Using Podman to host Homebridge Container

Finally bought an Apple TV 4k (Gen 3) for the sole purpose of setting up Homebridge. Got it all setup with TV and on the network, and started the grind that is setting up Homebridge.

For ease of setup, I opted for using the official Homebridge docker image in Docker Hub to run a containerized instance of Homebridge. At the same time, wanted to try out Podman to host the containers.

After a few google searches, settled on the following:

podman run --name=homebridge \
    -v $(pwd)/homebridge_data:homebridge \
    -p 8581:8581 \
    -p 51000:51000 \
    homebridge/homebridge:latest

The above maps local homebridge_data folder to containers default homebridge data folder, forwards port 8581 which is what the Homebridge UI web app runs on by default, and forwards port 51000 through which is what the Homebridge Port. The port forwarding of the Homebridge Port is important as its used as part of the Bridge discovery for HomeKit when attempting to add via the Home app. These ports can be configured in the Settings -> Network section of HomeBridge UI.

Whilst the Homebridge Port forwarding should in most cases solve the discovery problems I encountered, one very critical piece of configuration is mDNS setup for Homebridge. In the Settings -> Network section of HomeBridge UI, there are several mDNS Advertisers to choose from based on your host. As the base docker image for Homebridge is based on uBuntu, the recommended advertiser is Avahi for Linux as per Homebridge documentation. After many hours of troubleshooting why the discovery was still failing, the following article includes details about running Homebridge without Host Network Mode, which is a common hack that some users opt for in order to get their Homebridge instance discovered on their local network. The author linked to his script in Github which inspects the running Homebridge container for the required configuration it needs to generate an Avahi service file. The script works perfectly bar 1 quirk, its based on docker. This was easily remedied by replacing docker with podman and executing in the terminal. And viola! Homebridge is discoverable via Home app.