I’ve feel like I’ve used Plex forever. I also feel like every couple years I try Jellyfin to see how it’s going. Recently I tried it again because of Plex restriction on more than one user.
Well, I just tried it again and it’s substantially improved! This time it actually properly detected most of my library!
Also the Android TV app is AWESOME! No more glitches, lagging, and freezing trying to play my stuff like Plex did. It is butter smooth.
Wow! I’m impressed and I just deleted Plex. Good riddance.
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I tried to setup Plex and it was just about the most god-awful experience I’ve ever had. It was unnecessarily complex to accommodate their cloud infrastructure setup.
Installing Jellyfin took like… 2 minutes and I’ve had no issues since.
Only thing I don’t like about Jellyfin is the metadata engine, which I have disabled and just use TinyMediaManager and save everything to .nfo which is picked up by Jellyfin immediately. Works great.
Hm. I gave Jellyfin a try and the UX was a turnoff, so I ended up in Plex. The separate management of metadata does sound like a pain to me, too, but maybe there’s a bit of sunk cost fallacy to that.
Either way it seems people are mostly fine with their choices and there is a viable free alternative, so… all good there.
You can change the UI design to whatever you want with a custom CSS. Can make your own or there’s a plethora of themes on GitHub. I remember trying one that replicated the Netflix app, and don’t hold me to it but I think I saw a Plex one as well.
Also, regarding the metadata, there are options that auto populate it for you. Idk how it does it, but my haphazard library of torrents all had accurate metadata AND it downloaded the subtitle files as well.
Not the UI, the UX. The UI may be editable, but if I have to make my own UI to be happy with what it looks like or works like, then that’s bad UX.
I get that sometimes those terms are used interchangeably, but they’re not the same.
Sorry, I misread. What is bad about the UX exactly? You don’t need to customize anything if you don’t want to; “it just works”. And I dont follow you on how having the option to customize things makes it a bad user experience. You’re assuming the native UI is bad for some reason.
I’ve used Plex a lot too back in the day but there’s nothing it provides that Jellyfin doesn’t do out of the box + self-hosted + for free.
I barely even remember what the specific dealbreaker was, honestly. I was just dabbling, considering expanding my NAS and maybe getting the gear to dump my 4K BluRays. I gave Jellyfin a try first, I went through the setup process and I remember it being a) confusing to set up directly on my NAS, and b) very ugly.
I gave Plex a try to cover my bases and that looked better and got me up and running faster, so I just stuck with it. Easier remote access was a feature for me there, too, but the choice was made purely on the onboarding process, there was nothing activist to it. It’s maybe the most user-level, unresearched decision I’ve taken on software in a while, honestly. I was already trying to figuring out the ripping and encoding at the same time, so I didn’t want to put any additional attention on library management.
If anything I gave Jellyfin a bit more of a chance than I otherwise would have because I had heard a lot of angry chatter from people about Plex. I guess I came in after they made the changes that pissed people off and didn’t mind the state of the current product without a frame of reference. I would have bailed if there was a subscription, but they do have a one-and-done purchase, so now I’m set up, it’s working and I’ve paid them as much as I’m going to, so I’m fine with it. I do appreciate a free alternative existing, though.
I don’t know if it’s bad UX or UI, but I do agree there’s something really disturbing with jellyfin’s options and tweaks… More than once I lost my way and had to click on every option button again to find a specific thing to disable/enable something?
Now It’s easier after I have passed some time in the options/user menu, but some tweaks and options are not very intuitive.
Other than that, Jellyfin is awesome and I can’t believe something as good as Jellyfin is free and open source. Thanks to all devloppers behind this, I hope they will stay true to open source and jellyfin will last forever !! But I doubt it.
I tried Jellyfin out on my most recent build - don’t think it’s quite as good as Plex so far. Still using it though - I think either is perfectly fine for a simple home media server.
The separate management of metadata does sound like a pain to me
It’s really not, but I guess it depends on how you do it. You can even automate it.
Has Jellyfin improved its subtitle fetching?It’s been awhile since using Jellyfin. I stayed with Plex because downloading subtitles on the fly wasn’t available in Jellyfin, and no extensions for it either.
I guess it depends on when you last used it. I opt for the CLI approach, but Jellyfin can install a plugin which allows (on library scan) to extract internal subtitles, which fixes 90% of issues with subtitle display for devices like Chromecasts.
Jellyfin also integrates with OpenSubstiles: https://i.xno.dev/gVee6.png
Jellyfin is still not up to snuff with where Plex was pre-enshittification, but Plex is enshittified. For everyone in between, there’s Emby, which I have been very happy with.
