I have too many computers.
A Mac here. A Linux box there. A few VMs. Some local AI models. And apparently I was supposed to SSH into all of them like a responsible adult.
So I built BarkVisor.
It's an open-source QEMU dashboard that lets you turn your Macs and Linux boxes into one Home and manage the whole thing from one place.
They don't need to be identical. They don't even need to run the same OS.
Mac mini in the office? Add it. Linux server in the closet? Add it. Another machine under the TV because you have a problem? Add it.
One Home. One dashboard. All your machines.
And maybe Windows gets invited to the party next. 👀
One Home. Different machines. 🏠
This is probably the part I didn't explain well enough before.
A BarkVisor install is a Device.
Your Mac can be a Device. Your Linux server can be another Device. Add both to the same Home, and BarkVisor gives you one place to manage them.
🏠 My Home
│
┌───────────┼───────────┐
│ │ │
🍎 Mac mini 🐧 Linux 🍎 MacBook
│ │ │
VMs + AI VMs + AI VMs
Different hardware. Different operating systems. Same Home.
From there you can create workloads, decide which Device should run them, manage networking, run local models, and see what's happening across the whole setup.
And importantly, Home isn't a cluster.
There's no quorum keeping your machines alive. If the Linux box disappears, your Mac doesn't suddenly care. Workloads stay on the Device where they're running.
BarkVisor just gives all those independent machines a shared control plane.
It's less:
"I have three random computers."
And more:
"Apparently I have infrastructure now." 😅
Local AI across the Home 🧠
This gets more interesting when those Devices have different strengths.
Maybe the Mac mini is always on. Maybe the Linux box has the big GPU. Maybe another Device is mostly there for VMs.
Models can live on different Devices while BarkVisor gives you one front door for completions across the Home.
So instead of remembering:
192.168.1.42:11434
192.168.1.73:11434
wait... which box had Qwen?
you talk to BarkVisor.
One Home. One endpoint. Multiple machines.
Basically a tiny inference router that escaped from my homelab.
Networking with an undo button 🧯
Host networking is where confidence goes to die.
Bridges are useful right up until the moment you accidentally remove the network connection you're currently using to configure the bridge.
Ask me how I know.
So BarkVisor assumes you're going to do something stupid and gives you a way back before the change sticks.
NAT is there when you want boring.
Bridges are there when you want power.
And rollback is there when you discover you wanted boring after all.
Alpha on top. QEMU underneath. 🪨
BarkVisor itself is Alpha.
The dashboard will change. The API will change. I will probably rename something five minutes after you learn it.
But the actual virtualization layer isn't an experiment.
QEMU is QEMU.
Battle-tested virtualization. Real VMs. Boring, reliable infrastructure.
BarkVisor is the opinionated layer I bolted on top because apparently typing ssh one more time was my breaking point.
And yes, there's a phone app 📱
Because obviously this got out of hand.
There's a native SwiftUI console aimed at Mac and iOS, and phone sign-in already works.
I'm not giving you an App Store date.
"Soon" is the most accurate unit of time available.
This is only the beginning 🛠️
The idea behind BarkVisor isn't really "put a UI on QEMU."
It's:
make the computers you already own feel like one Home.
Today that's macOS + Linux.
Tomorrow? Maybe Windows joins too. 👀
And the roadmap gets progressively more unreasonable from there: failover, live migration, distributed storage, backups, cross-Device networking, portable workloads, Tailscale/WireGuard and more.
No promises on dates. Plenty of questionable ideas.
Try it. Break it. Add another box. 🚀
BarkVisor is open source, MIT licensed, and very much being built in public.
If you've got a Mac, a Linux machine, or preferably both, give it a spin.
Install BarkVisor on them.
Put them in the same Home.
Create a VM. Run a model. Add another Device. Break the networking. Hopefully recover the networking.
Then open an issue and tell me what I got wrong.
Built with ❤️, QEMU, and the kind of overengineering that starts with:
"I just want one dashboard."
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