Ahoy mateys, it’s time to setup Jellyfin if you prefer not to pay for the privilege of self-hosting your own content.
cross-posted from: https://programming.dev/post/27204525
We are also changing how remote playback works for streaming personal media (that is, playback when not on the same local network as the server). The reality is that we need more resources to continue putting forth the best personal media experience, and as a result, we will no longer offer remote playback as a free feature. This—alongside the new Plex Pass pricing—will help provide those resources. This change will apply to the future release of our new Plex experience for mobile and other platforms.
I want to switch to jellyfin, I selfhost but I don’t want to open a port directly to my server. I don’t understand how everyone else figures this out and I’m apparently an idiot.
Also do people expect all who use my server to start a VPN each time? What if they leave it on and their other streaming services are using my bandwidth.
I don’t understand and I have looked it up but I don’t see a consensus.
Opening a port isn’t really bad if you have your firewall configured properly. You will have to open a port either way with jellyfin or wireguard. If you have a TLS/SSL certificate then just doing jellyfin is fine (but have good passwords since it’s public facing), otherwise a VPN like wireguard will handle encryption for you.
As for managing traffic on the VPN you can follow this advice: https://serverfault.com/questions/1075973/wireguard-how-to-only-tunnel-some-of-the-traffic
Basically setup your firewall to stop extra traffic on your end, and change accessible IPs in wireguard to your service(s) so the peer knows not to talk on that interface for unrelated things.
It isn’t bad until an exploit is discovered on jellyfin. Then it can get really bad.
It already happened on Plex. Just a matter of time until it happens to Jellyfin.
Do you have a recommended way of remote accessing a server?
you can do a thing called UDP hole punching for NAT traversal, buuuuuut afaik these days a lot of consumer routers consider it a security risk and attempt to block it
I just use Tailscale when remote streaming.
From their docs:
By default, Tailscale acts as an overlay network: it only routes traffic between devices running Tailscale, but doesn’t touch your public internet traffic, such as when you visit Google or Twitter. The overlay network configuration is ideal for most people who need secure communication between sensitive devices (such as company servers or home computers), but don’t need extra layers of encryption or latency for their public internet connection.
Just gonna… Drop this here…
In my experience Jellyfin doesn’t find or handle subtitles nearly as well, and I can’t watch modern movies without subtitles.
I have never had an issue with subtitles on Jellyfin, and my wife has turned our household into an always-on subtitles household. Are you making use of the Open Subtitles plugin?
And so it begins …
For me it began since they announced they are killing the watch together feature… For other people it started a long time ago.
That is so sad. I was just reconfigured my hone server with plex last weekend. Seems like it’s time to switch to jellyfin now. Luckily didn’t finish the configuration.
If you have Plex pass (honestly, get the lifetime, it’s worth it, jellyfin is pretty shit compared to Plex) it will not effect users of your server.
How exactly is it “pretty shit”? Running Jellyfin on my network with zero issues whatsoever.
I had Plex lifetime and still switched to Jellyfin as an open source and community driven project will always be better in the future compared to a commercial product
They would charge you to watch your own DVDs if they could
… A fee for adding content to each media, capped libraries? What is next?
Let’s brainstorm guys ;D
nice try Plex
So I’ve currently got a yearly Plex Pass, because I didn’t want to get locked into Plex or feel any pressure to stay if they went down the dunny, but have been putting off migrating to JellyFin. For anybody who has, how did you find the process?
My media isn’t named the most sensibly. I just keep whatever name it came with for the most part. I also liked how Plex just handled the authentication and remote streaming for me - at no stage did I have to open up a port on my router, setup a reverse proxy, etc. Can I migrate my watch history?
I’m fairly new to this. Any migration advice or thoughts would be appreciated!
E: only me, though I stream things externally while out of the house fairly regularly. I’m tech literate enough to follow a readme and read docs, but that’s about it. I don’t need to worry about other, less tech savvy, users streaming my library
I switched to jellyfish last year. Though I didn’t try to get watch history over. Jellyfin should handle your file structure very similarly to Plex, so if what you have now works, it should work on jellyfin.
If it’s only you and you’re only using phones and laptops outside, then you can just skip reverse proxy and all that and just VPN into your system. Wireguard, tailscale, or zerotier are good options with simple easy setups.
