Honest question, because I know multiple people who are not looking to jump ship since they already have the Plex Pass.
Ease of use for my users across multiple platforms with minimal tech knowledge on their end. I’m sharing my library with ranges from 12yo to 70. I need it to “just work” and it does that perfectly.
Same here. Plex just works for my folks with 0 tech literacy. I may try Jellyfin in the future, but I have a few friends that primarily access Plex via Playstation 4/5, and I know there’s no support there yet.
Yeah, lacking the client is not good. https://features.jellyfin.org/posts/2751/playstation-5-support
Couldn’t upvote this harder. Tried Jellyfin for 5 mins and was super confused why I couldn’t find sharing options. After googling and reading about reverse proxies and buying domains and shit I said fuck it and uninstalled
Yes. Same.
Totally understandable, however basic tailscale version is free and you can just have that installed on all of the connected devices as a “reverse proxy”. You then use the ip adress from the server or main computer with the files and connect to its tailscale provided ip adress after turning it on and as long as you have port 8096 open on the server computer (http:/with your adress here:8096) you can connect to the server through the jellyfin app on the device you’ve installed it on.
Yeah, I think you lost them after the first paragraph. 😉
I am tinkering constantly with my home setup, but I am lacking the time to set up everything to my liking.
So I am using neither Plex or Jellyfin, I am using Kodi and have a Webdav share available for when I am away on holiday. 😬😁
But then I am only sharing with my closest family in my home network. Somehow it seems everyone is providing a streaming service for half the neighborhood and the remote family (or possibly a polycule with the drama associated, IIRC).
This.
Did you try Jellyfin? I’ve had success with Jellyfin once I’ve been the one setting up the TV app, etc. It did just work, because users found it very simple in comparison to Plex. If anything, they like how Plex shows more things beyond the collection.
I’ve been the one setting up the TV app, etc.
That is exactly the issue. I can’t personally set up the app for all my users. Most of them are not in my household.
Me either, but I don’t expect them to setup any sort of app themself (including Plex).
That’s his point though, he does expect them to be able to set up themselves, and apparently Plex is good for that.
Yes, in my case I personally had to setup both clients (Plex and Jellyfin) for the family members myself.
And right back to https://lemmy.cafe/comment/17371392
Ah, the answer to that… I configured the server beforehand and installed it at their house as a gift, so I have persistent SSH access over VPN and can administer it remotely at will within tmux. Has worked for several years.
The extent of the setup for Plex is to log in with your email and password, pick which shared libraries you want to be pinned to your home screen, and then browse. My parents in their 70s were able to figure it out and all I had to do from my end was grant them access to the libraries I wanted to share with a simple check box.
Had to find it, but there is a new tvOS app that looks very nice: Moonfin
Thanks do letting me kno about this. I tried it and it does look good. Sadly for me at least it does perform well. Moves slow between options and libraries. And the Live TV Guide isn’t working at all. That could be a me issue, but the slowness is unacceptable. Once I have more time I will play it more and probably reach out to the Dev.
I use both at home, mostly plex though and I have about a dozen people who watch remotely and keeping the remote access private and secure I’m not putting jellyfin behind a public reverse proxy. Not feasible to setup wire guard for a dozen people across 4 states and troubleshooting those tunnels when Plex does all that for me. Plus Plex allows them to manage and reset their password without my intervention
I’ve never understood this stance. You do you, but if I’m offering to host stuff for friends or family for free, they can at least learn to operate that thing on their end.
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Surely you haven’t exposed your Jellyfin to the open net, since even the devs admit that that is a terrible idea
Got a link for the dev recommendation? I hadn’t heard about that
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Theres a reason everyone uses a VPN to allow remote streaming for their Jellyfin. The things as open as a barns door, so you should not just open it to the public. Like I said, even the devs say not to do that, its just not secure enough
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It seems to depend on how you are granting access and have configured the server… if they have to setup VPN access in order to access Jellyfin, as opposed to logging into plex website.
No, that doesn’t change anything about what I said really.
To me, if I’m hosting something for my friends and family, they can put in the effort to learn how to use it. Period. Whether that’s as simple as logging in through a browser, installing an app, or using a VPN. They can learn, or they can pay for Netflix (as an example, since we’re discussing a media server originally).
In my experience getting dozens of people on to my server, plenty will happily choose to pay for Netflix. I want people to choose my server over paid streaming, so I offer both Plex and Jellyfin, and to date not a single person has stuck with Jellyfin, and several have gotten my invite email, took a look at the FAQ on how to request media, and continued using paid streaming.