I’d have to agree with this, there was a time where Plex was amazing. after like the 3rd time I was forced stop it from hiding my library and them pushing services in my face I made the switch to Jellyfin. It’s been long enough now that I don’t recall the features I miss, and overall Jellyfin is fine, and seems to get better pretty consistently.
after like the 3rd time I was forced stop it from hiding my library and them pushing services in my face
Seeing shit like this makes me wonder what different Plex I’m using from everyone else. Pinned my local library at the top 4 years ago and now every device shows that tab first when logging in and hasn’t ever behaved differently except when the home server is down (it’ll still go to the tab but read OFFLINE)
You people do realize that you can use the Plex server without using the Plex apps right? I pretty much exclusively use Infuse to interface with my Plex server and have none of the issues I see mentioned here.
I mean you very much still have the privacy issues and online requirements. And if you’re not even using the plex web client or any of the apps, all Infuse is using plex for is the metadata, at which point you might as well just use the Jellyfin back end.
After having been shafted by sublime text I will never believe anything called a “lifetime subscription” is such.
A “lifetime subscription” is just a “until we decide otherwise” subscription
I don’t mean to be glib or upset you, but you still have lifetime access to the versions of Sublime Text for which you paid; you just don’t get free updates to the next version. AFAIK, that’s been the way they’ve done things for years.
Before the one license=one version switch in 2013 the license stated “and future updates” which they did, but they switched to needing to pay for new licenses for some reason. I remember that being the primary reason I switched to emacs.
After having been shafted by sublime text I will never believe anything called a “lifetime subscription” is such.
Care to elaborate?
AFAIR SublimeText licenses are always only for a specific major version. And they sometimes might work for the next major version. So, I guess you’ve just installed a newer version for which your lifetime license isn’t valid anymore.
Before sublime text 3 all updates were included in the single license, not just major revision updates. This was back in 2013.
Hmm… I remember buying the license for ST2 back in the days and it specifically saying it’s for ST2.x only. However, it also worked for early ST3 versions but stopped working at some point. Which was when I’ve switched to something else.
It was over eleven years ago at this point so my memory may be hazy on the details but I remember something happening in the major version change that pissed me off enough to switch off of it. 🤔
I’ve been using it for 8 years and haven’t paid, is there any benefit for paying?
I tried Jellyfin two years ago and was so fed up troubleshooting the installation that I swore it off. Tried it again a few months ago and it worked flawlessly! Now I host movies, shows, music, ebooks, and audiobooks for a handful of friends and family. My jellyfin instance is probably siphoning $120/month from Netflix’s subscription revenue lol
How well do ebooks & audiobooks work on jellyfin? I’m an emby user, and while I love it a lot, it’s not great for audiobooks & there’s functionally no ebook support… you can see ebooks in their library but not even open them.
I have audiobookshelf too which handles both, but I’m also always looking for ways to cut down on excess stuff to have to worry about or maintain
Audiobookshelf is absolutely awesome for audiobooks. Tho it’s possible, Jellyfin isn’t really very audiobook friendly imo. Just run both.
Jellyfin is awesome.
I’ve been using Kodi with Jellyfin for around 10 years now. I tried Plex now and then because everyone uses it but I could never get behind why everyone is using it. It has always been worse in every aspect for me.
Wife approval factor
My wife won’t use it if she can’t see an app for it to click on to start using immediately. Going through browsers is not an option. Not having a dedicated app on the LG TV is not an option. Not being able to find something instantly means instant rejection. She refused Plex, but now sometimes uses it and has learnt to find subtitles, etc by herself.
I don’t touch my self hosted apps. If something doesn’t behave properly on the first attempt then it gets rejected from our household. It’s only for us enthusiast nerds to put up with kanky UI and setup issues for the sake of superior functionality. Normie’s won’t tolerate it.
My wife uses the Kodi app on Android TV just fine.
Not having a dedicated app on the LG TV is not an option.
When was the last time you checked? Jellyfin has had an app on LG’s webOS store for a couple of years now, although older TVs didn’t get it until a few months later. I’d given up on it and bought a lifetime Emby Premiere licence by the time by TV was finally supported.
Jellyfin is only 6 years old
I started with Kodi and added Jellyfin later
A big one for me was user management. I don’t have to concern myself with that. So it helps. They also have apps for most things, I can just say go get Plex instead of what device are you using? Get x app. Here is the server information you’ll need to put in.
