{"slug": "jellyfin", "name": "Jellyfin", "category": "selfhosted", "category_name": "Self-hosted and home server", "description": "Free, open-source media server for organizing and streaming your own movies, TV, and music.", "recommenders": 48, "commenters": 106, "warners": 5, "score": 53.146, "rising": 12.16, "first": "2025-11-10", "latest": "2026-10-27", "why": "Liked as an open-source replacement for Plex that reliably streams a home library to family and friends; the most common complaint is rough client apps, from clunky seeking to a less polished feel than Plex, with some also fighting library indexing and metadata problems.", "why_is_quote": false, "has_verdict": true, "sentiment": {"recommend": 48, "neutral": 53, "compare": 4, "warn": 4}, "spark": [1, 1, 3, 0, 2, 0, 4, 2, 14, 2, 10, 9], "listed": true, "loved": ["Plex alternative", "Daily reliability"], "caveat": "Client UX", "short_quote": "Jellyfin has been great for sharing with friends, and having them share with me.", "icon": true, "domain": "jellyfin.org", "github_repo": null, "official_url": "https://jellyfin.org/", "pricing": "open source", "aliases": ["Jellyfin"], "verdict": [{"text": "Liked as an open-source replacement for Plex", "cites": [{"id": 803031216, "item_id": 50189451, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50189451", "by": "tstrimple", "date": "2026-10-22", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I've since switched to Jellyfin.", "excerpt": "More than likely Plex realizes where their money comes from. It's not streamlining personal video content playback. That's how they built their reputation, but they make their money on integration deals and filling your home screen with other people's content. I paid for Plex Pass and they still feel entitled to put advertisements in front of my local media content. I've since switched to Jellyfin.", "context": "former Plex Pass user", "use_case": "media server", "switched_from": "Plex", "story": "Plex laid off the whole player team"}, {"id": 742702688, "item_id": 46418918, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46418918", "by": "ku1ik", "date": "2025-12-29", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "switched to Jellyfin and couldn\u2019t be happier!", "excerpt": "There\u2019s always risk of a rug pull or going the wrong direction with \u201copen-source\u201d software developed by a for-profit company (Plex, MinIO, Mattermost in this example). When choosing software that I run in my \u201chomelab\u201d I lean towards community developed projects first. They may not always have as high quality as the ones offered by commercial entities but they\u2019re just safer for the long term and have no artificial lim", "context": "homelab user", "use_case": "media server", "switched_from": "Plex", "story": "Self-hosting is being enshittified"}, {"id": 771106273, "item_id": 48194142, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48194142", "by": "stavros", "date": "2026-05-19", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I switched to Jellyfin and haven't looked back.", "excerpt": "Plex has slowly been going down the drain. I could be convinced to buy a lifetime pass for $90 (even if it's just for paying to watch my own content), but $750 is strictly \"get outta here\" territory. With how it's been stagnating recently, even the current prices are a hard sell for me, especially given how \"lifetime\" with tech companies tends to mean \"~five years\". I switched to Jellyfin and haven't looked back.", "context": "", "use_case": "media server", "switched_from": "Plex", "story": "New Lifetime Plex Pass Pricing"}, {"id": 803021872, "item_id": 50188867, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50188867", "by": "rumblefrog", "date": "2026-10-21", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "With open source, I can at least fork/pin it from some version and merge things from upstream that I want, which is the reason why I was looking at Jellyfin.", "excerpt": "For me personally it's open source I was looking for. But I totally understand if it's not aligned with the business value. It helps me guard against things like \"Hey, this company decided to remove this feature that I use a lot (cough cough, watch together on Plex), or put something behind a paid wall where it was previously free\". With open source, I can at least fork/pin it from some version and merge things from ", "context": "", "use_case": "media server", "switched_from": "", "story": "Plex vulnerabilities being exploited in the wild to drop a cryptominer"}]}, {"text": " that reliably streams a home library to family and friends", "cites": [{"id": 797325840, "item_id": 49832865, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49832865", "by": "dbg31415", "date": "2026-09-24", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Jellyfin has been great for sharing with friends, and having them share with me.", "excerpt": "I switched from Plex a year or so ago. Jellyfin has been great for sharing with friends, and having them share with me. * The Free Software Media System | Jellyfin // https://jellyfin.org/", "context": "", "use_case": "media server sharing", "switched_from": "Plex", "story": "Disney+ and Hulu raise prices by up to 13 percent after doubling profits"}, {"id": 783870000, "item_id": 48991875, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48991875", "by": "petepete", "date": "2026-07-21", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I've used Jellyfin for years and my experience is currently incredibly smooth and works like a dream for the whole family.", "excerpt": "I've used Jellyfin for years and my experience is currently incredibly smooth and works like a dream for the whole family. I only use it for movies and TV shows though, the live TV experience (with a HDHomeRun) was incredibly buggy and slow, and once you've tried it and failed, it seems like it's impossible to remove the remnants of it from your interface. The music and audiobook support never felt like it was as pol", "context": "", "use_case": "movies and TV shows", "switched_from": "", "story": "Jellyfin founder Andrew leaves team"}, {"id": 799461376, "item_id": 49966336, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49966336", "by": "stego-tech", "date": "2026-10-05", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "The Jellyfin server hosting media to friends and family on Docker.", "excerpt": "Man, I\u2019ve felt this way for decades now. It\u2019s a constant fight just to accomplish basic utility without divulging everything short of your genetic code to hundreds of \u201cpartners\u201d in the process. It\u2019s at the point that I spend more time trying to get relatives off tech entirely instead of helping them utilize it to improve their lives, for the simple reason tech doesn\u2019t improve life right now, at least not for a lot of", "context": "self-hosts services", "use_case": "hosting media for friends and family", "switched_from": "", "story": "\"I'm Embarrassed on Behalf of the Tech Industry\""}, {"id": 783847072, "item_id": 48990442, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48990442", "by": "amiga386", "date": "2026-07-21", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Jellyfin is a daily driver for me and works amazingly.", "excerpt": "While I'd agree that the 10.11.x releases have terrible performance on some APIs to the extent that I rolled back to 10.10.x and marked it as held, until they release 12.x... Jellyfin is a daily driver for me and works amazingly. I have thousands of films, TV shows, books, music, and it lets me navigate and use them perfectly well. I have a wonderful little Linux media server. What sort of bugs affect you?", "context": "", "use_case": "films, TV, books, music media server", "switched_from": "", "story": "Jellyfin founder Andrew leaves team"}]}, {"text": "; the most common complaint is rough client apps, from clunky seeking to a less polished feel than Plex", "cites": [{"id": 802757969, "item_id": 50172373, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50172373", "by": "arantius", "date": "2026-10-20", "stance": "warn", "quote": "Default Android Jellyfin client seeking is really unpleasant.", "excerpt": "I use wolphin. Biggest thing for me is the seeking. I press < or > and it seeks, now. Default Android Jellyfin client seeking is really unpleasant. Some other smaller niceties, too.", "context": "", "use_case": "media playback", "switched_from": "", "story": "An ad-free Android TV"}, {"id": 802569137, "item_id": 50160571, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50160571", "by": "starky", "date": "2026-10-20", "stance": "warn", "quote": "the horrible way that Jellyfin deals with seeking", "excerpt": "This is pretty much the exact setup I have on my Chromecast minus button mapper since I use a Sofabaton remote for control. I ended up finding Wholpin after getting especially angry one day at the horrible way that Jellyfin deals with seeking the requires manually pressing play to start the video again.", "context": "uses Chromecast with a Sofabaton remote", "use_case": "media playback on Android TV", "switched_from": "", "story": "An ad-free Android TV"}, {"id": 802586768, "item_id": 50161673, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50161673", "by": "triyambakam", "date": "2026-10-20", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I've been using Jellyfin for my family for years.", "excerpt": "I've been using Jellyfin for my family for years. But the number of clients is interesting. The web experience on a desktop/laptop is pretty much the only tolerable experience. And I appreciate that the alternative clients try and address the poor UX of the default but I still find so many of the basic behaviors missing or inconsistent. I can't offer anything better but I find it