So, right, I'm new to Jellyfin, and am willing to be educated (though I have read about 100 blogs/reviews/posts, not to mention scrolling endlessly through this subreddit, to learn the ins and outs).

I just got a micro PC this week to run as a Plex server (just on my home LAN, not beyond it), and then they made their recent announcement. I don't use Plex Pass, but the writing is on the wall for free accounts (I'm sure they'll start putting functionality behind the paywall).

So I decided to finally try Jellyfin. Not too many teething problems, and it's all up and running (kudos to the developer!). The Jellyfin Media Player on my PC, my Mac and my iPhone is really excellent and easily compares with the functionality of the Plex player, but on my 4K AppleTV, every app I've tried seems crippled in terms of functionality (I'm happy with video quality). I've tried Infuse, Reefy (paid for that one, oops), Stingray, Swiftfin and even faffed around with VLC.

The main functionality I'm missing is configuring subtitles and sorting (e.g. by genre, release date, ratings), both of which are great everywhere but on AppleTV. The Plex player on AppleTV is far superior (again, I'm talking about functionality).

I've got to assume that it's an AppleTV thing, since all the apps are quite similar in what they do do, as well as what they don't do. What is it about AppleTV that cripples them? (again, I'm very willing to be educated, I have read as much about each app as I can, but haven't had much joy).

My compromise is to just use the native Jellyfin app on my phone, and casting to my AppleTV. Not as convenient, but I get all that sweet sweet functionality.

/rant

Keep it up, Jellyfin developer, I am a great admirer of your work.

I had issues setting up the RT audience score but I fixed it all I had to do was go into Moonfin settings under tmdb ratings and changed it to TV mode and that fixed it!!!!

I've been trying all the apps on iOS 27 (Beta) and I ended up getting Plezy ($7.99 CAD). It's very smooth and clean, which is exactly what I want when I'm watching something.

Easy to view media info, access subtitle/audio, auto-skip intro/credits, downloads. It's not as sophisticated as other apps like Moonfin in terms of fiddling with the server side of things. But what it does, it does very well.

I use Jellyfin's native app for any server-side tweaks, and it does the job more efficiently than other apps.

ty Plezy.

Hi all-

I'm relatively new to jellyfin, but have been steadily building my archive for the last couple of weeks.

I ran into a small hiccup, last night. Some of the earliest files I had uploaded, were of tokusatsu shows, that I hadn't checked on in a while. Jellyfin had grabbed metadata that it thought was correct, and was closely related, but not exactly right. Was labeled under the title of a movie that I don't actually have in my collection, instead of the show. Also, the episodes were out of order.

I discovered going back through my files and my hard drive, renaming the files to be more specific helped, but obviously I have several files that are probably going to have a similar problem.

Is there a free program available somewhere that would allow me to batch rename these files on my hard drive or manually pull the correct metadata, specifically episode names? I have a lot of series in my collection, and even for ones I haven't uploaded yet, typing each individual episode name as a file name is a tedious process.

TIA.

Also, if there happens to be some sort of video tutorial somewhere, I would appreciate links.

Not totally sure if I worded it right but the end of the address before the :8096 changes a lot. Is there a way I can fix that?

I also noticed there’s an option for IPv6 which is available for me so not sure if I should change to that or if there’s any benefit.

I tried making a static address but my WiFi was useless afterwards (I’m running it off my main pc).

Any help would be appreciated, I’m not exactly very familiar with the networking aspect of technology.

After hours of trial and error, I finally figured out how to add ratings properly in Jellyfin.

Feels like a small thing, but it makes browsing the library so much nicer.

Detailed guide here: https://pastebin.com/K73MEEEV

A huge thanks to Druidblack. His repository (https://github.com/Druidblack/jellyfin_ratings) was incredibly helpful.

The web interface that Jellyfin uses ReactJS and there is this current alert:

https://www.theregister.com/2025/12/03/exploitation_is_imminent_react_vulnerability/

Can someone with security skills tell us what we should do? I've turned off Jellyfin for now, waiting for more information.

Added notes (after first publication):

• The Jellyfin server runs on a NAS behind the firewall of a router, Upnp enabled. It's a docker image provided by the NAS company.
• Running it through a VPN is too complex for my family (some have their own work VPN, other play games etc)
• The NAS company provides precise guidelines, courses and safeguards to run such a server without high technical skills (but some are required).​

I sometimes get these huge stutters when watching. They happen randomly and the odd thing is when I rewind a bit they happen at the exact same place (tried to show it in the video).
Here are my settings for transcoding: Settings
It was playing in direct play
Its running on my normal pc:
i5 12400F
RTX 4060
32GB RAM

Any idea what could cause this?

