this post was submitted on 03 Jul 2025
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after almost 15yrs my plex server is no more. jellyfin behind nginx with authentik is running very nicely.

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[–] Fingolfinz@lemmy.world 85 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

Welcome to the jelly. ONE OF US. ONE OF US.

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[–] daniskarma@lemmy.dbzer0.com 53 points 15 hours ago* (last edited 15 hours ago) (4 children)

I've been using jellyfin for years.

My best recommendation is DELAY UPDATES and back up before you update.

I have a history of updates breaking everything so you should be careful about them.

All software recommends backing up before an update, but for jellyfin the shit is real, you really want to back up.

[–] surewhynotlem@lemmy.world 28 points 12 hours ago (1 children)
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[–] Lem453@lemmy.ca 11 points 13 hours ago* (last edited 9 hours ago)

I've been using jelly since just after the emby fork and never had an update issue on docker. Automatic snapshots every 5 mins (amoung other backup tools). means I don't need to worry much if it does.

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[–] cupcakezealot@piefed.blahaj.zone 40 points 19 hours ago (2 children)

i love jellyfin i just wish there was a nicer way to highlight collections so you could make themed weekly or monthly collections of movies and shows that also still show up in the regular folders.... almost like netflix.

[–] Drathro@sh.itjust.works 6 points 18 hours ago

I'm probably mistaken, but I think there might actually be a plugin for this? I haven't looked into it myself but I swear I scrolled past a plugin listing similar functionality at some point. Or I could be hallucinating. Or it could even exist but no longer work on the current version of the app. Who knows!?

[–] cyrano@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 points 14 hours ago

That is coming, I saw a PR for that. Just need to be patient.

[–] non_burglar@lemmy.world 33 points 19 hours ago (5 children)

I'm also 90% done migrating to jellyfin. I've had the instance running for 6 months now, the cultural change to watch jellyfin is complete, except for my wife's iPad.

Heck, I should just retire Plex. That will force the change.

These are the thoughts of a cold and calloused sysadmin. Didn't get the email about the change? Too bad.

[–] meh@piefed.blahaj.zone 21 points 19 hours ago

yeah it took me about 6 months with jellyfin to feel like i was ready to finally kill plex. the thing that finally did it was getting an email from plex asking if i'd like to check out whats streaming on hbomax.

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[–] macstainless@discuss.tchncs.de 20 points 16 hours ago (8 children)

I've heard jellyfin has a lot of security issues, which I don't know if that's accurate or not. But the BIGGEST issue is lack of a proper tvOS app. I really don't feel like using Infuse or some other app just to use my library. Year after year I hear about people switching and yet, the gap is simply still there.

[–] rumba@lemmy.zip 10 points 15 hours ago (2 children)

I’ve heard jellyfin has a lot of security issues

The biggest known stuff I saw on their GitHub is that a number of the exposed service URLs under the hood don't require auth. So, it's open-source with known requirements, you can tell easily from the outside that it's running, and you can cause it to activate a LOT of packages without logging in. That's a zero-day in any package that can be passed a payload away from disaster.

AS far as TVOS, I'm kinda surprised swiftfin doesn't service you.

[–] Lem453@lemmy.ca 5 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

Assuming this is all true, sure its not great but how much does it matter?

Most have jellyfin in a docker. My jellyfin can't only has read only accses to the media folder. Only the config folder has write access. Assuming the worst case scenario here, how much damage can than do?

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[–] EncryptKeeper@lemmy.world 9 points 16 hours ago (2 children)

I am also not up to date on Jellyfin security issues but the biggest one I care about is that its clients don’t support OIDC. There’s a neat plugin for OIDC, but without client support it only works with the web client and I’m not a fan of leaving login pages open to the internet.

[–] meh@piefed.blahaj.zone 6 points 15 hours ago

if you use the oidc connection and apps that support quick connect you can do it. you basically end up doing things like the plex link process that got implemented when they forced everyone into their authentication service. i almost went that route but opted to leave the password auth from ldap in. its the kind of log in process most people are used too and i've got a few elderly users. i disabled password reset in authentik though and everyone gets a 3 word 24 char minimum password.

