this post was submitted on 20 Mar 2025
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Given the recent news about Plex soon charging for remote access, I wanted to finish up my switch to Jellyfin.

What tools/methods have you all used to migrate watch history to Jellyfin?

I have a few family members in there, and would like to get everything switched over without resetting their watch history.

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[–] HappyTimeHarry@lemm.ee 98 points 4 days ago (5 children)

All the folks saying "just buy the lifetime pass" gonna be in for a big disappointment in about 5 years

[–] Eldritch@lemmy.world 27 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Yep. Enshitification behavior doesn't cease once you're technically a paying customer. If they hadn't made a habit of enshitification. Clawing features away to put behind a paywall I'd give them some support. But I prefer foss anyhow. And for myself, I'm not missing anything.

[–] Obelix@feddit.org 9 points 3 days ago

And those lifetime subscriptions are also a trap. They know that you have the money and are willing to pay and that you're using their service. Do you really think that some business suit will be satisfied by your onetime payment back in 2022?

[–] okamiueru@lemmy.world 16 points 3 days ago

I got the lifetime pass 5 years ago. I've switched to JF because of the disappointment so far about a year ago.

JF is exactly what I wanted and needed plex to be, and everything added since is a worsened product. The lifetime pass was an attempt at getting the peace of mind of "then you just have it". If anything, only FOSS can give that.

[–] droolio@feddit.uk 7 points 4 days ago

Won't take that long before the enshittification is complete.

[–] WordBox@lemmy.world 2 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (4 children)

If we got 5yr it's more than paid for itself. Even FOSS needs support - stop whining and support good things.

[–] HappyTimeHarry@lemm.ee 11 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (3 children)

PLEX is not FOSS, plex is a proprietary fork of XBMC.

My point is that in 5 years a lot of these plex users will wish they made the switch to jellyfin sooner.

[–] teawrecks@sopuli.xyz 8 points 3 days ago (5 children)

Or Plex currently does everything they need it to, and $120 for 5+ years of keeping that going without any interruption of service is very reasonable. In the meantime, jellyfin will only get better and there might even be other options available by then.

Stop trying to make the issue black and white, one-size-fits-all. There are perfectly legitimate reasons for people to use both Plex and Jellyfin.

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[–] EncryptKeeper@lemmy.world 11 points 4 days ago (3 children)

Thing is, Plex turns out to be less and less of a good thing with each passing day. Bloat, spying, removal of features, price hikes etc.

If you want to pay for software that is good, there’s always Emby.

[–] WordBox@lemmy.world 5 points 3 days ago (5 children)

Already paid for Plex and it works. Im not in favor of every change they've made, but it's still damn solid and takes money to run.

The point being these whiners aren't going to run off and support FOSS/alternatives... Just leech.

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[–] Diplomjodler3@lemmy.world 7 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Yes, do donate to FOSS projects. At least that money will go to people who do the actual work and not to pad corporate profits.

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[–] MadBigote@lemmy.world 7 points 4 days ago

I don't get the people down voting you... It's not like services are free. I've been paying for Plex since 2019, and I just recently got a lifetime pass. It's only fare to pay for it to use it ...

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[–] BakedCatboy@lemmy.ml 40 points 4 days ago (3 children)

I think this is the tool you are looking for: https://github.com/luigi311/JellyPlex-Watched

I haven't used it myself but I plan on it eventually when I do make the switch.

[–] jaykob@feddit.org 3 points 4 days ago

I recently made the switch, worked pretty well :)

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[–] tron@midwest.social 32 points 4 days ago (3 children)

I think you're looking for https://github.com/arabcoders/watchstate Watchstate will pull from Plex and migrate it into a Jellyfin instance. Emby is also supported. Works with multiple users as well, just do yourself a favor and make sure all usernames match up!!!

[–] roofuskit@lemmy.world 3 points 4 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

I just used this to migrate from Emby to Jellyfin, works really well. I already have trakt setup on my main account but for my kid nothing goes out to the cloud so their account was all done with watchstate. It was also handy to keep Emby and Jellyfin in sync during the transition.

Thanks this looks great!

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[–] kitnaht@lemmy.world 19 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

I sync my watch history with trakt.tv -- I believe there are plugins for both Plex and Jellyfin which can transfer those watch histories via that service. I don't know of any other way.

[–] WilhelmStroker@lemmy.world 6 points 4 days ago

Yeah this is what I did when I spun up a Jellyfin instance to play around with. For plex I used PlexTraktSync and the jellyfin trakt plugin to sync from trakt to jellyfin.

[–] Ulrich@feddit.org 9 points 4 days ago (1 children)

If someone wants my Lifetime Plex account they can have it.

[–] Celestus@lemm.ee 6 points 4 days ago (1 children)

I’ll take it if you haven’t already given it away. This Plex change is not great for me, since I’m using remote access. I’ve got a Jellyfin server too, but I’m finding it less convenient for me, mostly for various nitpick reasons

[–] chonkyninja@lemmy.world 3 points 3 days ago (1 children)

You get it? I have one too, never going to use it again.

[–] Celestus@lemm.ee 2 points 3 days ago
[–] darvocet@infosec.pub 3 points 4 days ago (1 children)

oh no, this is the first im hearing about this.

[–] Unmapped@lemmy.ml 8 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

If you have Plex pass you dont have to worry about it. Others can still remote play from your server free. Actually more so because the mobile app is free for them too now.

[–] Cerothen@lemmy.ca 15 points 4 days ago (11 children)

But if you don't already have lifetime and are paying monthly or annually then that price is also almost doubling

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[–] fmstrat@lemmy.nowsci.com 2 points 18 hours ago* (last edited 18 hours ago) (1 children)

I used this: https://github.com/arabcoders/watchstate

It works, really, really well. You just connect it to the servers, and it syncs them by user. You can even let it run regularly while you are in your transition phase as a docker container right next to Plex and Jellyfin.

Mine's even a bit more advanced, as I used samba-domain to set up an LDAP active directory for my fam, then the above to sync the Plex users to those users in Jellyfin, and it still worked great.

Edit: The WebUI is also pretty intuitive, but I did have to run it twice for my user the first time for it to get 100% in sync. Everything was fine after that.

@BakedCatboy@lemmy.ml

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