curious.", "context": "", "use_case": "family media server", "switched_from": "", "story": "An ad-free Android TV"}, {"id": 802985905, "item_id": 50186619, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50186619", "by": "PierceJoy", "date": "2026-10-21", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "The player isn\u2019t quite as polished as plex, but it isn\u2019t as buggy", "excerpt": "The new Apple TV app is terrible. It\u2019s completely redesigned, and visually looks good I suppose, but it\u2019s so buggy and has terrible UX. So terrible, in fact, that after a decade of using plex I finally became a cliche and switched to jellyfin. The player isn\u2019t quite as polished as plex, but it isn\u2019t as buggy, and I\u2019ll probably just take an open source player and have Claude customize it to my liking. Honestly plex de", "context": "decade-long Plex user", "use_case": "media server", "switched_from": "Plex", "story": "Plex laid off the whole player team"}, {"id": 783807520, "item_id": 48987970, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48987970", "by": "muppetman", "date": "2026-07-20", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Again, I love Jellyfin and I use it daily.", "excerpt": "Because Plex worked amazingly ~5-6 years ago, while Jellyfin was still very early stage. It'd sort of work. So there's a lot of \"Well I'm already using Plex\" inertia. Plus Plex has very lovely, polished clients, you can easily invite people, share your library with others etc etc. Once they got all that of course, then the changes/fees/ads/bloat started. Jellyfin is great, it's all I've ever used. But it's still very", "context": "", "use_case": "home media server", "switched_from": "", "story": "Jellyfin founder Andrew leaves team"}]}, {"text": ", with some also fighting library indexing and metadata problems.", "cites": [{"id": 793681632, "item_id": 49605102, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49605102", "by": "VladVladikoff", "date": "2026-09-08", "stance": "warn", "quote": "I switched to jellyfin about 6 months ago and I can say it is definitely worse.", "excerpt": "I switched to jellyfin about 6 months ago and I can say it is definitely worse. I\u2019m constantly fighting to fix thumbnails, fix episodes to be in the same show, force rescans to get it to even recognize a show that already exists. I never had any of these problems with plex. Plex also defaults to transcoding which fixes a lot of gaps with clients that don\u2019t support certain codecs. I\u2019m often running into issues where i", "context": "", "use_case": "media server", "switched_from": "Plex", "story": "Jellyfin 12.0"}, {"id": 783990096, "item_id": 48999381, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48999381", "by": "lthi747", "date": "2026-07-21", "stance": "warn", "quote": "Constantly have issues with playback, files indexing and watch statuses that not marked", "excerpt": "Well, good luck Andrew and Anthony! Jellyfin is great project and good software when is working, unfortunately for me it doesn\u2019t works very well. Constantly have issues with playback, files indexing and watch statuses that not marked, but that are small issues compred to the hell with subtitles. Very often out of sync (if they load) So I switched to nova player and sharing my tv shows and music collection over SMB. I", "context": "", "use_case": "media server", "switched_from": "", "story": "Jellyfin founder Andrew leaves team"}]}], "praise": [{"label": "Plex alternative", "summary": "Many commenters switched from Plex over ads, pricing and hostile changes, and don't regret it.", "quotes": [{"id": 803031216, "item_id": 50189451, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50189451", "by": "tstrimple", "date": "2026-10-22", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I've since switched to Jellyfin.", "excerpt": "More than likely Plex realizes where their money comes from. It's not streamlining personal video content playback. That's how they built their reputation, but they make their money on integration deals and filling your home screen with other people's content. I paid for Plex Pass and they still feel entitled to put advertisements in front of my local media content. I've since switched to Jellyfin.", "context": "former Plex Pass user", "use_case": "media server", "switched_from": "Plex", "story": "Plex laid off the whole player team"}, {"id": 742702688, "item_id": 46418918, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46418918", "by": "ku1ik", "date": "2025-12-29", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "switched to Jellyfin and couldn\u2019t be happier!", "excerpt": "There\u2019s always risk of a rug pull or going the wrong direction with \u201copen-source\u201d software developed by a for-profit company (Plex, MinIO, Mattermost in this example). When choosing software that I run in my \u201chomelab\u201d I lean towards community developed projects first. They may not always have as high quality as the ones offered by commercial entities but they\u2019re just safer for the long term and have no artificial lim", "context": "homelab user", "use_case": "media server", "switched_from": "Plex", "story": "Self-hosting is being enshittified"}, {"id": 771106273, "item_id": 48194142, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48194142", "by": "stavros", "date": "2026-05-19", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I switched to Jellyfin and haven't looked back.", "excerpt": "Plex has slowly been going down the drain. I could be convinced to buy a lifetime pass for $90 (even if it's just for paying to watch my own content), but $750 is strictly \"get outta here\" territory. With how it's been stagnating recently, even the current prices are a hard sell for me, especially given how \"lifetime\" with tech companies tends to mean \"~five years\". I switched to Jellyfin and haven't looked back.", "context": "", "use_case": "media server", "switched_from": "Plex", "story": "New Lifetime Plex Pass Pricing"}]}, {"label": "Daily reliability", "summary": "Long-time users say it runs smoothly every day across large libraries.", "quotes": [{"id": 783870000, "item_id": 48991875, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48991875", "by": "petepete", "date": "2026-07-21", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I've used Jellyfin for years and my experience is currently incredibly smooth and works like a dream for the whole family.", "excerpt": "I've used Jellyfin for years and my experience is currently incredibly smooth and works like a dream for the whole family. I only use it for movies and TV shows though, the live TV experience (with a HDHomeRun) was incredibly buggy and slow, and once you've tried it and failed, it seems like it's impossible to remove the remnants of it from your interface. The music and audiobook support never felt like it was as pol", "context": "", "use_case": "movies and TV shows", "switched_from": "", "story": "Jellyfin founder Andrew leaves team"}, {"id": 783847072, "item_id": 48990442, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48990442", "by": "amiga386", "date": "2026-07-21", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Jellyfin is a daily driver for me and works amazingly.", "excerpt": "While I'd agree that the 10.11.x releases have terrible performance on some APIs to the extent that I rolled back to 10.10.x and marked it as held, until they release 12.x... Jellyfin is a daily driver for me and works amazingly. I have thousands of films, TV shows, books, music, and it lets me navigate and use them perfectly well. I have a wonderful little Linux media server. What sort of bugs affect you?", "context": "", "use_case": "films, TV, books, music media server", "switched_from": "", "story": "Jellyfin founder Andrew leaves team"}, {"id": 783803792, "item_id": 48987737, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48987737", "by": "whynotmaybe", "date": "2026-07-20", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I've been using it on Windows for years with multiple devices and it's been working flawlessly.", "excerpt": "Maybe it's a Linux thing? I've been using it on Windows for years with multiple devices and it's been working flawlessly.", "context": "", "use_case": "media server on Windows", "switched_from": "", "story": "Jellyfin founder Andrew leaves team"}]}, {"label": "Family sharing", "summary": "Commenters share their libraries with friends and family, including non-technical users.", "quotes": [{"id": 797325840, "item_id": 49832865, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49832865", "by": "dbg31415", "date": "2026-09-24", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Jellyfin has been great for sharing with friends, and having them share with me.", "excerpt": "I switched from Plex a year or so ago. Jellyfin has been great for sharing with friends, and having them share with me. * The Free Software Media System | Jellyfin // https://jellyfin.org/", "context": "", "use_case": "media server sharing", "switched_from": "Plex", "story": "Disney+ and Hulu raise prices by up to 13 percent after doubling profits"}, {"id": 797437602, "item_id": 49839850, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49839850", "by": "unrented7977", "date": "2026-09-25", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "everything pipes into my Jellyfin server", "excerpt": "I use prowlarr and radarr in my hone proxmox setup. I have a container locked behind a VPN running my torrent client and everything pipes into my Jellyfin server. My non-techie partner honestly uses it way more than I do because it's just so damn easy. You punch a request into radarr and after some time it magically appears in Jellyfin. It was a bear to set up the first time, but smooth sailing after that", "context": "home Proxmox setup", "use_case": "media