Self-hosted NAS backend · Raspberry Pi

Plug in a drive.
Browse it anywhere.

LiteLayer turns a Raspberry Pi and any USB drive into your own file server. You can open it from any device on your network and it keeps every drive read only so your files stay exactly as they are.

$ bash <(curl -fsSL litelayer/install.sh)

One line over SSH. Pi 3 → Pi 5 · 32 & 64-bit · ~5 min.

litelayer /dev

litelayer detect
NAME   FSTYPE   SIZE   STATE
sdb    exfat    931G   ro mounted
sdc    ntfs     2.0T   ro mounted
sdd    ext4     480G   ro mounted
3 drives · read-only · originals untouched 

What it is

ANY FS

Reads every drive

ext4, NTFS, exFAT, FAT32, Btrfs, XFS, HFS+, F2FS — kernel auto-detect as the fallback.

SAFE

Read-only first

Write is an explicit per-drive opt-in. No mkfs, no fdisk, no parted — ever.

REACHABLE

Any device, any VPN

Browse from a phone or laptop over LAN, Tailscale, WireGuard, ZeroTier — no app changes.

SELF-RUN

Updates itself

OTA over GitHub with a daily check and one-tap apply from the web UI.

Features

Everything you want from a NAS, nothing you don't.

The things that matter for living with your files day to day.

AUTO DETECT

Shows up on its own

Plug a drive in and it appears in the browser. No mounting, no config, no terminal needed.

SANDBOXED

Stays in its lane

Every request is locked to the drive you opened. There is no way to reach the rest of the Pi.

TRANSFER

Move between drives

Copy files from one disk to another in the background and watch the progress as it goes.

PREVIEW

Look before you grab

Open photos right in the browser instead of downloading every file just to see what it is.

Locked by default

One password gets you in. Every drive and every file needs a valid session to reach.

MOBILE

Fits a phone

Drives are the home screen and tapping one opens its files. The whole thing works one handed.

Safety rules

Built so a NAS can't wreck your data.

These aren't settings you can fumble — they're how LiteLayer behaves out of the box.

Read only by default

Writing to a drive is a deliberate per drive choice you turn on yourself.

Boot disk protected

The Pi system disk is found and left out, so it is never mounted or touched.

Stays in the drive

Every path is resolved and locked to the drive. Attempts to climb out return 403.

Never formats

There is no code path that runs mkfs, fdisk, or parted. It cannot wipe a disk.

Clean eject

Unmount flushes pending writes first, so ejecting never loses a file in flight.

Your data is the one thing that never changes.

Compatibility

Runs on the Pi you already have.

Pi 3 through Pi 5, 1 GB and up, 32- or 64-bit Raspberry Pi OS (Bullseye+, Bookworm recommended). On a Pi Zero 2 W it drops to a single worker. NVMe HATs work on Pi 5.

ext4 built-in

NTFS ntfs3

exFAT exfat

FAT32 vfat

Btrfs btrfs

XFS xfs

HFS+ ro

ISO 9660 ro

F2FS android

…anything auto-detect

Get started

SSH into your Pi. Run one line.

The installer sets a password, picks a VPN (or none), and registers a systemd service so LiteLayer starts on every boot. Then open http://litelayer.local.