Willow: Open-source, local, and self-hosted voice
Willow is a self-hosted smart home and voice assistant tool. Open-source, local, and self-hosted voice assistant alternative.
Why self-host Willow
The case for running Willow at home is straightforward: you get the full feature set, no subscription cost, and no data sitting on someone else’s server.
What it does
Willow falls into the Smart Home, Voice Assistant category of self-hosted software. It is designed to be deployed on your own infrastructure, whether that is a home server, a VPS, or a local machine running Docker.
Community traction
The project has 3k stars on GitHub, which is a reasonable proxy for how widely it is used. Active repositories tend to ship bug fixes faster and have better documentation than projects that stall after the initial release.
Deployment
Like most modern self-hosted apps, Willow supports Docker. A single compose file handles the deployment in most cases.
Alternatives
If Willow does not fit your needs, common alternatives include Samsung SmartThings, Apple HomeKit, Google Home, Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, Siri. The self-hosted versions of these tools often differ in resource requirements and feature focus, so it is worth testing the one that matches your workload.
Maturity
The current version is 0.3.1, which means the project is still pre-1.0. That is not a disqualifier, but it is worth checking the changelog before upgrading in a setup where stability matters.
License
It is licensed under Apache-2.0, making it freely available for personal and commercial use.
Links
Whether you are just starting with self-hosting or adding to an existing setup, Willow is a reasonable pick in the smart home and voice assistant space.