server", "switched_from": "", "story": "Disney+ and Hulu raise prices by up to 13 percent after doubling profits"}, {"id": 784498000, "item_id": 49031125, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49031125", "by": "radcod3", "date": "2026-07-23", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use jellyfin with Infuse, Kodi, mpv-shim and a couple of mobile clients as well. No major issues so far", "excerpt": "I use jellyfin with Infuse, Kodi, mpv-shim and a couple of mobile clients as well. No major issues so far, even my parents use it via Kodi.", "context": "", "use_case": "media server", "switched_from": "", "story": "The Corporate Creep of Plex: Why it may be time to move to Jellyfin"}]}, {"label": "Client compatibility", "summary": "It works with Infuse, Kodi, official smart TV apps and devices like HDHomeRun.", "quotes": [{"id": 784498000, "item_id": 49031125, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49031125", "by": "radcod3", "date": "2026-07-23", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use jellyfin with Infuse, Kodi, mpv-shim and a couple of mobile clients as well. No major issues so far", "excerpt": "I use jellyfin with Infuse, Kodi, mpv-shim and a couple of mobile clients as well. No major issues so far, even my parents use it via Kodi.", "context": "", "use_case": "media server", "switched_from": "", "story": "The Corporate Creep of Plex: Why it may be time to move to Jellyfin"}, {"id": 793704896, "item_id": 49606556, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49606556", "by": "anygivnthursday", "date": "2026-09-08", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Jellyfin has worked great so far for us", "excerpt": "Jellyfin has worked great so far for us, I never used Plex or Emby so cant compare. They recently made an official Tizen app too, so dont have to build and sideload anymore, just works. One of the remaining issues is that the Samsung client remuxes if you select a secondary audio track[0] - apparently fixable by using the AVPlay player instead of the HTML player. [0]: https://github.com/jellyfin/jellyfin-tizen/issues", "context": "", "use_case": "media server", "switched_from": "", "story": "Jellyfin 12.0"}, {"id": 783814400, "item_id": 48988400, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48988400", "by": "drnick1", "date": "2026-07-20", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "One thing that Jellyfin does really well is integrate devices like the HDHomeRun.", "excerpt": "One thing that Jellyfin does really well is integrate devices like the HDHomeRun. You can then watch OTA TV from any device on the LAN or elsewhere through the Jellyfin Web portal or dedicated clients for Linux/Android/iOS. If your HTPC is powerful enough, you should also check out Plasma Bigscreen as a substitute for XFCE4.", "context": "", "use_case": "live TV and media server", "switched_from": "", "story": "Jellyfin founder Andrew leaves team"}]}, {"label": "Remote access", "summary": "Remote use via Tailscale or a reverse proxy is described as easy to set up.", "quotes": [{"id": 804077648, "item_id": 50254853, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50254853", "by": "knowaveragejoe", "date": "2026-10-27", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use jellyfin remotely with tailscale. It was trivial to set up.", "excerpt": "I use jellyfin remotely with tailscale. It was trivial to set up. There's probably a dozen other holepunching mesh VPN approaches that would also work. Not to mention Iroh is in the mix now too.", "context": "", "use_case": "remote media streaming", "switched_from": "", "story": "Disney Raising Prices Days After Confirming Ads Will Now Show Up on Every Tier"}, {"id": 802576114, "item_id": 50161007, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50161007", "by": "clundin22", "date": "2026-10-20", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I use a raspberry pi and nginx to forward my jellyfin over Tailscale.", "excerpt": "I use a raspberry pi and nginx to forward my jellyfin over Tailscale. This works really well, Tailscale is low touch and nginx is battletested. Jellyfin appears as a local service to other devices and I manage the raspberry pi with NixOS which makes the setup easy and deployable. Just plug in the pre imaged raspberry pi.", "context": "", "use_case": "media server", "switched_from": "", "story": "Plex vulnerabilities being exploited in the wild to drop a cryptominer"}, {"id": 784398560, "item_id": 49024910, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49024910", "by": "entropicdrifter", "date": "2026-07-23", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I can access my Jellyfin instance from almost any smart TV in the world with the official apps", "excerpt": "I use a reverse proxy for Jellyfin remote access, people saying you need a VPN or Tailscale (which is also a VPN) are unnecessarily paranoid IMO. That said, I'm a software engineer with more than 10 years of experience and a lifelong tinkerer, and I've set up an OpenWRT One as my primary router, so my firewall is more up to date and useful than 99% of consumers and I'm comfortable restoring a PC if it gets hacked. Bu", "context": "software engineer, runs it on an Intel N100 home server", "use_case": "home media streaming", "switched_from": "", "story": "Jellyfin founder Andrew leaves team"}]}, {"label": "Open source control", "summary": "Being open source guards against removed features and paywalls.", "quotes": [{"id": 803021872, "item_id": 50188867, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50188867", "by": "rumblefrog", "date": "2026-10-21", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "With open source, I can at least fork/pin it from some version and merge things from upstream that I want, which is the reason why I was looking at Jellyfin.", "excerpt": "For me personally it's open source I was looking for. But I totally understand if it's not aligned with the business value. It helps me guard against things like \"Hey, this company decided to remove this feature that I use a lot (cough cough, watch together on Plex), or put something behind a paid wall where it was previously free\". With open source, I can at least fork/pin it from some version and merge things from ", "context": "", "use_case": "media server", "switched_from": "", "story": "Plex vulnerabilities being exploited in the wild to drop a cryptominer"}, {"id": 742702688, "item_id": 46418918, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46418918", "by": "ku1ik", "date": "2025-12-29", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "switched to Jellyfin and couldn\u2019t be happier!", "excerpt": "There\u2019s always risk of a rug pull or going the wrong direction with \u201copen-source\u201d software developed by a for-profit company (Plex, MinIO, Mattermost in this example). When choosing software that I run in my \u201chomelab\u201d I lean towards community developed projects first. They may not always have as high quality as the ones offered by commercial entities but they\u2019re just safer for the long term and have no artificial lim", "context": "homelab user", "use_case": "media server", "switched_from": "Plex", "story": "Self-hosting is being enshittified"}, {"id": 769426864, "item_id": 48089179, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48089179", "by": "BowBun", "date": "2026-05-10", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I switched to Jellyfin and also don't regret it.", "excerpt": "I switched to Jellyfin and also don't regret it. I agree the quality is lower, BUT that sacrifice in this case was worth it given Plex's shitty track record. If any of y'all are interested in helping the Jellyfin project, that would be dope!", "context": "", "use_case": "media server", "switched_from": "Plex", "story": "Plex's price hikes prove I was right to switch to Jellyfin"}]}], "caveats": [{"label": "Client UX", "summary": "Default clients have awkward seeking and missing or inconsistent basic behaviors.", "quotes": [{"id": 802757969, "item_id": 50172373, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50172373", "by": "arantius", "date": "2026-10-20", "stance": "warn", "quote": "Default Android Jellyfin client seeking is really unpleasant.", "excerpt": "I use wolphin. Biggest thing for me is the seeking. I press < or > and it seeks, now. Default Android Jellyfin client seeking is really unpleasant. Some other smaller niceties, too.", "context": "", "use_case": "media playback", "switched_from": "", "story": "An ad-free Android TV"}, {"id": 802569137, "item_id": 50160571, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50160571", "by": "starky", "date": "2026-10-20", "stance": "warn", "quote": "the horrible way that Jellyfin deals with seeking", "excerpt": "This is pretty much the exact setup I have on my Chromecast minus button mapper since I use a Sofabaton remote for control. I ended up finding Wholpin after getting especially angry one day at the horrible way that Jellyfin deals with seeking the requires manually pressing play to start the video again.", "context": "uses Chromecast with a Sofabaton remote", "use_case": "media playback on Android TV", "switched_from": "", "story": "An ad-free Android TV"}, {"id": 802586768, "item_id": 50161673, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50161673", "by": "triyambakam", "date": "2026-10-20", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I've been using Jellyfin for my family for years.", "excerpt": "I've been using Jellyfin for my family for years. But the number of clients is interesting. The web experience on a desktop/laptop is pretty much the only tolerable experience. And I appreciate that the alternative clients try and address the poor UX of the default but I still find so many of the basic behaviors missing or