I didn’t have to put a lot of effort into managing the people using it.
We have different requirements apparently. I don’t need user management and we only watch on our TV (plus myself using Jellyfin as backend for Symfonium).
Yeah, I’m really glad I found out about Jellyfin. I switched to Jellyfin because Plex doesn’t let you disable Passout Protection (automatically stopping playback after something like 3hrs) without Plex Pass. I was just about to fork over $95 for a lifetime license when I looked into Jellyfin and discovered continuous playback was the default. I switched that very day and never looked back.
I’ve been using both for ages.
For remote access to friends plex is easier and cleaner.
For offline viewing in Android plex is cleaner
I’m running tailscale with jellyfin for personal use and it’s wonderful, But I wouldn’t ask my relatives to do that and I don’t trust to surface the port. Plex has a dedicated security team and 2FA.
The Roku client for jellyfin is also a futureless husk of a client.
I have lifetime Plex so I’m in no hurry to do a full conversion. I would love to drop plex all together though
The Roku client for jellyfin is also a futureless husk of a client.
How so? What do you see as missing?
Should be able to * on a “watching” item and remove from from front page watching, you have to go all the way to it’s location in the share, find the move/episode and unset it from the sub,submenu. Should be able to see the file names and location of the items on the front page through submenus. None of the items on the front page can have their options viewed, they all just play on click.
I miss plex opensubtitles integration
Unable to unset watched/watching from any grid, it’s one item at a time.
Lack of Playlists.
No listing anywhere for filename or bitrate. Would love to see deeper info about the codec for a file hidden away on a submenu.
(which complicates:) If you have two copies of the same thing with different versions, you can’t tell which is which. (which complicates:) If you have a bad meta match on something, it’s REALLY hard to even tell what it really is. I really miss Plex: Play Version.
Usecase, I have futurama in both widebox and 4:3, they all just show up twice. In plex they all show up once with a 2 in the corner letting you know there are multiple versions. you can then context->playversion->4.3mbps
No folder view for unmatched content. When I was putting 1963 Doctor Who up, I could hardly tell what was what without having the meta 100% sorted. In Plex I could just hit folder view and navigate.
🤘 Right on! Thanks for posting these.
Several of these have never been brought up to the devs, so this is the first time seeing anyone ask for them.
Neat, I just figured Roku clients were just going to get just enough attention to work.
I run everything parallel and have the same shares. Unless I set up the video, the wife and kids always go back to Plex.
I get it, But at the same time, Samsung is trying to sell what I’m watching, plex is trying to sell what I’m watching, roku is trying to sell what I’m watching. I just want to watch some damn videos without being someone else’s payday.
I just want to watch some damn videos without being someone else’s payday.
Amen!
Neat, I just figured Roku clients were just going to get just enough attention to work.
Nope. We have a team dedicated to working on the Roku client. They’re constantly working on not only bug fixes, but also improvements and new functionality.
It is……if you use a computer. Their AppleTV app still looks like some random coder’s pet project with random playback issues.
The app on my LG TV is acceptable, but does have random problems, like it can’t connect over TLS, and it’s kinda slow to navigate. But it works, and my kids know how to work it.
I also use it on an LG TV and sometimes it can’t run at its normal framerate with subtitles on. I haven’t figured out why yet, but it might be embedded files like someone else says in this thread. Other than that it works like a charm.
Yeah, I did have a to transcode a bluray rip, but I think that might be a network limitation rather than a processing one. 1080p transcode worked fine, so it’s not resolution.
One of these days I’ll DIY a HTPC, but for now, the Jellyfin app works acceptably well.
Huh, it works great on my android os Nvidia shield
The TV/mobile apps vary wildly in their capabilities and performance. Swiftfin is better for iOS devices, but not sure about AppleTV. That’s my main gripe with Jellyfin overall.
I mean, just like everything else there’s an optimal setup. I have a NAS with an extensive media library and running Jellyfin on it was a terrible experience. The NAS simply isn’t powerful enough to make Jellyfin usable.
I fixed that issue by running the server on my PC, and the libraries point to my NAS library locations. It’s the perfect setup. I get access to my GPU for HD video transcoding, and an overpowered CPU with the advantage of not having to worry about storage.
I feel like it’s the perfect setup for me.
It’s not a transcoding power issue. It’s a UI consistency and usability issue. With every device having a slightly different UI, with some apps having issues if playing back natively and some needing transcoding, the experience is inconsistent and frankly doesn’t pass the “wife acceptance factor” test, or the “let your friends use it without needing to handhold them through regular troubleshooting for their particular device” test.