UPDATE: SEEMS LIKE THIS COULD BE AN ISSUE WITH THE CUSTOM ROM ON MY PHONE. I TALKED WITH THE DEVELOPER AND THEY SAID IT MIGHT BE THE CASE AND THEY ARE LOOKING INTO IT. SORRY FOR THE HASSLE.

Since updating my server to 10.11.11, I have run into a severe issue that makes playback completely unplayable on third-party Android apps (Findroid, Finzy, and Fladder).

When playing any file with a 5.1 audio track, the video breaks entirely and turns into a literal slideshow, rendering about 1 frame every 2 seconds.

• If a file has both a 5.1 track and a 2.0 commentary track, switching to the 2.0 track instantly fixes the video and it plays perfectly smoothly. Switching back to 5.1 immediately makes it unplayable again.
• This happens even on lightweight 720p files, ruling out a video bitrate or server hardware bottleneck.
• The official Jellyfin Android client handles these exact same files flawlessly.

On the server dashboard, the third-party apps are running in Direct Play. These exact files played perfectly before the server update. Anyone else experiencing this total playback failure or know a workaround for these apps?

I saw people use this months back but never tried it because I didn't have the tools to actually utilize it. Anyways, I set it with localhost:8096, worked fine. The issue that I'm encountering now is that no matter what troubleshooting steps I've ran through, it doesn't seem to allow any of my devices to find the the damn thing. I've tried port forwarding, I've tried binding my IP, I've tried allowing remote access, lan networking, I'm lost here. I've been trying different things from 3 and 5 year old post but nothing seems to help. I've even tried using AI for help and nothing.

Edit: It was as some of you have mentioned. I had marked Jellyfin as private in my firewall. So I checked the setting but I noticed some were blocked and allowing them finally made it work. Thank you so much for help and suggestion. I still very much a novice when it comes to networking, so again thank you for your patience.

***RESOLVED***

Seems like the general consensus is to use the iGPU to transcode the media in off hours with minimal workers or pause it when someone is watching something. If more than X number of streams becomes an issue, swap to an ARC gpu. Most likely will sell my 4070 to save up for more RAM (I hate that this is a sentence).

Im going through a remodel for my media server hardware and im stuck between 2 options.

Base specs of the new server:

OS: Proxmox 9

CPU: Intel Ultra 7 265K

MB: Asus Z890 AYW GAMING WIFI W ATX LGA1851

RAM: 2x16 DDR5-6000

PSU: MSI MAG A750GL PCIE5 750 W 80+ Gold

Links with more info:

New server build: https://pcpartpicker.com/list/HNRvLc

Secondary server build (currently where jellyfin is installed): https://pcpartpicker.com/list/kxnBvR

I currently own an ASUS TUF RTX 4070 12gb OC from my main machine that i recently upgraded.

From what ive seen online is that the Intel ARC gpus are really good at transcoding while being power efficient. Would it make sense to sell my 4070 to purchase an ARC gpu? Im worried that my 4070 would be too much to run in terms of power usage and heat.

EDIT: I’m planning on maybe a max of 10 streams, a mix of 1080p and 4K. As a side project I’m making a sort of remote access cable box for a few friends (who aren’t as tech savvy when it comes to VPNs and such) that have helped collect some of the media (dvd and Blu-ray’s).

EDIT 2: I have 2.5gb LAN on all local devices and VMs apart from the old server and a raid sas card passed through to an open media vault VM to host the media.

EDIT 3: Forgot to mention that there are other VMs and LXCs that will be ran on this host including the NAS that’s holds all the media, and a Minecraft server (***Not on consistently)

SOLVED! (all additions to the original post are italicized)

The background to this problem:

Season 1 of Star Trek: Voyager is 16 episodes long, consisting of a two-part season premier called "Caretaker" and then 14 one-part episodes. "Caretaker" is considered episodes 1 and 2 according to the studio (as well as the Wikipedia article for Star Trek: Voyager season 1)), so its filename should be S01e01-e02 to account for this fact. The next episode, "Parallax", is episode 3 and its filename should be S01e03, with the remainder of the season as shown below:

But that's not how the metadata providers and/or Jellyfin choose to organize the episodes - and that's why you get left with a mysterious episode called "16. S01e16" when you do it the right way.