inconsistent. I can't offer anything better but I find it curious.", "context": "", "use_case": "family media server", "switched_from": "", "story": "An ad-free Android TV"}]}, {"label": "Less polished", "summary": "Several users find it rougher and short of Plex's feature parity.", "quotes": [{"id": 802985905, "item_id": 50186619, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50186619", "by": "PierceJoy", "date": "2026-10-21", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "The player isn\u2019t quite as polished as plex, but it isn\u2019t as buggy", "excerpt": "The new Apple TV app is terrible. It\u2019s completely redesigned, and visually looks good I suppose, but it\u2019s so buggy and has terrible UX. So terrible, in fact, that after a decade of using plex I finally became a cliche and switched to jellyfin. The player isn\u2019t quite as polished as plex, but it isn\u2019t as buggy, and I\u2019ll probably just take an open source player and have Claude customize it to my liking. Honestly plex de", "context": "decade-long Plex user", "use_case": "media server", "switched_from": "Plex", "story": "Plex laid off the whole player team"}, {"id": 769426864, "item_id": 48089179, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48089179", "by": "BowBun", "date": "2026-05-10", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I switched to Jellyfin and also don't regret it.", "excerpt": "I switched to Jellyfin and also don't regret it. I agree the quality is lower, BUT that sacrifice in this case was worth it given Plex's shitty track record. If any of y'all are interested in helping the Jellyfin project, that would be dope!", "context": "", "use_case": "media server", "switched_from": "Plex", "story": "Plex's price hikes prove I was right to switch to Jellyfin"}, {"id": 744242000, "item_id": 46515125, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46515125", "by": "keytarsolo", "date": "2026-01-06", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I like Jellyfin, and run it alongside Plex.", "excerpt": "I like Jellyfin, and run it alongside Plex. But they have a very long way to before they reach feature parity with even just the stuff I use. Let alone everything Plex can do. I think this year I\u2019m going to try and find an issue or feature I can contribute on. I\u2019d like to end up moving to Jellyfin based on it being good and not Plex being bad.", "context": "", "use_case": "media server", "switched_from": "", "story": "State of the Fin 2026-01-06 \u2013 Jellyfin"}]}, {"label": "Library management", "summary": "Some fight thumbnails, episode grouping, rescans and unmarked watch status.", "quotes": [{"id": 793681632, "item_id": 49605102, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49605102", "by": "VladVladikoff", "date": "2026-09-08", "stance": "warn", "quote": "I switched to jellyfin about 6 months ago and I can say it is definitely worse.", "excerpt": "I switched to jellyfin about 6 months ago and I can say it is definitely worse. I\u2019m constantly fighting to fix thumbnails, fix episodes to be in the same show, force rescans to get it to even recognize a show that already exists. I never had any of these problems with plex. Plex also defaults to transcoding which fixes a lot of gaps with clients that don\u2019t support certain codecs. I\u2019m often running into issues where i", "context": "", "use_case": "media server", "switched_from": "Plex", "story": "Jellyfin 12.0"}, {"id": 783990096, "item_id": 48999381, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48999381", "by": "lthi747", "date": "2026-07-21", "stance": "warn", "quote": "Constantly have issues with playback, files indexing and watch statuses that not marked", "excerpt": "Well, good luck Andrew and Anthony! Jellyfin is great project and good software when is working, unfortunately for me it doesn\u2019t works very well. Constantly have issues with playback, files indexing and watch statuses that not marked, but that are small issues compred to the hell with subtitles. Very often out of sync (if they load) So I switched to nova player and sharing my tv shows and music collection over SMB. I", "context": "", "use_case": "media server", "switched_from": "", "story": "Jellyfin founder Andrew leaves team"}]}, {"label": "Non-tech onboarding", "summary": "Getting family set up, especially with Tailscale, is harder than with Plex.", "quotes": [{"id": 802989458, "item_id": 50186841, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50186841", "by": "joshstrange", "date": "2026-10-21", "stance": "warn", "quote": "Jellyfin is rough (I've tried!) and especially for external users (family).", "excerpt": "Yeah, I can't believe how bad the UI/UX is for the new Apple TV Plex app. I switched to Plezy as a client (still Plex server) but don't love it either. I really did like the old Plex UI on ATV. I don't know what I'll do going forward. Jellyfin is rough (I've tried!) and especially for external users (family).", "context": "", "use_case": "media server", "switched_from": "", "story": "Plex laid off the whole player team"}, {"id": 783936752, "item_id": 48996047, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48996047", "by": "IAmBroom", "date": "2026-07-21", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I'd prefer to be exclusively on Jellyfin. It simply has more features that I use", "excerpt": "I'd prefer to be exclusively on Jellyfin. It simply has more features that I use - specifically, collections are great non-hierarchical groupings. But periodically my system will refuse to see the Tailscale server, and I'll have to do some black magic tech operation like reinstalling to get it back. Additionally, guiding a friend remotely through installing both Jellyfin and Tailscale is far more effort than saying, ", "context": "", "use_case": "media server", "switched_from": "", "story": "Jellyfin founder Andrew leaves team"}, {"id": 802614224, "item_id": 50163389, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50163389", "by": "aurmc", "date": "2026-10-20", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Now I\u2019m on Jellyfin but the point is the same.", "excerpt": "Me. Or I did back when I used it. Now I\u2019m on Jellyfin but the point is the same. I share my Plex/Jellyfin with a couple dozen friends and family members, all of varying levels of technical knowledge. \u201cInstall an app called Jellyfin on your smart TV\u201d is complicated enough for most people. \u201cAlso search for another app called Tailscale and now log in with my credentials, yes it\u2019s going to ask for control over your devic", "context": "shares media server with a couple dozen friends and family", "use_case": "media server shared with family", "switched_from": "Plex", "story": "Plex vulnerabilities being exploited in the wild to drop a cryptominer"}]}, {"label": "Platform gaps", "summary": "Apple TV support is described as buggy and Chromecast casting from iOS is missing.", "quotes": [{"id": 783807520, "item_id": 48987970, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48987970", "by": "muppetman", "date": "2026-07-20", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Again, I love Jellyfin and I use it daily.", "excerpt": "Because Plex worked amazingly ~5-6 years ago, while Jellyfin was still very early stage. It'd sort of work. So there's a lot of \"Well I'm already using Plex\" inertia. Plus Plex has very lovely, polished clients, you can easily invite people, share your library with others etc etc. Once they got all that of course, then the changes/fees/ads/bloat started. Jellyfin is great, it's all I've ever used. But it's still very", "context": "", "use_case": "home media server", "switched_from": "", "story": "Jellyfin founder Andrew leaves team"}]}, {"label": "Live TV, audio", "summary": "Live TV and music or audiobook support are seen as weaker than video.", "quotes": [{"id": 783870000, "item_id": 48991875, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48991875", "by": "petepete", "date": "2026-07-21", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I've used Jellyfin for years and my experience is currently incredibly smooth and works like a dream for the whole family.", "excerpt": "I've used Jellyfin for years and my experience is currently incredibly smooth and works like a dream for the whole family. I only use it for movies and TV shows though, the live TV experience (with a HDHomeRun) was incredibly buggy and slow, and once you've tried it and failed, it seems like it's impossible to remove the remnants of it from your interface. The music and audiobook support never felt like it was as pol", "context": "", "use_case": "movies and TV shows", "switched_from": "", "story": "Jellyfin founder Andrew leaves team"}, {"id": 779531489, "item_id": 48720718, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48720718", "by": "austin-cheney", "date": "2026-06-29", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use JellyFin for video.", "excerpt": "Its because of things like this that I self host all my media. As an example why buy games from Steam when I can get them on gog.com DRM free and make them portable (without a setup or installation step on future machines)? So, I run my own Steam Store/Library like experience on a home server using Game Vault. I use JellyFin for video. It works for music files, but I don't really like it for audio. So, I wrote my own", "context": "self-hosts all media", "use_case": "self-hosted video streaming", "switched_from": "", "story": "Studio Canal Movies purchased on PlayStation Store removed without refund"}]}], "who": [{"by": "tstrimple", "context": "former Plex Pass user", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50189451", "date": "2026-10-22"}, {"by": "PierceJoy", "context": "decade-long Plex user", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50186619", "date": "2026-10-21"}, {"by": "aurmc", "context": "shares