Your Own Personal Internet Cockpit: Meet Glance

You know that feeling when you open your browser and have to check ten different tabs just to see what's happening? RSS feeds, Hacker News, YouTube uploads, stock prices, the weather—it's a whole ritual before you actually get any work done. What if you could have all of that on one page, hosted on your own hardware, loading in about a second? That's exactly what Glance sets out to do.

Glance is a self-hosted dashboard that pulls your feeds and widgets into a single, streamlined interface. It's lightweight, highly customizable, and—best of all—it runs as a single binary under 20MB. No database, no Node.js runtime, no fuss.

What It Does

At its core, Glance is a personal dashboard server. You configure it with a YAML file, it reads that config, and it serves up a web page that aggregates everything you care about. The README lists an impressive range of widgets: RSS feeds, subreddit posts, Hacker News, weather forecasts, YouTube channel uploads, Twitch channels, market prices, Docker container status, and server stats. There's even support for custom widgets if you want to build something specific.

The architecture is refreshingly simple. It's a single Go binary that you can run on any major OS or architecture, or as a tiny Docker container. The frontend uses minimal vanilla JavaScript—no heavy frameworks to bloat the page. The README claims uncached pages typically load within about a second, which is a bold promise for an aggregator. The configuration is done entirely through YAML files, where you define pages, columns, and widgets in a nested structure. You can have as many pages or tabs as you need, each with its own layout.

Why It's Cool

What makes Glance interesting isn't just that it exists—plenty of dashboards exist. It's the combination of choices that make it feel genuinely thoughtful.

The performance story is compelling. A single sub-20MB binary with few dependencies and minimal JS means this thing runs anywhere. An old Raspberry Pi, a cheap VPS, a spare laptop—anything can host this without breaking a sweat. You're not spinning up a database or managing a complex stack just to see your RSS feeds.

It's genuinely customizable without being a programming project. You can tweak layouts, add as many pages as you want, and configure each widget extensively. The YAML config is approachable—you can see exactly what each widget does and adjust it. For power users, there's custom CSS support and multiple styles for some widgets. You can even create your own theme by adjusting a few numbers, or pick from existing themes.

The mobile optimization is a smart touch. The README specifically calls this out, and it makes sense—you'll want your dashboard on your phone when you're away from your desk. It's a small detail, but it shows the project is thinking about real usage patterns, not just desktop screenshots.

The widget selection is practical, not flashy. Twitch channels, Docker status, market prices, server stats—these are the things self-hosters actually check daily. The example config even shows a collapse-after option for RSS feeds, letting you keep things tidy without losing content. That's the kind of granular control that separates a good dashboard from a great one.

How to Try It

Getting started with Glance is straightforward. Head over to the repository and check the installation section. You'll find pre-built binaries for multiple operating systems and architectures, plus a Docker image. The setup process is essentially: download the binary, create a YAML config file, run it.

Here's a minimal example based on the README's configuration preview:

pages:
  - name: Home
    columns:
      - size: small
        widgets:
          - type: calendar
            first-day-of-week: monday

          - type: rss
            limit: 10
            collapse-after: 3
            cache: 12h
            feeds:
              - url: https://selfh.st/rss/
                title: selfh.st
              - url: https://ciechanow.ski/atom.xml

That's it. You define your page, your columns, and your widgets. The full configuration documentation is linked in the README, and there's a community widgets repository if you want to see what others have built. There are also preconfigured pages available if you want a starting point without writing everything from scratch.

The project has a Discord server for community support and sponsorships available if you want to support development. But the core product is free and open source—you can just grab it and go.

Final Thoughts

Glance is for people who like owning their tools. If you're already self-hosting services, or if you're tired of letting some cloud service decide what your feed looks like, this is a solid option. It's not trying to be a full-blown productivity suite or a home automation hub—it's a focused, fast, and flexible aggregator that respects your hardware and your time. The single-binary approach means maintenance is nearly zero, and the YAML config means you're never fighting a GUI to get what you want.

If you've been thinking about consolidating your feeds into one place, this is worth a weekend afternoon. You'll probably have it running in under an hour, and you'll wonder why you didn't do it sooner.

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