Lifetime subscriber when it was like $75 bux
Setup and runs on my NAS (unRAID) Uses a small GPU to transcode as needed Shared only with non technical family members
Has worked as is for YEARS.
So, the question is, am I looking for something to replace a working free (prepaid) solution I have? That answer is nope.
Having non-technical family on board is priceless tbh.
Yeah, my mom uses it. My mom. I have to remove search bars from her chrome like it’s 2005.
This is my POV. It already works perfectly, is prepaid, and is accessible to my nontechnical users. Switching would be a major pain for a worse experience.
Also, Plexamp.
Someday in the future no doubt Plex will enshittify for lifetime users such that it will justify a change, but that hasn’t happened.
+1 to all of this. I paid for it when it was $90 lifetime, before either Jellyfin was popular before I heard of it, who knows. It works fine. No reason to put extra effort into replacing something that I have no problems or qualms with.
The client apps on Apple TV are just not good. I have tried swiftfin which is slow and I find it not very visually appealing. There there is infuse which does look better, but is missing features and requires a subscription for full functionality. If there is a app I’m missing I would be happy to try it.
I keep Jellyfin up to date and check in or it from time to time. Even have watchstate so my watched history stays updated. Hoping one day there will be a good Apple TV app and I could fully switch.
I’m in the same boat. Considering swapping out for a Linux based media box instead of the AppleTV.
Kodi works well as a frontend to Jellyfin and Plex
I hate this answer so much. I get that it works, but it feels like a kludge
Great; how do I load that in my AppleTV?
Same boat on Swiftfin and Infuse.
There’s one I recently found called Moonfin that does many things well. It’s my current go-to until official apps catch up.
I hadn’t heard of Moonfin before, it looks promising as an Apple TV client. Any pitfalls with it?
I use it on my tablet and it direct plays all of my (limited) media, and also handles and organizes downloads to the device with reencoding options. Playback is more reliable and efficient compared to Swiftfin. UI seems modeled after existing streaming services.
They also have a plugin that “updates” your existing Jellyfin install so the features show up on the official client, but uses code injection which I didn’t like and so did not partake. The sense I get is that they push for features and implementation while official Jellyfin development takes a much more conservative approach. I hope they can work together some day.
Absolutely, my other friends are doing the same. They keep their state synced between services and keep checking in on the AppleTV client improvements for Swiftfin.
I use Jellyfin on my phone and just do the screen share to my AppleTV.
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Lifetime Pass holder here. Used to run Jellyfin alongside Plex. Had crashing issues and had to shut Jellyfin down for quite a bit. Came back after a while and started Jellyfin from scratch. None of my users ever chose Jellyfin over Plex.
- The UI is slower (at least on Windows), clunkier, and uglier. Hopefully this gets fixed in the upcoming big update they have planned for the desktop client. Their Roku app is actually on par with Plex’s though.
- The admin dashboard is confusing and in my opinion awful.
- Downloaded content is not viewable within the app on Android. This is the complaint I’ve heard the most from my user who made a significant effort to switch. Ironically, after the New Experience update this became less of an issue since Plex ruined downloads.
- Plexamp’s UI, radios, and sonic similarity feature were, last I checked, unmatched by a long-shot. I use my music library heavily. If I make the switch fully away from Plex, I’ll probably opt for something more specialized like Navidrome.
- Manually setting the edition of a movie is so much easier on Plex, and for someone who likes to have multiple editions, it’s less confusing for the user to see each edition individually labelled in the library than selecting the movie and being expected to know which file name they should pick. Not every file is named to Jellyfin’s standards because that would make them harder to add to my torrent client, and some don’t have their editions in the file name at all and I just have them hand-labelled in Plex based on run time.
- I’m still trying to setup my DVR in Jellyfin and can’t get it to work. Plex works fine, Jellyfin just won’t. It’s a moot point at the moment, but once I do get it to work, unless things have changed over the years, the channel guide is a whole other set of challenges.
I’m willing to deal with this personally simply because Plex creates just as much, if not more of a headache for me as an administrator and the bloat is ridiculous, but not a single one of my users has switched, and I don’t blame them. They don’t have to deal with the administrative difficulties, so there’s no benefit to them except being able to download files to their system instead of just in the app, which none of them care about. If nobody is going to use it, my focus ends up being on Plex anyway. I have been pushing Jellyfin for a year and a half. None of my friends or family want to use it unless Plex borks something, and even then they want Plex back.