media server with a couple dozen friends and family", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50163389", "date": "2026-10-20"}, {"by": "attilaolah", "context": "self-hosts on many small nodes", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50115461", "date": "2026-10-16"}, {"by": "bengalister", "context": "homelab self-hoster, works with Kubernetes", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50114968", "date": "2026-10-16"}, {"by": "Hikikomori", "context": "home server user", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50111512", "date": "2026-10-15"}, {"by": "fak3r", "context": "self-hosts at home", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50010479", "date": "2026-10-08"}, {"by": "stego-tech", "context": "self-hosts services", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49966336", "date": "2026-10-05"}, {"by": "unrented7977", "context": "home Proxmox setup", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49839850", "date": "2026-09-25"}, {"by": "KomoD", "context": "self-hoster", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49748253", "date": "2026-09-17"}, {"by": "recvonline", "context": "self-hoster", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49748213", "date": "2026-09-17"}, {"by": "altmanaltman", "context": "homelab user", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49624803", "date": "2026-09-09"}], "tags": ["self-hostable", "for Plex switchers", "for sharing with family", "for *arr stack users", "for home labs"], "use_cases": ["media server", "media streaming", "self-hosted media server", "home media server", "media streaming on tv", "remote media streaming"], "compared": [{"slug": "plex", "name": "Plex", "co": 52, "switched_from": 14, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "tailscale", "name": "Tailscale", "co": 12, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "infuse", "name": "Infuse", "co": 9, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "immich", "name": "Immich", "co": 9, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "kodi", "name": "Kodi", "co": 8, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "wholphin", "name": "Wholphin", "co": 4, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 1}, {"slug": "navidrome", "name": "Navidrome", "co": 4, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 1}, {"slug": "audiobookshelf", "name": "Audiobookshelf", "co": 4, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 1}], "makers": [], "threads": [{"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48986091", "title": "Jellyfin founder Andrew leaves team", "mentions": 18}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49604861", "title": "Jellyfin 12.0", "mentions": 13}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49985548", "title": "Ask HN: What do you run on a $5 VPS that's worth keeping online 24/7?", "mentions": 7}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50109715", "title": "What I self-host", "mentions": 6}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50186318", "title": "Plex laid off the whole player team", "mentions": 5}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50152321", "title": "Plex vulnerabilities being exploited in the wild to drop a cryptominer", "mentions": 5}], "sentiment_by_month": {"2025-11": {"neutral": 2, "recommend": 1}, "2025-12": {"compare": 1, "recommend": 1, "neutral": 1}, "2026-01": {"recommend": 3, "neutral": 2}, "2026-02": {"neutral": 1}, "2026-03": {"neutral": 4, "recommend": 2}, "2026-04": {"neutral": 2}, "2026-05": {"recommend": 4, "neutral": 4}, "2026-06": {"neutral": 5, "recommend": 2}, "2026-07": {"neutral": 4, "recommend": 14, "compare": 2, "warn": 1}, "2026-08": {"recommend": 2, "neutral": 2}, "2026-09": {"neutral": 10, "recommend": 10, "warn": 1}, "2026-10": {"recommend": 9, "neutral": 16, "warn": 2, "compare": 1}}, "quotes": [{"id": 804077648, "item_id": 50254853, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50254853", "by": "knowaveragejoe", "date": "2026-10-27", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use jellyfin remotely with tailscale. It was trivial to set up.", "excerpt": "I use jellyfin remotely with tailscale. It was trivial to set up. There's probably a dozen other holepunching mesh VPN approaches that would also work. Not to mention Iroh is in the mix now too.", "context": "", "use_case": "remote media streaming", "switched_from": "", "story": "Disney Raising Prices Days After Confirming Ads Will Now Show Up on Every Tier"}, {"id": 803031216, "item_id": 50189451, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50189451", "by": "tstrimple", "date": "2026-10-22", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I've since switched to Jellyfin.", "excerpt": "More than likely Plex realizes where their money comes from. It's not streamlining personal video content playback. That's how they built their reputation, but they make their money on integration deals and filling your home screen with other people's content. I paid for Plex Pass and they still feel entitled to put advertisements in front of my local media content. I've since switched to Jellyfin.", "context": "former Plex Pass user", "use_case": "media server", "switched_from": "Plex", "story": "Plex laid off the whole player team"}, {"id": 803021872, "item_id": 50188867, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50188867", "by": "rumblefrog", "date": "2026-10-21", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "With open source, I can at least fork/pin it from some version and merge things from upstream that I want, which is the reason why I was looking at Jellyfin.", "excerpt": "For me personally it's open source I was looking for. But I totally understand if it's not aligned with the business value. It helps me guard against things like \"Hey, this company decided to remove this feature that I use a lot (cough cough, watch together on Plex), or put something behind a paid wall where it was previously free\". With open source, I can at least fork/pin it from some version and merge things from ", "context": "", "use_case": "media server", "switched_from": "", "story": "Plex vulnerabilities being exploited in the wild to drop a cryptominer"}, {"id": 802994241, "item_id": 50187140, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50187140", "by": "jmuguy", "date": "2026-10-21", "stance": "compare", "quote": "Question for Jellyfin users - how's the support for non-tech people that were using your library?", "excerpt": "Question for Jellyfin users - how's the support for non-tech people that were using your library? Like my parents use my Plex, and getting them switched to something else is going to be a hell ride.", "context": "hosts media library for parents", "use_case": "media server", "switched_from": "", "story": "Plex laid off the whole player team"}, {"id": 802990817, "item_id": 50186926, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50186926", "by": "dewey", "date": "2026-10-21", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I only recently switched to Jellyfin because Hetzner blocks Plex", "excerpt": "Because I bought a lifetime pass a very long time ago, and their apps across all platforms look and work consistently. I only recently switched to Jellyfin because Hetzner blocks Plex, but otherwise I wouldn't have had a big reason to switch.", "context": "", "use_case": "media server", "switched_from": "Plex", "story": "Plex laid off the whole player team"}, {"id": 802989458, "item_id": 50186841, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50186841", "by": "joshstrange", "date": "2026-10-21", "stance": "warn", "quote": "Jellyfin is rough (I've tried!) and especially for external users (family).", "excerpt": "Yeah, I can't believe how bad the UI/UX is for the new Apple TV Plex app. I switched to Plezy as a client (still Plex server) but don't love it either. I really did like the old Plex UI on ATV. I don't know what I'll do going forward. Jellyfin is rough (I've tried!) and especially for external users (family).", "context": "", "use_case": "media server", "switched_from": "", "story": "Plex laid off the whole player team"}, {"id": 802985905, "item_id": 50186619, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50186619", "by": "PierceJoy", "date": "2026-10-21", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "The player isn\u2019t quite as polished as plex, but it isn\u2019t as buggy", "excerpt": "The new Apple TV app is terrible. It\u2019s completely redesigned, and visually looks good I suppose, but it\u2019s so buggy and has terrible UX. So terrible, in fact, that after a decade of using plex I finally became a cliche and switched to jellyfin. The player isn\u2019t quite as polished as plex, but it isn\u2019t as buggy, and I\u2019ll probably just take an open source player and have Claude customize it to my liking. Honestly plex de", "context": "decade-long Plex user", "use_case": "media server", "switched_from": "Plex", "story": "Plex laid off the whole player team"}, {"id": 802757969, "item_id": 50172373, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50172373", "by": "arantius", "date": "2026-10-20", "stance": "warn", "quote": "Default Android Jellyfin client seeking is really unpleasant.", "excerpt": "I use wolphin. Biggest thing for me is the seeking. I press < or > and it seeks, now. Default Android Jellyfin client seeking is really unpleasant. Some other smaller niceties, too.", "context": "", "use_case": "media playback", "switched_from": "", "story": "An ad-free Android TV"}, {"id": 802643474, "item_id": 50165217, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50165217", "by": "joshstrange", "date": "2026-10-20", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "it supports Plex and