NOVA for Unraid® — your NAS in your pocket. A fast, native Android app for keeping an eye on — and a hand on — your Unraid® server.
Screenshots, install options and the privacy summary on the project website.
NOVA puts the parts of your Unraid® server you actually check on your phone — array health, container and VM state, live system metrics — into a clean, dark, one-thumb interface. Start a container, fix a stuck VM, kick off an update, glance at parity progress: without opening a laptop or fighting the desktop web UI on a phone screen.
It talks to your server through the official Unraid API (the Connect plugin's GraphQL endpoint) over your own network — NOVA itself routes nothing through a third party.
Project website: https://hellwand.github.io/nova/ — screenshots, install options and a summary of the privacy policy.
| Overview | Docker | Container detail |
|---|---|---|
 |
 |
 |
- Overview — array capacity, CPU & memory live, container/VM counts, parity-check progress at a glance
- Array — disk-by-disk status, temperatures, capacity, start/stop the array
- Docker — every container with status; start / stop / restart / pause, jump straight to a container's Web UI, see which have image updates and update one — or all — in a tap
- VMs — VM state with start / stop / pause / resume
- Multiple servers — switch between them; each remembers its own local and remote address
- Live network speed — upload/download on the Overview card (needs Unraid API 4.35.0 or newer); the NIC inventory sits under Settings → Network interfaces (vendor, model and link speed only with a third-party API plugin)
- Stay current — the GitHub APK checks GitHub for its own updates and installs them in place (the F-Droid build is updated by F-Droid)
NOVA surfaces what Unraid's GraphQL API exposes today. A few things commonly asked for aren't there yet — most because the upstream API hasn't added them:
- Plugin updates — NOVA shows installed plugins and the install-job history, but Unraid's API doesn't expose "update available" status the way it does for Docker containers. Tracking: unraid/api#2012.
- User shares / SMB / NFS, UPS, disk SMART, parity-check scheduling — not yet surfaced.
If something on this list (or off it) matters to you, an issue or a 👍 on an existing one is the best signal.
A deliberately dark, glassy Material 3 design — dense cards, a single accent color, restrained motion. Tuned for quick checks, not for living in.
A few things bend to taste in Settings:
- Accent — mint, blue, purple, amber or red
- Mode — dark, light or follow the system
- Density — compact, balanced or spacious padding
- Docker layout — list, grid or grouped-by-state
- Install NOVA — either from F-Droid (stable releases only) or as the latest APK from the Releases page. (For the APK, Android will ask you to allow installing from your browser/files app — that's expected for apps outside the Play Store.)
- Betas are GitHub pre-releases, so they come as an APK from the Releases page. NOVA tells you when a new version is out (switch on Include pre-releases in Settings for betas) and sends your browser to the APK; Obtainium works too.
- The F-Droid build and the GitHub APK are signed with different keys, so switching between them needs an uninstall first (your saved servers and API keys go with the app). See ADR-0040.
- On your Unraid server, generate an API key: web UI → Settings → Management Access → API / Connect.
- Open the app → Add server and fill in:
- Server name — a label, e.g.
Tower - Local host — its address on your home network, e.g.
192.168.1.10. Flip Use SSL (HTTPS) if the server uses HTTPS; for a self-signed certificate also enable Trust self-signed certificate and confirm it once - Remote host (Unraid Connect) — optional, e.g.
your-server.unraid.net, for when you're away (with its own Use SSL (HTTPS) switch) - API Key — the one you just generated
- Server name — a label, e.g.
- Tap Test (next to the local and/or remote connection), then Save. The pill in the top bar flips between Local and Remote.
Versions up to 0.1.46 (GitHub APK). On 2026-11-13 we observed that Google Play Protect stopped every GitHub build we tried (0.1.45-beta1, 0.1.45 and 0.1.46-beta1) when it was installed or updated, on a phone with Android 9 and on one with Android 17. Two dialogs appear one after the other:
- "App scan recommended" (German: "App-Scan empfohlen") — Play Protect does not know the file yet. Android shows this for every new file that is not from Google Play. Tap Scan app ("App scannen").
- "Harmful app blocked" (German: "Schädliche App blockiert"), "This app may be harmful" ("Diese App könnte schädlich sein."). You can continue through More details > Install anyway ("Weitere Details > Trotzdem installieren").
This is Google's rating of the file, not a finding about what NOVA does; Google does not say why it gives it. Our observation, which Google has not confirmed: these builds could install other apps (that is how the old in-app updater worked), and a build of the same version without that ability was rated "This app seems safe" ("Diese App ist anscheinend sicher") by the same scan on the same phone. NOVA is open source (GPL v3), and you can check what you installed:
- SHA-256 of the file: the release page lists it next to the APK; compare it with
sha256sum NOVA-v….apk. - Signing certificate:
apksigner verify --print-certs NOVA-v….apkshould show the SHA-256 digest9f86baa17c1208004d9284e99597f77276c77301b06340b10075c793152b6824.
From version 0.1.47 on, NOVA no longer installs updates itself and no longer asks for the permission to install apps. Download in the update sheet lets your browser download the file; you open it to install. Android will still ask once to scan each new file ("App scan recommended"), because Play Protect does not know it yet; that is expected. We cannot promise that no warning appears, since Google's rating can change.
F-Droid is the channel without any such prompt we have seen, but it has stable releases only, gets updates later, and is signed with a different key. Switching between the GitHub APK and F-Droid means uninstalling first, which removes your saved servers and API keys.
Requires an Unraid 7.x server with the API/Connect plugin enabled. All app features need Unraid API 4.30.0 or newer; the live network speed needs 4.35.0 or newer (API versions, not Unraid OS versions). On an older API some screens fail to load.
Unraid® is a registered trademark of Lime Technology, Inc. NOVA is an independent, community-built client; it uses the term solely to describe compatibility with the Unraid® operating system and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or supported by Lime Technology. The project was previously named UnraidControl; the rename to NOVA in v0.1.33 was made to comply with the Unraid® Trademark Policy — see ADR-0038 and ADR-0039.
- Full policy: https://github.com/hellwand/nova/blob/main/docs/privacy/POLICY.md
- Your API key stays on your device. It's encrypted at rest using Android Keystore via Google's Tink library, and explicitly excluded from cloud backup / device-transfer.
- No analytics, no telemetry, no tracking services. The app talks to your Unraid server's API; in the GitHub (
direct) build it also asks GitHub's API for app updates (at app start, when you open Settings, or on "Check now"); and it loads container icons from the URLs your own server supplies (often GitHub or a CDN). - Update downloads are made by your browser, not by NOVA: the update sheet opens the release's APK on GitHub, shows its SHA-256 so you can compare it with the downloaded file, and the app itself downloads and installs nothing. See ADR-0046.
- Source is the spec. Audit, fork, run yourself — GPL v3.
The architecture overview is in HANDOFF.md (Layout), design decisions are recorded as Architecture Decision Records under docs/adr/, and the contribution workflow and release pipeline are in CONTRIBUTING.md. Bug reports and PRs welcome.
Before pushing, you can run the exact CI checks locally in a pinned container with ./scripts/local-ci.sh — see docs/local-build.md.
GNU General Public License v3.0. Use it (including commercially), modify it, run it — but if you distribute the app or a fork, the corresponding source has to be available under the same license. Full text in LICENSE; rationale in ADR-0021.
© 2026 nofuturekid