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[–] cantankerous_cashew@lemmy.world 7 points 13 hours ago

To be fair there is a tvOS app in development but progress is slow because the whole project is maintained by a small handful of volunteers. They’ve put out a call for help and the maintainers post updates here

[–] Jakeroxs@sh.itjust.works 4 points 16 hours ago (5 children)

Op already said they were behind authentik

There also absolutely are apps for tv oses like Android, I use one daily.

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[–] The_Zen_Cow_Says_Mu@infosec.pub 13 points 18 hours ago* (last edited 18 hours ago) (3 children)

i have a lifetime plex pass, but I'd consider moving to jellyfin when their closed-captioning support reaches parity with plex. i regularly spin up a jellyfin container to try it out, but i still run into issues. And jellyfin's android apps are mediocre (in particular android auto support), especially for music compared to plexamp

[–] TeamAssimilation@infosec.pub 11 points 18 hours ago

I find Jellyfin’s subtitle search much better than Plex’s. Bonus for leaving a subtitle file right along with your file, instead of buried somewhere else so you can’t easily edit it.

[–] Jakeroxs@sh.itjust.works 6 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

For android auto, I use symfonium as it can hook into my jf library

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[–] Moonrise2473@feddit.it 12 points 14 hours ago (3 children)

Unrelated but why a full VM for Linux stuff, lxc is much more efficient

[–] meh@piefed.blahaj.zone 20 points 14 hours ago (2 children)

honestly every explanation probably just ends at 'this is what i learned on and it works'. same way i religiously use nano and try to do everything in bash first. or how a couple coworkers can't stop explaining their vim workflow and defending python unprompted like it's a trauma response for them. my current homelab is also running a r9 with 64gb ram and 30tb storage. if i were paying for remote hosting, still using salvaged hardware or being paid, i'd invest time learning newer processes. but containers haven't caught my interested and this set up takes basically no effort on my part to maintain, so i can focus my limited free time elsewhere.

[–] mic_check_one_two@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

honestly every explanation probably just ends at 'this is what i learned on and it works'.

Yeah, lots of these answers basically boil down to “when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.”

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[–] Laser@feddit.org 5 points 11 hours ago

Stronger compartmentalization

[–] CeeBee_Eh@lemmy.world 5 points 8 hours ago (6 children)

I can backup an entire VM snapshot very quickly and then restore it in a matter of minutes. Everything from the system files, database, Jellyfin version and configs, etc. All easily backed up and restored in an easy to manage bundle.

A container is not as easy to manage in the same way.

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[–] puppycat@lemmy.blahaj.zone 11 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

my only issue is how user friendly it isn't compared to Plex.

i genuinely want to leave Plex (especially the more and more they enshittify) but I just could not figure out how to set up jellyfin. i use Linux every day, and know I'm at least a tiny bit more tech smart than your average PC user, but I can't imagine trying to explain to my family how to set jellyfin up.

[–] candyman337@lemmy.world 7 points 18 hours ago (4 children)

Host Jellyfin either by running their easy setup script or by hosting it on docker, in order for it to be publicly accessible you will need to either port forward and give people your external IP or you need to have your own website. It's very easy with a docker container to get it running locally, you literally just spin it up, the same as Plex.

[–] CrayonDevourer@lemmy.world 6 points 18 hours ago (2 children)

The only thing that plex has over jellyfin at the moment (in my opinion) is the simple sign on and user options that allow users to have their own usernames and not have to know anything about reverse-proxying a domain for jellyfin access. It's that little bit of back-end that you have to set up that's the problem for the 'normie' users that a lot of plex admins cater to. That, and there's some holes in where the jellyfin app is available.

[–] AtariDump@lemmy.world 4 points 18 hours ago (5 children)

And Plexamp.

And a decent AppleTV app.

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[–] mlg@lemmy.world 10 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

Does jellyfin do untranscoded video/audio?

Haven't used it in years but finally building up my media server again and I remember it had some funky settings for hardware encoding back then which I didn't need because I was connecting to it via a repurposed gaming laptop that could easily handle 4k content and surround sound by itself.

[–] treyf711@eviltoast.org 12 points 9 hours ago

I use jellyfin for unencoded audio and video on my clients that support it like my newer television, but I also use transcoded audio video on things that can't handle the higher codecs like the raspberry pi.