jellyfin, which would make switching to jellyfin in the future easier", "excerpt": "The Apple TV UI change drove me crazy. I switched to Plezy but it\u2019s still not quite what I want. The good news is, it\u2019s open source, so I can modify it if I want to, and it supports Plex and jellyfin, which would make switching to jellyfin in the future easier.", "context": "", "use_case": "possible future media server", "switched_from": "", "story": "Plex vulnerabilities being exploited in the wild to drop a cryptominer"}, {"id": 802614224, "item_id": 50163389, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50163389", "by": "aurmc", "date": "2026-10-20", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Now I\u2019m on Jellyfin but the point is the same.", "excerpt": "Me. Or I did back when I used it. Now I\u2019m on Jellyfin but the point is the same. I share my Plex/Jellyfin with a couple dozen friends and family members, all of varying levels of technical knowledge. \u201cInstall an app called Jellyfin on your smart TV\u201d is complicated enough for most people. \u201cAlso search for another app called Tailscale and now log in with my credentials, yes it\u2019s going to ask for control over your devic", "context": "shares media server with a couple dozen friends and family", "use_case": "media server shared with family", "switched_from": "Plex", "story": "Plex vulnerabilities being exploited in the wild to drop a cryptominer"}, {"id": 802586768, "item_id": 50161673, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50161673", "by": "triyambakam", "date": "2026-10-20", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I've been using Jellyfin for my family for years.", "excerpt": "I've been using Jellyfin for my family for years. But the number of clients is interesting. The web experience on a desktop/laptop is pretty much the only tolerable experience. And I appreciate that the alternative clients try and address the poor UX of the default but I still find so many of the basic behaviors missing or inconsistent. I can't offer anything better but I find it curious.", "context": "", "use_case": "family media server", "switched_from": "", "story": "An ad-free Android TV"}, {"id": 802576114, "item_id": 50161007, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50161007", "by": "clundin22", "date": "2026-10-20", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I use a raspberry pi and nginx to forward my jellyfin over Tailscale.", "excerpt": "I use a raspberry pi and nginx to forward my jellyfin over Tailscale. This works really well, Tailscale is low touch and nginx is battletested. Jellyfin appears as a local service to other devices and I manage the raspberry pi with NixOS which makes the setup easy and deployable. Just plug in the pre imaged raspberry pi.", "context": "", "use_case": "media server", "switched_from": "", "story": "Plex vulnerabilities being exploited in the wild to drop a cryptominer"}, {"id": 802569537, "item_id": 50160596, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50160596", "by": "y-c-o-m-b", "date": "2026-10-20", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "login to JellyFin every few days for no apparent reason", "excerpt": "Oh wow, TIL about Wholphin. I'll have to give that a try. I wonder if this will finally resolve the issue with me having to login to JellyFin every few days for no apparent reason (it's not the server, I switched from Win to Linux and same problem). EDIT: all that remains for this stack is a good browser that can allow usage of uBlock Origin. BrowseHere is a pain to use with its constant nags about allowing pop-ups o", "context": "", "use_case": "media server", "switched_from": "", "story": "An ad-free Android TV"}, {"id": 802569137, "item_id": 50160571, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50160571", "by": "starky", "date": "2026-10-20", "stance": "warn", "quote": "the horrible way that Jellyfin deals with seeking", "excerpt": "This is pretty much the exact setup I have on my Chromecast minus button mapper since I use a Sofabaton remote for control. I ended up finding Wholpin after getting especially angry one day at the horrible way that Jellyfin deals with seeking the requires manually pressing play to start the video again.", "context": "uses Chromecast with a Sofabaton remote", "use_case": "media playback on Android TV", "switched_from": "", "story": "An ad-free Android TV"}, {"id": 802529136, "item_id": 50158071, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50158071", "by": "DaSHacka", "date": "2026-10-19", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "it must've undergone a UI overhaul as now it looks quite nice imo.", "excerpt": "When was the last time you tried it? I used to agree, but at least as of last year, it must've undergone a UI overhaul as now it looks quite nice imo.", "context": "", "use_case": "media server", "switched_from": "", "story": "Plex vulnerabilities being exploited in the wild to drop a cryptominer"}, {"id": 801897312, "item_id": 50118582, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50118582", "by": "dd_xplore", "date": "2026-10-16", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "jellyfin", "excerpt": "I had a N100 mini PC with 16GB DDR5 (the chinese ones with 4 Ethernet for router use). That thing ran lot's of my services - arr stack, jellyfin, immich (iGPU + ML + another container running on my PC for additional ML resource), n8n, it-tools, handbrake, and another project that I used to do. This mini PC also handled 4k hevc quite fine! This is a surprisingly capable chip.But I wanted more so I bought a core Ultra ", "context": "", "use_case": "media server", "switched_from": "", "story": "What I self-host"}, {"id": 801847379, "item_id": 50115461, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50115461", "by": "attilaolah", "date": "2026-10-16", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "It even works with Jellyfin, wrapped in systemd-socket-proxyd.", "excerpt": "I also used to run everything on K8s (hybrid Talos / Alpine+k0s on nodes too small for Talos). It is a fun exercise, but with many small nodes eventually I realised I was burning a quarter of my fleet's CPU on just monitoring and routing services. Eventually I switched to Systemd only, Clan-managed NixOS instances on bare metal. The killer feature for me is socket activation. It even works with Jellyfin, wrapped in s", "context": "self-hosts on many small nodes", "use_case": "media server for TV", "switched_from": "", "story": "What I self-host"}, {"id": 801842993, "item_id": 50115187, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50115187", "by": "romainio", "date": "2026-10-16", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "the lack of a Netflix-style recommendation experience in Jellyfin", "excerpt": "Super interesting article! I love how you found a solution for almost every daily app!! I also run into the \u201cwhat should I watch next?\u201d problem, as well as the lack of a Netflix-style recommendation experience in Jellyfin. That\u2019s why I forked Wholphin (huge thanks to the original project!) and added TMDB watchlist and popular-list syncing, all connected to Sonarr and Radarr with direct possibility to add movie in lis", "context": "", "use_case": "media server", "switched_from": "", "story": "What I self-host"}, {"id": 801839497, "item_id": 50114968, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50114968", "by": "bengalister", "date": "2026-10-16", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "jellyfin", "excerpt": "I also self host some services: keycloak, forgejo, home assistant, immich, grafana/prometheus, jellyfin, pureftp (to store my surveillance cameras videos), and a vibecoded financial app, and soon hermes agent on a 2023 laptop. I chose to run most of them on Kubernetes since I am used to work with it. I use: - ha-proxy running on the host and istio running inside the cluster for the sni based ingress routing - cert-ma", "context": "homelab self-hoster, works with Kubernetes", "use_case": "media server", "switched_from": "", "story": "What I self-host"}, {"id": 801784192, "item_id": 50111512, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50111512", "by": "Hikikomori", "date": "2026-10-15", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "running arr stack, jellyfin, home assistant, pi hole", "excerpt": "About to retire the NUC I used for 10 years running arr stack, jellyfin, home assistant, pi hole and a few more containers. Bought a new bee link mini pc, new Intel CPU, 500gb SSD and 16gb ram for less than $500.", "context": "home server user", "use_case": "media server", "switched_from": "", "story": "What I self-host"}, {"id": 801775778, "item_id": 50110986, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50110986", "by": "eleventen", "date": "2026-10-15", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "Jellyfin currently idles at 330MB.", "excerpt": "> Sonarr, Lidarr, Radarr, etc. Every time I read about setting it up, it just sounds like a resource-intensive mess that\u2019s fundamentally prone to frequent breakage. That\u2019s the opposite of what I\u2019m looking for when choosing self-hosted services. I just checked on my *arr stack. Sonarr and Radarr idle at 157MB and 159MB of memory and approximately no CPU. Jellyfin currently idles at 330MB. I'm not sure where you got th", "context": "", "use_case": "media server", "switched_from": "", "story": "What I self-host"}, {"id": 800409501, "item_id": 50025593, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50025593", "by": "MayeulC", "date": "2026-10-09", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "jellfin, *arr and torrents", "excerpt": "Well, I have a VPS, plus multiple physical servers in different locations (parents, etc). The VPS is useful for: - sending e-mails (hard to improve your reputation on residential IPs and get a reverse DNS record) - Unifi controller, though I appreciate Unifi less and less. - Uptime monitoring / status page - I think I'll move my headscale node there, since it has the highest availability -- Internet was out for a wee", "context": "", "use_case": "media server", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: What do you run on a $5 VPS that's worth keeping online 24/7?"