I think you should just give jellyfin a try. You can run it at the same time as Plex, so you can just play around with it and see how you like it.
Thanks rusty for the helpful answer! I’m going to have a look at downloading it and setting it up later tonight. I’ve heard a lot of good things about tailscale, so I might look for some newbie tailscale guides. When it comes to that kinda stuff, my biggest worry is that I might miss a step or not set it up right and then I’ve ended up exposing everything to the unfiltered internet and then my PC ends up in a botnet
If that’s your concern I personally find ZeroTier a lot simpler to set up securely. You basically can’t expose things to the public internet through it because it doesn’t even require you to forward ports or anything.
I was planning to switch to Jellyfin but having to sideload the app in my Samsung TV is a headache for me. But guess I will be doing exactly that now.
If you really don’t want to deal with sideloading, Jellyfin can be accessed through an add on in Kodi (assuming Kodi is easily installable on the TV)
Jellyfin vue and access it from a browser.
Fuck around with proprietary software and find out.
The “Remote playback with a Remote Watch Pass subscription” just sounds like IPTV with extra steps. I’m kind of ok with them requiring Plex Pass for remote streaming for the server owner, but then I have lifetime so it doesn’t affect me. Might feel differently I was having to pay.
It also means they will now have official payment info to tie everyones identity to their Plex server. So if the cops come-a-knocking they’ll be fully able to comply with information requests.
I mean, that’s always kinda been the case. Plex uses their own infrastructure to do remote streaming, and that requires that they know your IP address, and therefore your ISP. I don’t think this really changes much in regard to cops. If that’s your concern, definitely don’t use Plex.
If that’s your concern, definitely don’t use Plex.
Or IPTV
I mean, that’s always kinda been the case. Plex uses their own infrastructure to do remote streaming
Only if you don’t configure your server properly. Then you use their infrastructure to punch a connection through.
I’m not sure what you mean.
You don’t need to use their infrastructure for remote streaming. If you forward the port properly and setup your server properly. You can actually outright disable the remote streaming through them by unchecking the relay option in settings…
Does anyone have any helpful guides on setting up jellyfin with a certificate so they can privately host it while also keeping it secure and up to date? I think if using docker it would make sense to use compose and configure traeffic proxy and use let’s encrypt for certificates.
Plex takes care of this for you with their cert and authentication systems. I feel like if user management and secure authentication is easy to set up then that is the primary reason to leave Plex. If I can just hand out accounts to anyone whom I would like to access my instance with ease then my family members could easily access it.
If one was to host from the home, using something like tailscale to host it online with forwarding a port would also be ideal.
Look into a thing called Caddy. It can do a few things but it makes certificates super easy. You will likely need to buy a domain tho. They can be cheap if you don’t care what its called.
Cool. I was just looking to see if someone had a guide because I’m trying to understand the pitfalls of doing it this way and I’m curious if anyone else has opened up Jellyfin to the world.
Does anyone have any helpful guides on setting up jellyfin with a certificate so they can privately host it while also keeping it secure and up to date?
You can expose jellyfin via a reverse_proxy like caddy2, godoxy, ssl-proxy, or you can use something like lego to directly manage your certificates without the proxy. Lego is great because it works with dozens of dns providers, even cloudflare.
I’m probably gonna set up Jellyfin this weekend. Any tips for a first timer?
Set up docker. I ran an installation on Linux and on Windows for a few years but having it running from docker using external drives for library is a game changer. Always up to date. User files and settings Safed on a seperate folder so you can transfer it to a different os any time. Fantastic.
This, also a recurring thing I keep hearing from people moving from Plex to Jellyfin is that not all media get recognised correctly.
Which is probably because Jellyfin is less forgiving on file structure, file names. So check their site first for what Jellyfin needs: https://jellyfin.org/docs/general/server/media/shows
It’s not unreasonable requirements just seems somehow Plex didn’t care about structure as much.
Just use the arrs correctly and there will be no issue except for weird stuff.
Not an option everywhere outside the states. I mostly have to do that by hand
How so?
I am outside of the states and have absolutely no issues with recognition. Not for TV, movie nor anime.
And it’s usually available on tmdb or tvdb.Should have clarified. It’s not an option if you want to use it to get content that is not in english. For german content for example, you need access to german private trackers which you only get with a good torrenting record in addition to catching the exceedingly rare opportunities to get an invite.