[–] partial_accumen@lemmy.world 9 points 19 hours ago

Long ago I ran a Windows Media Center PC in the living room and used the hell out of it. When WMC finally went EOL, I look for alternatives and found Plex. I never got around to setting up a Plex box, and now I see it too is ready for the scrap heap. I think this is what getting old is. You plan on doing something and never get around to it. Time passes much faster up here in age.

[–] JimVanDeventer@lemmy.world 9 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

I am still using Kodi. It is feeling a bit long in the tooth in current year, but I can’t complain. I tried Plex because chromecasting is a feature I would love. Sadly it didn’t support the ISOs of my 1:1 rips. Maybe it does now (I stopped waiting for them years ago). As for Jellyfin, they seem to have an anti-ISO stance. One of the devs seemingly (or someone claiming to be a contributor) said I should convert all my media to a more modern format and make my own menus because it would be fun. Oh well, Kodi it is.

[–] lime@feddit.nu 6 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

i've never heard of anyone that keeps dvd menus around. like, i get it for archival purposes but i would never want to actually navigate a menu when i want to watch something. in my mind it's like sitting through the commercials on a rented vhs. i would probably store a converted copy as well, in a format that would let me specify from the application what track and subtitle i want so i can set a default.

[–] JimVanDeventer@lemmy.world 7 points 3 hours ago (3 children)

Blu-ray menus do kind of suck, but they are still mostly good enough to make all the supplemental material accessible (assuming the studio bothered to provide any anymore). But DVD menus (at least during that earlier golden age) add a layer to the experience I never knew I had been missing.

The Rocky Horror Picture Show has some dancing fishnet legs and sexyhorror lips dancing around. You get to see so many extras and choose two versions of the movie and AND a secret Easter egg third version. A smorgasbord. Same for Terminator 2: two good versions of the movie and that lame Star Trek-ish ending one was hidden and I love having the option to not watch it. Plus many more. Fight Club is the only one I can think of to make use of that camera angle swapping button. The DVD versions of Dragon’s Lair and Space Ace wouldn’t work any other way.

Perfect way to kill time when others go for a last minute toilet visit or decide to make popcorn. I am not going to the trouble of transcoding my entire library to get less.

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[–] Surp@lemmy.world 9 points 7 hours ago (4 children)

I just wanna get rid of Plex so bad but jellyfin isn't going to work for my grandma....

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[–] bitwolf@sh.itjust.works 5 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

I just got Authentik / Traefik going for Navidrome, Jellyfin is next.

Does it play well for the mobile applications? If you use them?

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[–] Vigge93@lemmy.world 5 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

How did you set up Jellyfin with Authentik? Are you using SSO or is it only through LDAP?

[–] meh@piefed.blahaj.zone 4 points 17 hours ago (2 children)

i ended up doing both. ldap for the apps. oidc for web based users and the apps that support the quick connect feature. the local user account system works fine too, and ldap would be enough. i just wanted an excuse to play round with sso systems, and it was fun figuring out how to connect all my servers.

authenik has a good docs site for both it's docker container and connecting it to jellyfin. Authelia looked interesting too.

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[–] Ledivin@lemmy.world 5 points 18 hours ago (2 children)

Did plex do something again

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[–] cyrano@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 18 hours ago

I have been running in parallel both jelly and plex and jelly is good.

[–] navi@lemmy.tespia.org 4 points 16 hours ago (2 children)

Anyone have experience hosting a server for non-technical parents? Plex is just so plug and play and they have clients for even the shittiest old smart TVs.

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[–] Kronusdark@lemmy.world 4 points 19 hours ago (6 children)

How is the Jellyfin software situation looking? Last time I checked it was pretty meh compared to plex. if I recall correctly the best app was Infuse and it was a monthly sub. Are there better options these days? I mostly watch plex on my TV through Android or Apple TV.

[–] candyman337@lemmy.world 8 points 18 hours ago

Jellyfin is a lot better than it used to be, to get feature parity with Plex you will probably need to install some plugins but I literally searched "best Jellyfin plugins reddit" and the list in the first thread I found was all I needed. The webOS, Android, and Roku apps are very good, I'm not sure what the situation is on Apple TV but I think they have an app

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