I've clicked through more "Your connection is not private" warnings than I'd like to admit, and nearly all of them came from my own homelab. The web UI for my Proxmox setup throws one, my Synology NAS throws one, and I'd trained myself to ignore both. Then Let's Encrypt announced that its certificates are getting shorter.

From February 10, 2027, every new Let's Encrypt certificate lasts 64 days instead of 90, and that drops to 45 days in 2028. Ever since Caddy replaced my reverse proxy setup , my proxy has handled its own renewals, but the two boxes I log into most never had trusted certificates at all. So I fixed all three, and I made each one prove it could survive a 64-day certificate before trusting it. It mostly went smoothly. Mostly.

What Let's Encrypt is changing, and what actually breaks

Shorter certificates are fine, hard-coded renewal dates are not

The Let's Encrypt announcement is crystal clear.…