hydra-selfhosted

Self-hosted backend for the entitybtw/hydra fork of Hydra Launcher — cloud saves, accounts, profiles and game data on your own server, without a Hydra Cloud subscription.

Features

• Accounts — register / login, sessions, optional passkeys (WebAuthn)
• Public profiles — shareable page at /u/username with playtime, library and recent activity; avatar, banner, bio, accent color and custom CSS
• Steam integration — connect Steam to show hours and library (synced every 30 min)
• Cloud saves — unlimited slots on your own server, 50 MB per upload by default
• Library management — pin / favorite games, playtime tracking, per-tab section order and visibility
• Web dashboard — full UI at / (profile editing, library, password change, admin panel)
• API docs — built-in reference at /docs
• Launcher compatibility — Big Picture, friendships stub and /download-sources proxy all work out of the box

Quick start

git clone https://github.com/entitybtw/hydra-selfhosted.git
cd hydra-selfhosted
cp .env.example .env
# edit .env — set API_TOKEN to a random secret string
docker compose up -d

The prebuilt image entbtw/hydra-selfhosted is pulled automatically, so nothing is compiled locally. The server runs on port 3000 by default.

Configuration (.env)

Variable	Default	Description
API_TOKEN	—	Required. Secret used to sign sessions and for the launcher
PORT	3000	Host port to expose
TAG	latest	Image tag: latest or a pinned version (e.g. v0.0.1)
SESSION_TTL_DAYS	30	Launcher session duration
PUBLIC_URL	—	Public URL shown in the web dashboard
MAX_SAVE_SIZE_MB	50	Cloud save upload limit
INITIAL_ADMIN_USERNAME	—	Create this admin user on first run
WEBAUTHN_RP_ID / WEBAUTHN_ORIGIN	—	Passkeys: bare domain / full origin URL
CORS_ORIGINS	—	Comma-separated allowed origins

Connecting to Hydra Launcher

1. Open the entitybtw/hydra fork
2. Settings → Integrations → Self-Hosted API
3. Enter your server URL and API_TOKEN, click Save
4. Register or sign in — the launcher syncs your library automatically

Updating

docker compose pull && docker compose up -d

To pin a release, set TAG=v0.0.1 in .env.

Data & backup

Everything lives in ./data/ — back up this folder to preserve all user data:

data/
  hydra.db        # SQLite database (users, games, achievements, artifacts)
  images/         # uploaded avatars and banners
  artifacts/      # cloud save archives

.env and data/ are never touched by updates.

Building the image yourself

docker build -t entbtw/hydra-selfhosted:latest ./api

Requirements

• Docker + Docker Compose