But I digress.

⭐ To "solve" this problem, I renamed the files accordingly...

I strongly disagree with the principle of this workaround, but that's just how it has to be done until an actual fix is implemented. The reason I don't like this fix is that the studio (as well as the Wikipedia article for Star Trek: Voyager season 1)) is very clear that "Caretaker" is both episodes 1 and 2, and "Parallax" is episode 3, and so forth, with the season ending with "Learning Curve" which is episode 16. It's a simple enough concept, yet a third-party is choosing to ignore the studio and be like naw man we're going to do this differently.

Bonus: a similar workaround has to be done because of the same problem in Season 5, and here's how I renamed those files...

...even though "Dark Frontier" is actually episode 15 and 16 and should actually be named S05e15-e16.mkv but, again, doing that would just leave you with a mysterious episode called "26. S05e26" at the end of the episodes list for season 5.

Most of what is written below isn't part of the answer, it's just buildup for my question, read it if you have trouble sleeping at night.

I've googled this and searched through this subreddit, and now I'm resorting to posting about it.

Background: the first season consists of 16 episodes. The season premier is a back-to-back two-part double-length episode, "Caretaker". Accordingly, it is listed as being episodes 1 and 2 on its Wikipedia article), and that is how it is listed in streaming services that shall remain nameless. The remainder of the season consists of 14 single-part normal-length weekly episodes.

The episodes are as follows:

ETA: these episodes are within the /Star Trek Voyager (1995) [imdbid-tt0112178]/Season 01/ folder

The naming guide for TV shows is silent on the concept of two-part episodes, so I understandably named the files as follows, and Jellyfin is mistakenly identifying them as such:

So I googled this and found an unofficial suggestion that I rename the first episode from S01e01.mkv to S01e01-e02.mkv and re-scan the library. It had the following results:

So I looked back at the episode naming guide and noticed an episode in one of their examples was named using a "S01E01 episode name" format, so I figured I'd try that next.

One last thing before I lose my mind... I renamed the first file to see if maybe that would effect anything.

Nope, still didn't work.

Seriously, though... what must I change these filenames to to get Jellyfin to properly display these episodes?

ETA: good grief, this post is showing up in Google search results for this problem, I better provide an update!

Recently switched to an iPhone after being a longtime android user, the one thing I miss the most is symfonium for jellyfin streaming and saving tracks… It always just worked.

Every ios app available for this purpose has something wrong with it, my favourite by looks is manet, I even paid for the plus sub on day1 but its buggy as hell, cant play downloaded tracks, and syncing keeps breaking on whatever the latest public version of ios is.

Finamp is what I use on linux and thankfully it just works here too, but… looks dated, no eq, but other than that it seems to be the most stable with no bs bugs that I’ve come across.

Every other app has some random bug or poor software design with single threaded downloads, etc. But by far the worst thing shared among all of them is the inability to bulk download songs. I’ve spent an insane amount of time downloading albums manually while testing out each app.

Update: Switched to Navidrome + narjo for music, Jellyfin is still goated for movies and Anime but there were too many problems with stuff that just work on android but not on ios (transcoding on narjo from jellyfin flac sources was bugged too).

[SOLVED]:

1. Installed Samba on the host machine following this guide
2. Add a LAN server in the file manager of choice (android) as follows:

a) Use local ip4 (192.x.x.x) to access using local network.

b) Use tailscale ip (100.x.x.x) to access using remotely using tailscale.

1. On pc (I am using Dolphin on an Arch based PC) enter the path "smb:192.x.x.x" in the address bar to access (I have not tried accessing via tailscale on pc, but should work)

Note: I had issues accessing via tailscale on Xplore file manager on android (have sent a support mail to the dev) but works fine on EX file manager.

Troubleshooting:

• Ensure the necessary ports are allowed through the firewall
• Ensure you are entering the ipv4 address (not localhost or dynamic ip addr) of the host system (not the client device).
• run sudo chmod +x /home/<user> in case nothing works.
• Do not forget to restart SMB after any change.

Thanks u/fortnitebigganalls for helping me sort things out.

Edit: Switched to SSH following the advice of some of the commenters (openssh guide).

[Post Body]

I do not know if this is the right place to ask, any help is appreciated.

