I wanted a lightweight dashboard for research, news, and YouTube feeds without having to look to all the bloat is out there in the internet. Glance fits nicely (at least for me): it is just a self-hosted dashboard, so the setup is mostly a container, a config directory, and accepting that RSS is still the least exciting but most reliable web API. I deploy this in a spare raspberry pi I had with all my devices using Tailscale personal VPN.

Running Glance with Podman

Glance listens on port 8080 (as of today, at least) in its container. Binding that port only to loopback keeps it off the LAN; Tailscale Serve will provide the HTTPS endpoint for devices in the tailnet. Glance’s upstream image uses /app/config for its configuration files. github

Step 1: Create a working directory and configuration directory.

mkdir -p ~/containers/glance/config
cd ~/containers/glance

Step 2: Create compose.yml.

services:
  glance:
    container_name: glance
    image: docker.io/glanceapp/glance:latest
    restart: unless-stopped
    ports:
      - "127.0.0.1:8080:8080"
    volumes:
      - ./config:/app/config:Z

The :Z volume suffix relabels the bind-mounted directory for SELinux, which avoids the usual Fedora-family “permission denied” surprise when the container tries to read the config.

Step 3: Start it with Podman Compose.

podman compose up -d

Container glance starts and port 127.0.0.1:8080 is published on the host.

Adding feeds

Create config/glance.yml with one page and a couple of feed widgets. Glance’s feed widget accepts feed URLs, optional titles, and item limits. raw.githubusercontent

This is only an example because i will not share my own personal setup

pages:
  - name: Home
    columns:
      - size: small
        widgets:
          - type: rss
            title: Research and climate
            limit: 8
            feeds:
              - url: https://www.nature.com/nclimate.rss
                title: Nature Climate Change
              - url: https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/feed/19422466/most-recent
                title: AGU Earth and Space Science

      - size: full
        widgets:
          - type: rss
            title: Infrastructure
            limit: 8
            feeds:
              - url: https://www.redhat.com/en/rss/blog/channel/red-hat-enterprise-linux
                title: Red Hat Enterprise Linux
              - url: https://www.cncf.io/feed/
                title: CNCF

      - size: small
        widgets:
          - type: videos
            title: YouTube
            channels:
              - UCg6gPGh8HU2U01vaFCAsvmQ
              - UCR-DXc1voovS8nhAvccRZhg

The videos widget uses YouTube channel IDs rather than a normal channel URL. A practical way to find one is to open the channel’s page source or use YouTube’s channel URL after it resolves to a /channel/UC... address. Glance also supports a YouTube search URL pattern where a widget needs search-based discovery rather than a fixed channel. raw.githubusercontent

Restart the container after editing the config.

podman compose restart glance

Testing it

First, verify that Glance is answering locally.

curl -I http://127.0.0.1:8080

HTTP/1.1 200 OK

Then check the container’s parsed configuration and feed errors, if any.

Serving it through Tailscale

Tailscale Serve can reverse-proxy a local HTTP service to an HTTPS URL that is reachable only inside the tailnet. It supports a local port or loopback URL as the proxy target. tailscale

Step 1: Confirm that Tailscale is connected on the host.

tailscale status

The current machine appears as a connected node in the tailnet.

Step 2: Point Tailscale Serve at Glance’s loopback-only port.

sudo tailscale serve http://127.0.0.1:8080

Available within your tailnet:

https://<machine-name>.<tailnet-name>.ts.net

Step 3: Inspect the active Serve configuration.

tailscale serve status

The status should show HTTPS traffic being proxied to http://127.0.0.1:8080.

Open the displayed https://<machine-name>.<tailnet-name>.ts.net address from another Tailscale device. The dashboard should load over HTTPS without exposing port 8080 to the local network or public internet. tailscale

Management commands

Notes

• Keep the host binding as 127.0.0.1:8080:8080; changing it to 8080:8080 makes Glance reachable directly on every network interface.
• If SELinux blocks the bind mount on Fedora, ensure the volume ends in :Z; this was the missing piece when a container could start but could not read its mounted config.
• tailscale serve is tailnet-only. Do not use tailscale funnel unless the goal is deliberate public exposure; Funnel is the internet-facing counterpart. tailscale
• Feed availability is outside the container’s control. If one widget is empty, test its RSS URL directly before assuming Glance is broken.

That is enough dashboard infrastructure for one afternoon.