Doesnt matter.
I download multiple things with radarr from 3 available german trackers without issues.
Imports properly and depending on my jellyfin library settings will get either german or english metadata.Dunno what you are having trouble with.
I accidentally download German things all the time on mine.
If setting up official docker container looks hard, check out linuxserver.io’s docker container for Jellyfin. Even HWA is very easy.
You can’t even fucking bring yourself to write hardware acceleration for the newbie asking for help?
🤡
Take it slow.
Don’t ditch Plex just yet but slowly transition the move.
Test it with your usual browser. If playback doesnt work, test with another browser or the phone app.I set up tail scale with mine so I can easily access it anywhere.
Plex has been on a downward spiral for awhile now. This will really kill the service for a lot of people, wonder if Plex sharing will be a thing of the past and people switch to jellyfin sharing
I think most people that host a server already had the lifetime license so this won’t affect them
If you are worried about opening port 443 on your local firewall I suggest trying to get a cheap vps with decent bandwidth and hosting a reverse proxy on it that points back to your local jellyfin over a tunnel.
Ive been doing it for a few months now and finally got all my family off of Plex.
Or you can dump your media server on another vlan on your same network. That’s what I do.
Can you elaborate more on this? I’m wondering how to set up jellyfin for people outside my lan to use and its unclear to me which method is best.
does this mean the server will need Plex pass or each user individually?
Edit:
IMPORTANT NOTE FOR CURRENT PLEX PASS HOLDERS: For users who have an active Plex Pass subscription, remote playback will continue to be available to you without interruption from any Plex Media Server, after these changes go into effect. When running your own Plex Media Server as a subscriber, other users to whom you have granted access can also stream from the server (whether local or remote), without ANY additional charge—not even a mobile activation fee. More on that later in this update.
I found this elsewhere and it seems to clear up the issue, for me at least:
The new “Remote Watch Pass” is primarily for users who stream from servers owned by individuals without a Plex Pass. For example, if your friend runs a Plex server but doesn’t subscribe to Plex Pass, their remote users will need a Remote Watch Pass to continue streaming after the changes take effect. Because you have a Plex Pass, your remote users will continue to be able to stream from your server remotely without needing to purchase the remote access pass.
And just found this from the FAQ on the announcement page:
I do not have a Plex Pass, but stream remotely from a Plex Media Server:
To stream remotely starting on April 29, 2025, you will need a Remote Watch Pass or Plex Pass subscription on your account or the admin of the Plex Media Server from which you stream will need a Plex Pass subscription on their account.
I guess the whole idea of this move is to force self-hosters to pay for a Plex pass. But it’s a funny demographic to try to strongarm into a subscription. Most tech savvy self-hosters won’t think twice about spinning up a Jellyfin instance instead, especially given that it’s FOSS. And for those folks with a lifetime Plex pass this makes no difference.,
Yeah but anyone who is seriously using Plex already paid for one so I don’t get the outrage
Dito. The price increase for lifetime is hard and surely made so to push people into the recurring instead. But as a Plex Pass holder this won’t drive me to Jellyfin
You should however give jellyfin a shot as it has a bunch of cool features and is way more extensible than Plex.
Plex is still more polished but ive found there are a bunch of plugins for jellyfin that are really cool
I have a Jellyfin instance running in parallel to check out its progress, but its just not there yet for me.
What do you mean with extensible? The plugin ‘shop’?
https://github.com/awesome-jellyfin/awesome-jellyfin
I really like the intro detector edl creator, tube archivist metadata provider, subtitle extract, and playback reporting plugins
Also you can customize the CSS for your server that extends to all clients using the jf webapp. Plex will never have that
Lol, that Jellyfin needs a 3rd party plugin for intro detection says a lot about the maturity of the project. Also, there are other Frontends for plex
Self hosters do it to absorb the burden and avoid playing subscriptions. I don’t pay for Netflix because I don’t want to have the monthly fee (among other things), I host Plex myself and deal with all the server and library maintenance. If I have to pay a subscription to self host it’s a step backwards lol.
I bought the lifetime back in 2013 so I have no complaints, but the month to month is a rip off.
Glad I moved to JellyFin years ago.