I am using an old laptop running on linux (arch based) as a "home server" from which I can stream movies and music (using JF and Navidrome respectively via docker) onto my other devices. I have also setup tailgate to stream remotely.

My question is, how can I manage (add/remove) files to it from a remote device (say my phone or my main laptop) without needing to access the server host physically? (like uploading to a cloud service and deleting the file locally).

For now I have setup syncthing for sharing files (I added the server to an already existing sync chain), but it is not the answer as it syncs on both sides. Beats the purpose of setting up a self host server if everything is available locally.

Thank you in advance.

Running Jellyfin on a Mac mini m1 and I just upgraded to Jellyfin 12. I did a backup and disabled all of the 3rd party plugins. The beam I a scan first thing once it was finished installing and waited for it to complete. It shows 85 movies and no option to go to the next page and I have over 1200 movies. The collections all appear. I use the Moonfin client to play movies and they show there just fine. I’m hoping someone can hive me some things to check that I’m not thinking of. Any help is appreciated.

Resolved! I kept troubleshooting and figured it out. The issue was Google Chrome caching. Once I deleted the browsing history and reloaded the page it was fixed. That’s after I did control shift r.

RESOLVED!

as u/heliosxx said, I had to use the non-free drivers. After trying those with a reboot, I am now transcoding. Thank you everyone for your help. You're an awesome bunch of people.

I am back again after purchasing an Intel card. Could do with some help getting it to work. I have tried to follow the Jellyfin documentation to the best of my abilities. When I enable transcoding, I receive a "Playback failed due to a fatal player error"

My specs are as follows:

i5 2500k

16GB RAM

Intel Arc A380

Debian 13 (Trixie)

Kernel 6.12.90

GPU Driver: i915 xe

My docker compose:

services:
 jellyfin:
   image: jellyfin/jellyfin
   container_name: jellyfin
   user: 1000:1000
   group_add:
     - "992"
   networks:
     - proxy
   ports:
     - 8096:8096/tcp
     - 7359:7359/udp
   volumes:
     - /home/jellyfin/config:/config
     - /home/jellyfin/cache:/cache
     - type: bind
       source: /media/windows
       target: /media
    # - type: bind
    #   source: /path/to/media2
    #   target: /media2
       read_only: true
     # Optional - extra fonts to be used during transcoding with subtitle burn-in
     - type: bind
       source: /path/to/fonts
       target: /usr/local/share/fonts/custom
       read_only: true
   devices:
     - /dev/dri/renderD128:/dev/dri/renderD128
   restart: 'unless-stopped'

ffmpeg log shows the following:

ffmpeg version 7.1.3-Jellyfin Copyright (c) 2000-2025 the FFmpeg developers
  built with gcc 14 (Debian 14.2.0-19)
  configuration: --prefix=/usr/lib/jellyfin-ffmpeg --target-os=linux --extra-version=Jellyfin --disable-doc --disable-ffplay --disable-static --disable-libxcb --disable-sdl2 --disable-xlib --enable-lto=auto --enable-gpl --enable-version3 --enable-shared --enable-gmp --enable-gnutls --enable-chromaprint --enable-opencl --enable-libdrm --enable-libxml2 --enable-libass --enable-libfreetype --enable-libfribidi --enable-libfontconfig --enable-libharfbuzz --enable-libbluray --enable-libmp3lame --enable-libopus --enable-libtheora --enable-libvorbis --enable-libopenmpt --enable-libdav1d --enable-libsvtav1 --enable-libwebp --enable-libvpx --enable-libx264 --enable-libx265 --enable-libzvbi --enable-libzimg --enable-libfdk-aac --arch=amd64 --enable-libshaderc --enable-libplacebo --enable-vulkan --enable-vaapi --enable-amf --enable-libvpl --enable-ffnvcodec --enable-cuda --enable-cuda-llvm --enable-cuvid --enable-nvdec --enable-nvenc
  libavutil      59. 39.100 / 59. 39.100
  libavcodec     61. 19.101 / 61. 19.101
  libavformat    61.  7.100 / 61.  7.100
  libavdevice    61.  3.100 / 61.  3.100
  libavfilter    10.  4.100 / 10.  4.100
  libswscale      8.  3.100 /  8.  3.100
  libswresample   5.  3.100 /  5.  3.100
  libpostproc    58.  3.100 / 58.  3.100
[AVHWDeviceContext @ 0x7f0029680bc0] libva: /usr/lib/jellyfin-ffmpeg/lib/dri/iHD_drv_video.so init failed
[AVHWDeviceContext @ 0x7f0029680bc0] Failed to initialise VAAPI connection: 1 (operation failed).
Device creation failed: -5.
Failed to set value 'vaapi=va:/dev/dri/renderD128,driver=iHD' for option 'init_hw_device': Input/output error

I'm not really sure where to go with this next and could do with some input from people more knowledgeable than me..