Jellyfin just isn’t on par with Plex, no matter how much I wish it was. It’s death by a thousand cuts on both the user and administrative ends. It would be one thing if I were a free user or actively paying for Plex, but as a Lifetime Pass holder, I just can’t justify it yet.
For music enthusiasts plexamp is also basically unbeatable. I welcome the day open source catches up.
Nothing in the self hosted space is taken seriously on windows. There’s a reason for that. Jellyfin on Linux is fine. I’m a fucking smooth brain and if I can do it, a crack enhanced autistic monkey can do it.
Plexamp is better. I will give you that. There’s nothing outright bad about jellyfins take on music. Apps like Discrete make it quite nice, but plexamp just satisfies that out-of-box itch.
Their Roku app is actually on par with Plex’s though.
I can’t tell if that’s a complement or a dig 🤣
I meant it as a compliment. Lol. Both of the Roku apps are fairly functional as far as I’ve been able to observe.
As an observer in these comments, this is a great answer. Thanks for typing it out.
It does seem like some “cuts” could be ironed out reasonably quickly, like the file naming issue or UI lag.
It’s a small piece in your observation but I’ve been on the hunt for an android client for jellyfin with downloads that are… usable. Fladder has been so far the only one where this seemed to work okay-ish (it’s still slow, and I noticed it doesn’t detect if the device supports Dolby vision to force transcoding). But still, if your one user is still trying… maybe it helps them a lil.
I’ll take a look at it and let them know. At the moment they’re back on Plex, but if this app works the way they want, they may be open to switching. Thanks!
WhatI’ve noticed is that people who prioritize privacy and just want to watch their downloads on their tv usually use jellyfin and people who prioritize ux slickness and want to run an IPTV service for their friends and family usually use plex.
It’s not a matter of privacy vs UX. I actually think Plex has ruined their UX. But if you have friends and family, some are tech-illiterate, some have their own media servers, and you all want to share with each other quickly and easily, Plex is the only viable option. Same if it’s just you, but you travel a lot, and want to watch something from your home server without lugging around a device that has access to your VPN and a screen/hdmi-out.
Jellyfin is really only viable if it’s just you on your own network.
I’m not switching at this time because I already bought a lifetime pass about 7 years ago. If ANY of my functionality gets changed by Plex then I’ll be switching
They already changed the authentication system a few years ago. Everything goes through their server now. You can’t self-host it.
Running Plex locally is still perfectly viable without going through their servers
Can you explain what you mean by not being able to self-host?
They can’t because they’re just plain wrong. I’ve been self-hosting Plex (lifetime pass) for years so idk what they’re on about
You can, and whitelist your local network so you don’t have to log in.
I don’t know what this means and maybe I’m just not techy enough, but all my shit is on my PC, and if my PC is turned off it doesn’t work. Are you saying it goes through their servers? I’m just curious why it matters.
Problem is access outside your home for family and friends.
There are serious security gaps that make it a non starter to expose to the internet.
I’ve been using Jellyfin ever since they forked out of Emby, and honestly, it’s the biggest complaint that I have. It is incredibly difficult to make it available to friends and family who are on various devices, networks, so on and so forth.
Whereas Plex “just works.”
Agree with most of the other comments here, but number one for me is PlexAmp.
100%, Plexamp is amazing when you really get into it.
Dedicated music on Jellyfin is something I’ve never been able to wrap my head around. Would be curious if others have figured something out that works really well within the same ecosystem.
Navidrome. It’s lightweight and works with any subsonic app.
Finamp exists, and it’s just as good.
I’ve used FinAmp. It’s not “just as good.”
Correct; it’s no where NEAR Plexamp.
100% this. I couldn’t find any other good carplay music player that wasn’t a subscription like Spotify.
I tried Jellyfin once about a year ago and it was… OK I guess? Certainly nowhere near as polished as the rabid fan base would have me believe, and there was something in my library that it flat out refused to play.
If I didn’t already have a lifetime Plex Pass, and it was just me hosting my own media for a user count of one, then sure, I’d use it. But none of those things are true. I need something that “just works” and Plex fits that bill.
Like most people here, I bought a lifetime pass when it was $75 and it’s paid for itself over and over again in the time since. I honestly think I’ve had more than $750 worth of value from my purchase. Sure they’ve made some odd decisions recently, but until they start actively taking away functionality or rescind existing lifetime subs then I will continue to use it.
