Self-host anything directly in the web browser, no servers required

TL;DR?

Spacewave: open-source, private, self-hosted, multiplayer Spaces (apps) that:

• Store data wherever you want. Your devices or the cloud.
• Work offline and without servers using peer-to-peer networking.
• Sync instantly with real-time streaming multiplayer.

So far, the following Plugins have been released and are included:

• Chat: communicate securely with humans or robots.
• Notes: write and collaborate with Markdown text files.
• Drive: store and access your files.
• Remote: connect and remote-control your devices.
• Git: version control and collaborate on your code.

You may want to store an encrypted backup of your data somewhere safe.

Spacewave Cloud provides 100GB of storage for $8/mo.

It's private, secure, fast (via. Cloudflare), and dead simple.

But it's not required: all of the software is open-source licensed Apache-2.0. You can do whatever you want with it. It works without the internet, and without the cloud. You may modify it however you need. And it can store data anywhere you want, including your existing cloud storage or on your devices.

Try it out: spacewave.app - one click to start, no account required.

Grab a copy of the code: github.com/s4wave/spacewave

Join the community and let us know what you want added next!

Software used to be installed once and used forever without subscriptions.

I remember as a kid using one of those multi-colored clamshell Macs back in 2008 (year?) to install the Lego Mindstorms robot programming software. Once it was installed on my laptop it just opened, ran, and worked everywhere, without needing an internet connection, license, or subscription. Visions of what I would build rushed through my head, and I became obsessed with building cool little robots and competing in the First Lego League (FLL) robotics competition.

Software back then worked differently: once you bought it, it was yours. Everything ran on your own device. As the internet became more and more popular, however, web apps began to take over. Personally, I loved them: Runescape inspired me to create a website with flash games for my friends to play with php, a DOTA 2 custom game mode platform, and a thousand other side projects. You can find almost all of the code I wrote over the years open-source on my GitHub.

In the modern internet, everything is rented, nothing is owned.

Soon everyone was doing most everything on their phone: there's always a mobile app, web-app for desktop, subscriptions, two-factor authentication, risk of getting banned. We live in the web browser for most everything.

In 2026, the average user experience is now: go to a website, create an account, verify your email, go through a bunch of sign-up steps, enter your credit card and pay for a subscription that bills you every month. If you stop paying, your data's gone. If you don't have an internet connection, nothing works.

Linux and open-source are alive and well with the dream of user freedom.

Linux is this incredible world where you own everything and it's customizable. You can make your computer look and work exactly the way you want without asking anyone or depending on anyone for continued access. It becomes your own private world where you can store your thoughts, ideas, and creations, without the fear of your data being leaked or an update randomly changing everything. Because you have full access to the code, you can modify it to fit your own unique needs.

You can build your own self-hosted world today. Open-source versions of almost anything you would want to do exist on GitHub. The community is alive and well, and producing more incredible software than ever. You can modify it to work exactly how you want, store your data wherever you want, and build a world of information entirely by your own design and preference, entirely by cobbling together Git repositories published under OSS licenses online.

Why isn't open-source self-hosting easy, popular, and the default?

So why hasn't self-hosted self-owned software had a resurgence? If it's so incredible, shouldn't it be wildly popular and commonly used? Of course, self-hosting is wildly popular today. But it's not as common as, for example, installing an app on your phone, or browsing to YouTube and watching a video.

The most important problems with self hosting today are:

1. Self-hosting is too difficult to set up, maintain, and use.
2. If you want more than one user you need to setup a server.

Renting a server, setting it up, paying for it every month, keeping it secure and up to date, installing and configuring new software, administration. It's a lot of work. Even the best tools for this still are not one-click to setup. The persistent need to pay for a cloud machine costs money. Collaboration requires trusting someone else's server setup is secure and reliable. Many headaches.

How do we bring open-source and self-hosted software into the limelight?

Since 2018, almost eight years ago now, I've been constantly working towards a software I've been dreaming of since I first fell in love with coding, it:

• Stores data wherever you want. Your devices or the cloud.
• Works offline and without servers using peer-to-peer networking.
• Syncs instantly with real-time streaming multiplayer.

Just as we have built the internet on top of running on servers in datacenters, there should be a common platform where we can build apps that do the above. Within this platform open-source apps can thrive: it would become one-click to download and run code from GitHub within a secure cross-platform sandbox.

Spacewave is just that: self-hosted, easy to use, multiplayer. Pick three.

github.com/s4wave/spacewave

It's open-source, Apache-2.0 license, you can do whatever you want with it.

What happens if I lose all my devices? Is my data gone?

You'll probably want to store an encrypted backup of your data somewhere safe.

Spacewave Cloud provides 100GB of storage for $8/mo.

It's private, secure, fast (via. Cloudflare), and dead simple.

What can it do?

Use Spacewave to create Spaces containing your apps and data.

Spaces are multiplayer: you can add your friends or coworkers.

So far, the following Plugins have been released and are included:

• Chat: communicate securely with humans or robots.
• Notes: write and collaborate with Markdown text files.
• Drive: store and access your files.
• Remote: connect and remote-control your devices.
• Git: version control and collaborate on your code.

There will be more plugins out soon, and you can build your own with the SDK!

Spacewave is a community project. All the code is on GitHub and you can install plugins from anywhere you want. It's completely free to use. Enjoy!

Thanks for checking out Spacewave! ~ Christian Stewart cjs.zip