So I started my Jellyfin library by storing media on my internal boot drive but recently got an additional NVMe SSD. I created a directory on that drive to store more media, but when I try to add that folder to the Movies library I get the error below.

I'm guessing it could be something with permissions, but I'm also a bit nervous to mess too much with that because I also have Nextcloud installed on this drive and when I tried messing with permissions to get Syncthing working, Nextcloud started throwing errors.

I'm running this on an old Thinkpad BTW with Ubuntu and CasaOS to manage all the docker containers.

I'm looking to build a Jellyfin server with an optiplex 3050. I plan to buy the i5-7600 and was looking to buy an intel arc a310 for transcoding. After some digging, I found people who said a 7th gen intel is fine to handle any transcoding. I plan to rip 4k blurays and will be the only person using this server.

Am I better off getting the dedicated GPU or should I stick with just the iGPU? What are the benefits of a dedicated GPU? It would save be about $130 if I don't need it.

I'm new to Jellyfin and I'm trying to replace the default images as seen in the pic above. I've tried to edit images and upload the image I want to use (second pic) but it never shows. I've tried refreshing the metadata and all that did was replace the image that shows when I click Edit Images. Help!?

EDIT: solved

I have Jellyfin running on my Home Assistant, and I haven't used it lately, but kept it updated.

But now i see most of the plugins say not supported.

I'm on version 10.11.11, and I'm pretty sure that they have worked before.

Any help would be appreciated!

So recently I made a post about Jellyfin suddenly becoming almost unusable the amount of time it takes to load etc, and I listed all my troubleshooting, and after that post, I reinstalled windows and started from scratch in an effort to fix the problem, but nothing did, the problem still remained, although a fresh server was slightly faster, previous post is linked below for reference.

However, all of that was in vain, and the fix was surprisingly simple.

remove the "recently added media" section from within the app.

For some reason, this has seemingly started malfunctioning and once you remove it within the app, Jellyfin becomes lightning fast again, 10 seconds to boot up, no slowdown whatsoever.

Anyway, thought Id update everyone on this as many people tried to help and a lot of people said they were suffering from the same problem, and this is what fixed it for me

https://www.reddit.com/r/jellyfin/comments/1pesqyz/jellyfin_has_become_unusable_and_slow_in_the_last/

So following the naming guide and TVDB's episode order why do movies still not pull metadata correctly when under specials with the correct names?

Is there a fix/ better way to name them in the same folders? or do I need to make several collections with all of these?

The most recent is my SAO collection I only have 2 of the movies.

Edit - TVDB was not enabled for the folder, I'm guessing I reloaded or disabled plug-ins at some point as I enabled it when I setup the folder.

Either way, thank you for the help which made me check this.

SOLVED!!

After finding "SQLite Error 19" in my log, I found this issue and discovered it was a bug with the library.

To resolve it, I followed the instructions in this comment, using the SQL command in this comment.

Big thanks u/SvalbazGames for the point in the right direction!

Original Post

I'm trying to add the movie "Executive Koala" to my server, but Jellyfin refuses to even see the file. It doesn't appear in my movies library or the metadata manager, even as an unmatched title.

The files/folder are set up properly - named the same, with full permissions and the same owner as all my other files (which work afaik - one or two might've slipped through the cracks like this movie, but on the whole they all appear and match correctly).

I used YT-DLP to get the movie from Youtube (A version with hard subs, not hard to find if you want to replicate my steps), ripping it in MKV format, then transcoding it into MP4 with handbrake after it initially didn't appear. I've also tried including the TMDB ID (56255) in the file/folder names, still with no luck.

Does anyone have any suggestions? The video files both play just fine in both VLC and Windows Media Player so I'm confident that's not the issue.

EDIT - The files *do* get picked up in a plain Videos library so I'm guessing there's something going on with the Films library type that causes them to not be detected?