When I was watching the YouTube background, I was surprised to find that this alist video has tens of thousands of views. Suddenly I remembered that the alist in NAS has not been updated for a long time. Combined with some recent experiences, I want to talk about some usage scenarios of alist. I hope it can be helpful to friends with potential needs.

There is another reason that motivated me. That is, at the beginning of the year, the VIP accounts of Alibaba Cloud Disk and Baidu Netdisk expired one after another, which not only caused the space to be full, but also caused the downloading speed to become slow. This was not a big deal, after all, there was still NAS to "hold on". But at the beginning of last month, when LD went out to have fun, when I downloaded several GB of photos from Baidu Netdisk, the speed of dozens of KB almost made me collapse.

The next day, LD wanted to bring the photos to his colleagues. I was worried that the USB flash drive was slow (those who have used free gifts should have suffered from this), so I put the photos on an SSD hard drive. I was worried that the old computer interface would be incompatible, so I not only prepared a CtoC data cable, but also "thoughtfully" put in an expansion dock.

This made me wonder: Instead of going through all this trouble, why not install the alist in the VPS? This way, I would have a public IP and could upload and download files anytime, anywhere. So, I had the idea of systematically organizing the alist.

I will divide these ideas into several issues:

• alist usage planning
• How to install alist on different devices
• How to install alist on VPS and avoid privacy exposure risks
• Implement alist binding domain name through reverse proxy
• Aira2andQBOffline Download
• With Emby, Plex mounts alist network disk

There may be more, I’ll think about it as I write.

This issue's content is a collection of thoughts or ideas about the usage scenarios of alist.

I always feel that it is relatively easy to obtain the operation method, but it is more difficult to form a global thinking about things. The so-called "seeing a small part can tell the whole picture" is more applicable to the era of information scarcity. Just like using WordPress to build a website, there are tutorials all over the Internet. But if you don't have basic global thinking, and don't weigh the differences between domestic and foreign, the differences between single site/multi-site, the differences between self-built VPS/hosted by a third party, etc., you will pay for these later.

Alist is famous for its network disk aggregation tool. Its core function is to centrally manage different network disks. But if you only use it to watch movies, it is a bit of a waste of resources. Therefore, I will talk about it from three aspects: installation device type, audio and video device linkage, and personal recent experience. I hope that friends who read this article can get additional inspiration.

1. Installation equipment type

We may see the installation tutorials of alist from various channels, and the most common one should be to install it on NAS or soft router. Because most of the friends who have these two types of devices are also audio and video enthusiasts. However, not everyone needs to buy a NAS or soft router, but everyone may have an Android phone. This may be the reason why "Install alist on an idle Android phone" has been viewed many times.

In fact, due to its wide range of applicability, alist can be used on almost all devices.

NAS: Common but Complex

There are two ways to install NAS, one is to install it in Docker, and the other is to install it as an application. The former requires a little common sense and takes up more system resources, but subsequent upgrades and maintenance are relatively simple; the latter is easy to install, but you need to download new applications for each upgrade.

The second method I use myself is suitable for newbies like me who get dizzy when looking at code.

Routing: Complex and Simple

I won’t go into details about how to flash the router with Merlin or OpenWRT firmware. In addition to purchasing it directly, friends who have NAS can also install OpenWRT through a virtual machine.

The installation and equipment of soft routers are relatively complicated, but once configured, the subsequent use of extended functions is relatively simple.

For example, the openwrt firmware I installed has integrated iStore, which contains alist, which can be installed with just a click.

I personally recommend using this type of router as a bypass router. In this way, even if there is a problem with the bypass router, it will not affect the normal Internet access of the device.

Android phones: usable but not great

In fact, an idle Android phone can do a lot of things. For example, install alist, or use it as a bypass router to do the most important thing of surfing the Internet. But will anyone really do this for a long time? I think this is an alternative solution, and it is more likely to be used for temporary transition.

Although I have made a tutorial myself, from my actual experience, once the mobile phone is used as a network center, the inevitable problem is that it needs to be charged for a long time. If it is an old mobile phone, the risk is not small.

Therefore, if you are verified to really like using alist, you should migrate to other devices as soon as possible.

Computer: Simple but not universal

If you only have one computer and it is your main viewing device, then installing Alist on your computer (Windows/macOS) is an option. Although it may not be a good choice. After all, whenever you encounter the situation of using Alist across devices, you need to turn on the computer, which is not a good experience.

However, if you are only interested in alist's function of expanding the computer's hard drive space, this is also a good idea.