}, {"id": 800375043, "item_id": 50023440, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50023440", "by": "Semaphor", "date": "2026-10-09", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "runs almost 20 services, from home assistant and jellyfin", "excerpt": "Cheap Vps: mainly seafile (file sync) and prosody (jabber/xmpp). I want those always available from everywhere. Living room has a small passively cooled n150 which runs almost 20 services, from home assistant and jellyfin, over paperless and navidrome, to some lesser known services (yamtrack, koito, grimoire). A bunch more, and I use them regularly, some more than others, but then adding a service without exposing it", "context": "", "use_case": "media server", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: What do you run on a $5 VPS that's worth keeping online 24/7?"}, {"id": 800306097, "item_id": 50019131, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50019131", "by": "paweladamczuk", "date": "2026-10-09", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "", "excerpt": "- Navidrome - Jellyfin - Vaultwarden - Immich - pi agent. I use it through tmux and iSH on my iPhone - librechat. nice UI but honestly I probably jsut use pi more often - copyparty. to visually inspect whatever I create with pi, and to access my documents, to upload files I need on the server quickly and easily from any device", "context": "", "use_case": "media server", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: What do you run on a $5 VPS that's worth keeping online 24/7?"}, {"id": 800282681, "item_id": 50017667, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50017667", "by": "wraptile", "date": "2026-10-09", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "public facing friend tools like jellyfin via tailscale tunnels", "excerpt": "These VPS no longer make much sense for self-hosting imo. I have two refurbished 32gb ram Lenovo k14 laptops (250$ each) that I use for self-hosting over tailscale and cloudflare tunnels. This is a lot of compute and very little power use. One for personal self-hosted projects: languagetool, nextcloud, hister, syncthing, restic backups, vaultwarden, windmill. Another for public facing web apps I host through cloudfla", "context": "", "use_case": "media server for friends", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: What do you run on a $5 VPS that's worth keeping online 24/7?"}, {"id": 800258133, "item_id": 50016133, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50016133", "by": "ahf8Aithaex7Nai", "date": "2026-10-09", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I can even run storage-intensive services like Jellyfin", "excerpt": "I use Yggdrasil [0] to connect my computers. This ensures they are always connected within a flat, private IPv6 namespace. However, two computers cannot find each other if they are both behind NAT on different networks. At least one of them must be reachable by the other via TCP. That\u2019s why I use the cheapest VPS I could find as a globally accessible Yggdrasil hub. I\u2019ve been running it this way for many years now, an", "context": "", "use_case": "media streaming", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: What do you run on a $5 VPS that's worth keeping online 24/7?"}, {"id": 800240770, "item_id": 50015048, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50015048", "by": "agnishom", "date": "2026-10-09", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Things I like to host: Jellyfin, Audiobookshelf, Karakeep, Deluge", "excerpt": "I use such a computer to expose services from my home server. You can do this using tailscale or even rathole. (Sadly, I don't have access to the router to port forward packets to my home server directly.) Things I like to host: Jellyfin, Audiobookshelf, Karakeep, Deluge, Tailscale (for exit nodes, among other things) Other stuff I want to host but not yet: Immich, Vaultwarden, Hister, Archibebox, CopyParty", "context": "", "use_case": "media server", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: What do you run on a $5 VPS that's worth keeping online 24/7?"}, {"id": 800167665, "item_id": 50010479, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50010479", "by": "fak3r", "date": "2026-10-08", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I self-host plenty at home, but most are things that are mainly needed at home like Jellyfin", "excerpt": "Things I use from home and away, two main things: Vikunja https://vikunja.io/ - todo list manager, I use it on all my computers, and phone // Websites - various personal, and work websites that I need up 24/7. I self-host plenty at home, but most are things that are mainly needed at home like Jellyfin, however that's available to others via the NAT/firewall/Traefik, but other things stay inside the FW since I don't n", "context": "self-hosts at home", "use_case": "media server", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: What do you run on a $5 VPS that's worth keeping online 24/7?"}, {"id": 799461376, "item_id": 49966336, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49966336", "by": "stego-tech", "date": "2026-10-05", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "The Jellyfin server hosting media to friends and family on Docker.", "excerpt": "Man, I\u2019ve felt this way for decades now. It\u2019s a constant fight just to accomplish basic utility without divulging everything short of your genetic code to hundreds of \u201cpartners\u201d in the process. It\u2019s at the point that I spend more time trying to get relatives off tech entirely instead of helping them utilize it to improve their lives, for the simple reason tech doesn\u2019t improve life right now, at least not for a lot of", "context": "self-hosts services", "use_case": "hosting media for friends and family", "switched_from": "", "story": "\"I'm Embarrassed on Behalf of the Tech Industry\""}, {"id": 797437602, "item_id": 49839850, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49839850", "by": "unrented7977", "date": "2026-09-25", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "everything pipes into my Jellyfin server", "excerpt": "I use prowlarr and radarr in my hone proxmox setup. I have a container locked behind a VPN running my torrent client and everything pipes into my Jellyfin server. My non-techie partner honestly uses it way more than I do because it's just so damn easy. You punch a request into radarr and after some time it magically appears in Jellyfin. It was a bear to set up the first time, but smooth sailing after that", "context": "home Proxmox setup", "use_case": "media server", "switched_from": "", "story": "Disney+ and Hulu raise prices by up to 13 percent after doubling profits"}, {"id": 797325840, "item_id": 49832865, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49832865", "by": "dbg31415", "date": "2026-09-24", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Jellyfin has been great for sharing with friends, and having them share with me.", "excerpt": "I switched from Plex a year or so ago. Jellyfin has been great for sharing with friends, and having them share with me. * The Free Software Media System | Jellyfin // https://jellyfin.org/", "context": "", "use_case": "media server sharing", "switched_from": "Plex", "story": "Disney+ and Hulu raise prices by up to 13 percent after doubling profits"}, {"id": 797324000, "item_id": 49832750, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49832750", "by": "summermusic", "date": "2026-09-24", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "then use something like Jellyfin to pull from that", "excerpt": "In general terms, set up a seedbox VM that is configured so it can only access the internet through Tor/VPN. Join a private tracker (I recommend IPT). Only allow file transfer one-way to your NAS or whatever, then use something like Jellyfin to pull from that.", "context": "", "use_case": "media server", "switched_from": "", "story": "Disney+ and Hulu raise prices by up to 13 percent after doubling profits"}, {"id": 795972050, "item_id": 49748253, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49748253", "by": "KomoD", "date": "2026-09-17", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Authelia, Immich, Jellyfin, Fusion, qBittorrent, Memos and Gitea.", "excerpt": "Authelia, Immich, Jellyfin, Fusion, qBittorrent, Memos and Gitea. I think that's all of them.", "context": "self-hoster", "use_case": "media server", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: What self-hosted apps do you use daily?"}, {"id": 795971409, "item_id": 49748213, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49748213", "by": "recvonline", "date": "2026-09-17", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Jellyfin: Movies and TV Shows", "excerpt": "* Kavita: eBooks and Comics * Jellyfin: Movies and TV Shows * Seafile: Hosting my private files * AdGuard Home: DNS/Ad blocking for all my devices * Vaultwarden: Passwords * Immich: For my photos * Plausible: Analytics * Audiobookshelf: Audiobooks * Radarr/Sonarr/Prowlarr + Transmission * Radicale: Calendar + Contacts * HedgeDoc: For my Markdown files LLMs made it REALLY easy to setup a self hosting server and mainta", "context": "self-hoster", "use_case": "movies and TV", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: What self-hosted apps do you use daily?"