I still don’t use Plex and exclusively use Jellyfin, but it’s still a hard sell to non technical users. Plex has much more polish.
With every device having a slightly different UI, with some apps having issues if playing back natively and some needing transcoding, the experience is inconsistent and frankly doesn’t pass the “wife acceptance factor” test, or the “let your friends use it without needing to handhold them through regular troubleshooting for their particular device” test.
This is a configuration issue, then. Because I have no idea what you’re talking about. The UI is exactly the same across devices, and profiles (which can be cloned) once setup, don’t require any user intervention to do transcoding. You literally click a video and it works…
Not sure what you’re doing over there, but you’re making it harder than it has to be.
Different devices. iOS, android, AppleTV. Most of it is likely Apple’s fault for the limited options in the ecosystem tho.
There are definitely UI inconsistencies across devices, especially smart TVs. Jellyfin on Firestick looks different from Jellyfin on Roku which looks different from Jellyfin on WebOS. Some devices deliver Jellyfin through a thin browser client, and in those cases you get access to a unified design. Outside of that it’s a crapshoot as what the app will let you do. Of course, it’s a volunteer project (and all my thanks to any maniac willing to develop TV apps), so I don’t expect that everything can be easily and neatly unified.
I can’t deny that it’s sometimes hard to support my users because of this. Someone complains that they’re getting movies dubbed in an unwanted language: I can’t guarantee that the button to select audio track will look the same on their end when I talk them through it.
Has been for a long while. Also there are tons of unofficial apps as well.
Yeah! It’s been great for me. No detection issues or weird bugs. The mobile and TV apps are also great!
I used Plex for a long time and was very tempted by their lifetime plan. I tried Jellyfin but at the time it just wasn’t a patch on Plex. I continued with Plex but always had that itch to get away from closed source. I eventually tried Jellyfin again and whilst it’s definitely not as feature rich as Plex, it does what I need from it which is a central store of media that any TV in my house can use. I’ve even given a few friends a login so they can watch content.
I do love that it’s completely self hosted. I run it behind Caddy so it has a Let’s Encrypt certificate. All run in a Docker container with the media from an NFS share from a Pi4 with an external HDD.
That said, I still have Plex running as I have one Samsung TV and there’s no official Jellyfin client for it. Yes there’s some long winded developer way to get one on but I just can’t be bothered.
Plex is unbelievably slow to start and navigate through my huge library on my TV. Jellyfin flies.
The search is also much better on Jellyfin on my TV, because I can use the system keyboard which supports voice to text via the remote. Plex on the other hand has no debouncing, so pressing each key just makes a new search and it’s slow as sh—.
I also had it outperform Plex when Plex couldn’t play an audio language track where Jellyfin could.
However, it doesn’t seem like Jellyfin is as good at figuring out duplicates/versions of the same media? It shows up as two identical posters of the same thing without any discernible info until you step into the media page of the thing (movie/episode).
All in all, a very good complement to, if not replacement for, Plex. 8/10. I’m proud of them!
Not having to pay for hardware transcoding/tonemapping is the biggest „selling“point for Jellyfin. I used to have plex before. It worked well but I didn’t want to pay 100€ for transcoding. Never tried emby for the very same reason.
Maybe I need it give it another chance, but 3 months ago it was still hot garbage compared to plex
I’ve noticed it definitely varies depending on how you access it. The web version is flawless as long as the software has the resources it needs to run (my server is slightly very over-provisioned and gets crazy IO delay pretty frequently from running too much on too little).
The official Android and IOS apps are pretty good but do glitch and hitch from time to time, but apps on other platforms are less perfect. Also the third party Streamyfin and Swiftfin apps both seem to work a bit better than the official one but have their own quirks to be aware of.
The Roku app only just got consistently usable around 3-6 months ago, and still prefers to crash without displaying an error when fed media it can’t direct play, and for some reason some user profiles just don’t work on it. I don’t have anything else to try other apps on but that’s my experience so far
I haven’t really used Plex so I don’t know how clean of an experience it provides, but Jellyfin is very usable and honestly at this point most of the problems I have are specific to my media or my setup and not so much problems with the software itself
Yes, if I was using it only for myself I could make Jellyfin work for me, but since I share my Plex server with about 50 family members and friends I still have to stick with Plex. It just has an app for pretty much every device that exists, which isn’t the case for Jellyfin. The clients are also much more user friendly so I don’t have to play tech support all the time because people can’t get the Jellyfin app working on their shitty 10 year old Samsung smart TV.