Servers: Complex but Practical

Why install it on the server?

This is largely because of the public IP (ipv4).

With a public IP, you can break through the LAN restrictions and log in to Alist anytime and anywhere, greatly expanding the usage scenarios.

As for how to obtain a public IP, the policies of different operators vary from place to place. Take Beijing Mobile as an example. You can just apply directly. I remember that you only need to pay an extra 10 yuan per month. I had applied for it at the mobile business hall, but I didn't bring all the documents that day. So it was left unresolved.

Therefore, friends who do not want to compete with operators can consider getting a VPS, which can help you achieve many things.

Of course, if you expose alist to the public network, don't put sensitive information in it. I will choose a later issue to talk about how alist exposes privacy.

Third-party escrow: Convenient storage restrictions

I don't want to spend money to buy a public IP and VPS, and I don't want to learn how to penetrate the intranet, but I still want to log in to Alist on the public network. Is there any way?

Then you need to use a platform that provides an online development environment.

One is Replit and the other is Cloudflare's worker.

I have used the former, but it is probably not usable now because Replit has restrictions on alist codes; I read the tutorial for the latter, but found it a bit troublesome, so I did not try it.

My advice for this type of method is: you can try it, but you don’t have to use it often.

Because third-party platforms are not doing charity, once these free and resource-consuming behaviors appear in large numbers, restrictions will follow.

To sum up, several installation methods have their own advantages and disadvantages. You can choose the most appropriate installation method according to your needs.

2. Audio and video linkage

If you consider alist as part of the audio-visual experience, I would like to share some experiences with you.

I will manage my audio and video experience from three levels: file management, media management, and tool playback.

File management tool: Alist is usually just an aggregate management tool for some local hard disks and network disks. In addition, there may be more devices that need to be connected.

Media management tools: Although you can browse files and play videos directly through alist, if you want to build your own audio-visual center, scrape video information, match subtitles, and even compress the video bit rate for smooth playback according to the device and network speed, it is best to leave these to professional software, such as Plex, Emby, etc.

Playback tools: Tools like Plex and Emby actually have both management and playback functions, and so does infuse. However, in addition to focusing on the Apple platform, infuse cannot compress the bit rate, which is a small flaw. After all, watching 4K videos directly on a mobile phone with data traffic is a waste of money. Therefore, although I think infuse has a great experience on Apple TV, I still use Plex as a media management center and connect it to it.

Finally, there are two tips to pay attention to:

• On a Windows computer, you can use Raidrive to connect to alist; if it is a Mac computer, you can just connect directly;
• After installing alist on NAS, Plex cannot see the file address, but Emby can; so they can be used together;

I will write about these specific operations slowly.

3. Personal Experience

As for me personally, I haven't used alist for a long time. However, after the VIP of Baidu and Alibaba Cloud Disk expired, I encountered the need of LP to transfer large-capacity photos, which made me pick up this skill again. Because in a flash of inspiration, I thought that alist combined with vps can become a good cloud disk, which does not require the other party to register and has no speed limit requirements.

Of course, after using alist, many network disks do not have speed limit requirements. However, most of my own network disks have exceeded their capacity, so I want to make use of the extra space of the vps.

Speaking of network disk limitations, we have to mention the famous Baidu Netdisk. My wife went out for fun and needed to download several GB of photos from Baidu Netdisk when she came back. If she had VIP, it would only take a few minutes. As a result, the computer was left running all night at a download speed of dozens of KB.

After going back and forth a few times, I was exhausted both physically and mentally. Then I came up with this idea.

You just need to complete the following things:

• There are vps
• It is best to have a domain name (IP only is also OK)
• Install alist on vps
• Install Nginx on vps
• Set up reverse proxy through Nginx to implement domain name binding [IP: port]
• Mount vps local folder and network disk in alist

For the above operations, in addition to referring to the official documentation of Alist, I, who don’t understand code, rely entirely on Gemini and ChatGPT.

I have to say, for questions like these that have standard answers, it’s faster to ask AI than to search for tutorials.

The vps I chose is the one I mentioned beforeXentainThis vps has very little hard disk space, only 15G, but unlimited traffic. If you don't use a proxy, the download speed is between 3M and 20M. It is enough for temporary file transfer.

When mounting Alibaba Cloud Disk to download files, my home 300m broadband remains stable at around 39M, which is considered full speed.

From now on, you can use cloud disk to happily transfer files to each other.

Okay, if you find it useful, just follow it.

Starting from the second phase, the specific operations will be carried out.