}, {"id": 795964337, "item_id": 49747771, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49747771", "by": "austin-cheney", "date": "2026-09-17", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "Jellyfin - videos and such", "excerpt": "* PiHole - dns * Jellyfin - videos and such * mealie - recipes * aphorio - my own app for container management, web servers, sockets, and more. It can do 5,000,000 messages person on a single socket roundtrip * gamevault - like Jellyfin for games * there is an audio app I wrote that I use daily * ghost - blogging on my public web server There are some others I run additionally but those listed above are the main ones", "context": "", "use_case": "media streaming", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: What self-hosted apps do you use daily?"}, {"id": 794085104, "item_id": 49630319, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49630319", "by": "nobody9999", "date": "2026-09-09", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Jellyfin and (just as importantly -- at least for me) the distribution (Fedora) I use have been very good at patching/releasing updates", "excerpt": ">I don't believe in Jellyfin being secure enough to put on the public Internet. In my case, Jellyfin is on my home network, and the box has access to a lot of files and devices. Fair enough. IME, Jellyfin and (just as importantly -- at least for me) the distribution (Fedora) I use have been very good at patching/releasing updates to both the clients and servers when vulnerabilities are found. Initially, I stuffed jel", "context": "", "use_case": "media server", "switched_from": "", "story": "Jellyfin 12.0"}, {"id": 793996848, "item_id": 49624803, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49624803", "by": "altmanaltman", "date": "2026-09-09", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "only I use my jellyfin mostly", "excerpt": "yeah when I started my homelab journey I wanted my windows desktop to also be a server. Over time i moved to pis and other smaller footprint stuff but my media server still is my desktop pc and works via a remote wake up and sleep method over day/night cycle to manage less power consumption. only I use my jellyfin mostly so how can i watch stuff if i am asleep", "context": "homelab user", "use_case": "home media server", "switched_from": "", "story": "Jellyfin 12.0"}, {"id": 793755440, "item_id": 49609715, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49609715", "by": "NoGravitas", "date": "2026-09-08", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I have been using the Jellyfin addon for Kodi as my main client", "excerpt": "Interesting! I have been using the Jellyfin addon for Kodi as my main client, but it would be interesting to try Android TV again on the same device, since I 90% only use it for things on Jellyfin. How is the music player on it?", "context": "", "use_case": "media streaming", "switched_from": "", "story": "Jellyfin 12.0"}, {"id": 793742352, "item_id": 49608897, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49608897", "by": "she46BiOmUerPVj", "date": "2026-09-08", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I am really looking forward to multiple libraries actually separating the contents.", "excerpt": "They don't mention it so I don't think it was changed, but I am really looking forward to multiple libraries actually separating the contents. This <https://github.com/jellyfin/jellyfin/issues/17215> is an example bug; there were others but I can't find them at the moment.", "context": "", "use_case": "media server", "switched_from": "", "story": "Jellyfin 12.0"}, {"id": 793716976, "item_id": 49607311, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49607311", "by": "abenga", "date": "2026-09-08", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "My only beef with Jellyfind when I used it some time back was inability to resize subtitles", "excerpt": "My only beef with Jellyfind when I used it some time back was inability to resize subtitles, which were huge on a large TV. Could have been lack of knowledge on my part though.", "context": "", "use_case": "media server", "switched_from": "", "story": "Jellyfin 12.0"}, {"id": 793681632, "item_id": 49605102, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49605102", "by": "VladVladikoff", "date": "2026-09-08", "stance": "warn", "quote": "I switched to jellyfin about 6 months ago and I can say it is definitely worse.", "excerpt": "I switched to jellyfin about 6 months ago and I can say it is definitely worse. I\u2019m constantly fighting to fix thumbnails, fix episodes to be in the same show, force rescans to get it to even recognize a show that already exists. I never had any of these problems with plex. Plex also defaults to transcoding which fixes a lot of gaps with clients that don\u2019t support certain codecs. I\u2019m often running into issues where i", "context": "", "use_case": "media server", "switched_from": "Plex", "story": "Jellyfin 12.0"}, {"id": 783990096, "item_id": 48999381, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48999381", "by": "lthi747", "date": "2026-07-21", "stance": "warn", "quote": "Constantly have issues with playback, files indexing and watch statuses that not marked", "excerpt": "Well, good luck Andrew and Anthony! Jellyfin is great project and good software when is working, unfortunately for me it doesn\u2019t works very well. Constantly have issues with playback, files indexing and watch statuses that not marked, but that are small issues compred to the hell with subtitles. Very often out of sync (if they load) So I switched to nova player and sharing my tv shows and music collection over SMB. I", "context": "", "use_case": "media server", "switched_from": "", "story": "Jellyfin founder Andrew leaves team"}, {"id": 783870000, "item_id": 48991875, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48991875", "by": "petepete", "date": "2026-07-21", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I've used Jellyfin for years and my experience is currently incredibly smooth and works like a dream for the whole family.", "excerpt": "I've used Jellyfin for years and my experience is currently incredibly smooth and works like a dream for the whole family. I only use it for movies and TV shows though, the live TV experience (with a HDHomeRun) was incredibly buggy and slow, and once you've tried it and failed, it seems like it's impossible to remove the remnants of it from your interface. The music and audiobook support never felt like it was as pol", "context": "", "use_case": "movies and TV shows", "switched_from": "", "story": "Jellyfin founder Andrew leaves team"}, {"id": 783847072, "item_id": 48990442, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48990442", "by": "amiga386", "date": "2026-07-21", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Jellyfin is a daily driver for me and works amazingly.", "excerpt": "While I'd agree that the 10.11.x releases have terrible performance on some APIs to the extent that I rolled back to 10.10.x and marked it as held, until they release 12.x... Jellyfin is a daily driver for me and works amazingly. I have thousands of films, TV shows, books, music, and it lets me navigate and use them perfectly well. I have a wonderful little Linux media server. What sort of bugs affect you?", "context": "", "use_case": "films, TV, books, music media server", "switched_from": "", "story": "Jellyfin founder Andrew leaves team"}, {"id": 783807520, "item_id": 48987970, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48987970", "by": "muppetman", "date": "2026-07-20", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Again, I love Jellyfin and I use it daily.", "excerpt": "Because Plex worked amazingly ~5-6 years ago, while Jellyfin was still very early stage. It'd sort of work. So there's a lot of \"Well I'm already using Plex\" inertia. Plus Plex has very lovely, polished clients, you can easily invite people, share your library with others etc etc. Once they got all that of course, then the changes/fees/ads/bloat started. Jellyfin is great, it's all I've ever used. But it's still very", "context": "", "use_case": "home media server", "switched_from": "", "story": "Jellyfin founder Andrew leaves team"}, {"id": 771106273, "item_id": 48194142, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48194142", "by": "stavros", "date": "2026-05-19", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I switched to Jellyfin and haven't looked back.", "excerpt": "Plex has slowly been going down the drain. I could be convinced to buy a lifetime pass for $90 (even if it's just for paying to watch my own content), but $750 is strictly \"get outta here\" territory. With how it's been stagnating recently, even the current prices are a hard sell for me, especially given how \"lifetime\" with tech companies tends to mean \"~five years\". I switched to Jellyfin and haven't looked back.", "context": "", "use_case": "media server", "switched_from": "Plex", "story": "New Lifetime Plex Pass Pricing"}, {"id": 742702688, "item_id": 46418918, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46418918", "by": "ku1ik", "date": "2025-12-29", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "switched to Jellyfin and couldn\u2019t be happier!", "excerpt": "There\u2019s always risk of a rug pull or going the wrong direction with \u201copen-source\u201d software developed by a for-profit company (Plex, MinIO, Mattermost in this example). When choosing software that I run in my \u201chomelab\u201d I lean towards community developed projects first. They may not always have as high quality as the ones offered by commercial entities but they\u2019re just safer for the long term and have no artificial lim", "context": "homelab user", "use_case": "media server", "switched_from": "Plex", "story": "Self-hosting is being enshittified"}]}