Meanwhile, not to belittle you personally, but the fact that every thread that mentions Plex in any way, good or bad, is guaranteed to be dominated by people circle-jerking over their beloved Jellyfin has put me completely off the project, to the point that I’ve had to add the word to my blocklist. Obviously that’s not working too well or I wouldn’t have seen this post!
I absolutely love jellyfin and frequently take advantage of its features. But the client absolutely suck butt. When I can hardly get my mom to remember which app on her TV lets her watch what, I can’t also have her fucking around with play buttons that don’t do what they say, a “continue watching” list that’s often haunted by episodes that have been marked as watched, or inscrutable menu icons mashed into the top-right corner of a media browser.
And don’t get me started on getting people logged in on the client.
I’m not using Plex, but I feel like I can answer my complaints about using jellyfin.
My biggest complaint is the lack of clients. It is such a pain in the butt to install jellyFin on all of my products.
My second complaint is the security design. They’ve had open issues about unauthenticated endpoints for three or four years now. And whenever the issue gets so old that it starts to look bad, they refactor the issue into a newer issue abd bury it in the sand.
For a while this was done under the guise of maintaining legacy client support, but just recently it looks like they’re starting to focus on more security, and I’ve noticed some of those security holes are being closed finally, but it’s a major concern for me that they’ve been open for as long as they have.
My second complaint is the security design. They’ve had open issues about unauthenticated endpoints for three or four years now. And whenever the issue gets so old that it starts to look bad, they refactor the issue into a newer issue abd bury it in the sand.
You mean that one issue that is still open and linked in the “security and quality” tab on github?
i feel like one issue is a bit of a downplay here, considering that it’s 12 different issues being shown as one mega issue. but yes that has most of them
But that’s also the most recent version of it. Some of those issues that they have listed there has had previous issues that were closed to be consolidated into that mega issue, which then was closed to be split into their own issues again.
i feel like one issue is a bit of a downplay here,
But how does it matter if the issue is closed or open? It is linked and stated early and tracked.
That issues get merged and closed is quite normal when there arw duplicates.
Also, i think the oppoaite. The issues get ‘upplayed’. Which one of these are you actually worried about? And how does they affrct you?
I don’t think downplaying them is the way to go though, Some of these issues have been in existence since 2019.
Like I mentioned though, it does seem like its starting to be worked on, a few of them are in progress the one I really don’t like is #13991 which is a combination of:
- #13982 which allows for an alternative user to be able to interact with the client readonly as if they are another user as long as they have the user id and any valid auth token (which includes that current users auth token). original issue: #5210 2/10/2021; status: partially mitigated 5/11/24 with v10.9 which locked modifying data behind elevation but getting the data still is able to be done in select endpoints still
- and #13990 Which gives any user with standard login access(like say the common family tv’s account) the ability to access the getUser endpoint and retrieve said previous user id. In progress since 12/2/25 reported via the megathread creation 3/8/2021
For example I just made a user with no access period to any collection, just a login access and took the auth token for the user. I was able to grab every user on the servers ID including hidden and administrative users as well as users who don’t use jellyfin’s auth system, then couple that to see what the users login method was, when their last access was, what folders they were allowed to use[note these are represented as id’s the client can’t actually parse them so you need to traverse the api for it], how many max sessions they could have, etc. without actually having access or logging in as that user or even being an administrator. If you snag an admins userid it even gives you internal server data such as logging paths that the server uses on the dashboard, the transcode path, the metadata path, what networking settings the server is using such as trusted ip nets the port jellyfin is using by default your certificate file and password if configured[although password may be ommited/the field left blank i didn’t test internal certs]. From there you can even recurse through the folder UUID’s provided via “enabledfolders” and the other folder restrictions on the users endpoint and get the name of the folders which could leak personal information about the library or the user because the 403 request it returns leaks the name of the library as part of the error message. “username is not allowed to access Library name”
Thankfully it’s finally being worked on but, I do think it’s worth stating the timeframe on them and that those issues do still exist.
Just like I think it’s worth stating that media endpoints are still fully unauthenticated as well, so as long as you can guess the full file path, you can md5 it and get unauthenticated media paths, but that’s in progress as well, its just super slow because that breaks third party clients.
