhost.directory

Community

Collected 16 days ago - public community threads