Doesn’t it affect all of us in that we cannot safely run it exposed to the internet? I mean I still yolo it and run my jellyfin completely exposed because there’s no way I’m guiding anyone through setting up wire guard or configuring clients to do additional auth, but still. I would love to not worry about that.
The question is, are the vulnerabilities actually a risk for your setup?
Should they be fixed? Absolutely.
But do they affect you? For me its basically a no.
A vulnability can be a nothing burger or critical issue that needa to be fixed. But it depends.
If it’s a nothing burger then they should come out and say it’s fine to run your instance publicly then
No, it is impossible to certify security, it’s only possible to certify insecurity.
They could only say something like “it’s designed to run exposed” or something like it.
You can pay for the audit if you like and still there would be no certainty.
I assume, before they say something like that they want a completely new API. But this would break every single client.
I got a lifetime pass for cheap ages ago and while the company isn’t doing so well, Plex itself isn’t getting any worse. Its just not getting better.
As long as that continues, then I’m fine with staying. I only really use it for Plexamp anyway.
oh I forgot about Plexamp. Its been my main music app since it also does Android auto.
It just works so well and nothing else comes close so far.
I got started with jellyfin and never used Plex but there’s a bunch of rough edges:
- No apps on several smart tv/streaming stick stores, Vizio has an app for plex but not jellyfin so I would need to buy a new streaming device. Yes smart tvs spy on you but the alternatives people recommend either spy on you just as much or are expensive (Nvidia shield) and most of them still require side loading so it’s a major obstacle for sharing with anyone else.
- Casting from the mobile app won’t play at full resolution, you can get around this by using VLC as your player and casting from that but that causes it to frequently lose watch progress. Also stopping casting or playing the next episode doesn’t work properly with VLC and you need to rapidly mash “back” to get into the jellyfin app again and queue up a new episode.
- The current release of Jellyfin desktop won’t play audio for iptv streams, this is fixed in the dev branch but I have yet to find a build without other critical bugs so I’ll likely need to wait for the next release which currently has no target date.
- The browser version has spotty controller support that stops working constantly. When it does work it lacks any way to access context menus to mark shows as watched etc. If you’re using a flatpak browser to run it on steam deck or whatever, you’ll have codec and passthrough issues (Chrome is the only flatpak with decent codec support).
- Others have mentioned the security issues which you can bypass by putting authentik or something in front of it but then you can only share with people using browser.
What about exposing through Pangolin tunnel, Cloudflare Tunnel, Tailscale Funnel approach? Would that allow proper client access?
Same problem regarding security because if you leave it up to jellyfin to do auth you are betting on the wrong horse. With pangolin auth in front of it you have the same problem as before. Clients can’t handle the additional auth.
Or am I misunderstanding the concept of tunnels wrong? I am using pangolin as a reverse proxy with nice VPN management included. How do you the tail scale style “connect this client to this network that has the jellyfin server on it” thingy?
You have a VPS that relays the pangolin tunnel and a reverse proxy serving the tunnel through a cloudfare + fail2ban protected domain. It should be really cheap since the vps only really runs for the initial auth and connection, and once in a while to update the tunnel IPs. You just give people a domain and a credential for the client.
It sounds complicated but isn’t really. I did it once but then returned to plain tailscale since I don’t really share my server with many people.
I’m still not seeing how this solves the issue. You either use Cloudflare or your reverse proxy as the auth, which is secure but then people can only use your Jellyfin server through a web browser, or you publish actual Jellyfin and use its auth, but now you rely on its poor security.
Are you saying you integrate fail to ban with Jellyfin’s auth? If so that’s alright, but won’t stop anyone from using an exploit, just brute force attacks. I’m still also not sure why the VPS is required at all.
Cloudflare doesn’t allow streaming large quantities of data through their tunnels. At least it’s against their ToS.
When setup with tunnels, cloudflare doesn’t see any media traffic. Cloudflare only needs to serve the auth and handshakes. The actual traffic is IP to IP, TLS encrypted if you setup a domain correctly. Or just use something like tailscale that sets up the certificates and domains for you.
Lifetime pass, it still works well so why would I switch?
I tried Jellyfin probably 2 years ago and it was fine but Plex is just “plug n play” in regard to my family setting it up themselves with little help from me.
Plexamp is the only way I stream music too so that’s a big reason why I won’t move yet.
Navidrome plus Arpeggi, Narjo or Symphonium are pretty much equivalent
“Pretty much” doing a lot of heavy lifting in that sentence.
That’s a lot of apps to replace the functionality of one. Pass.
