I've been running plex since 2016 and jellyfin since 2019. I'm slowly moving users over to jellyfin with the plan to cut off plex at somepoint in the next couple years. Jellyfin is missing some quality of life features but nothing super crazy
this post was submitted on 23 Feb 2025
507 points (98.5% liked)
Selfhosted
42718 readers
1254 users here now
A place to share alternatives to popular online services that can be self-hosted without giving up privacy or locking you into a service you don't control.
Rules:
-
Be civil: we're here to support and learn from one another. Insults won't be tolerated. Flame wars are frowned upon.
-
No spam posting.
-
Posts have to be centered around self-hosting. There are other communities for discussing hardware or home computing. If it's not obvious why your post topic revolves around selfhosting, please include details to make it clear.
-
Don't duplicate the full text of your blog or github here. Just post the link for folks to click.
-
Submission headline should match the article title (don’t cherry-pick information from the title to fit your agenda).
-
No trolling.
Resources:
- selfh.st Newsletter and index of selfhosted software and apps
- awesome-selfhosted software
- awesome-sysadmin resources
- Self-Hosted Podcast from Jupiter Broadcasting
Any issues on the community? Report it using the report flag.
Questions? DM the mods!
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
I've been using both for ages.
For remote access to friends plex is easier and cleaner.
For offline viewing in Android plex is cleaner
I'm running tailscale with jellyfin for personal use and it's wonderful, But I wouldn't ask my relatives to do that and I don't trust to surface the port. Plex has a dedicated security team and 2FA.
The Roku client for jellyfin is also a futureless husk of a client.
I have lifetime Plex so I'm in no hurry to do a full conversion. I would love to drop plex all together though
I use Jellyfin for music mostly and it struggles with metadata. For example, if a song has two artists on it and I edit to correct it, it won't update correctly and I'll edit up with the artist "Artist A; Artist B".
Jellyfin seems solid.
The only issues I've had are with dodgy media files. Obviously better player hardware gets you better performance, but transcoding eliminates some of those issues.
I installed Mint last week and haven't addressed media players yet... strokes chin. Thanks for the info!
Jellyfin is so underrated
Yep
Welcome to the future
Been using jellyfin for a few years now, never had a problem vs constant problems with plex
I would probably be using Jellyfin if it were just me.
The handful of people in my family that use my Plex server though are all non-tech people. When I hear that random smart TV apps aren’t nearly as good, that is what gives me pause.
That, plus the fact that a lifetime Plex pass was a one-time purchase on sale several years ago. It may be a proprietary product instead of FOSS like it should be, but at least they aren’t trying switch me to $1.99/month or some BS like that. But they’re probably smart enough to know they’d really start the Plexodus!
Maybe I should run jellyfin alongside Plex to keep better tabs on it.
I'm a bit biased as I started with Jellyfin, but the Roku Jellyfin app works flawlessly on the family TV.
I'd advise at least becoming mildly familiar with how you'd go about it, since corpos suddenly rug-pulling existing users and forcing subscriptions is pretty common, basically expected, behavior of American business now.
That way you have an "out" and your service can have minimal downtime. :)
On the other hand, you might just find you like how sleek and functional Jellyfin is. I can only see wins for you here. :p
If the apps don't work for you then I'd stick to plex. But I had the opposite experience, especially with the Plex Android TV app, it is so shitty... And the Jellyfin Android TV app is rock solid
It is…..if you use a computer. Their AppleTV app still looks like some random coder’s pet project with random playback issues.
I just sucked it up and paid for Infuse Pro and now my Apple TV experience with Jellyfin is great
I've had Infuse Pro for about 6 years and it has been an absolutely perfect app for me. I've used it across many different iterations of home media servers (Emby, Jellyfin, NFS, SMB, etc...)
If you use Apple devices it's the best way to go.
I mean, just like everything else there's an optimal setup. I have a NAS with an extensive media library and running Jellyfin on it was a terrible experience. The NAS simply isn't powerful enough to make Jellyfin usable.
I fixed that issue by running the server on my PC, and the libraries point to my NAS library locations. It's the perfect setup. I get access to my GPU for HD video transcoding, and an overpowered CPU with the advantage of not having to worry about storage.
I feel like it's the perfect setup for me.
It’s not a transcoding power issue. It’s a UI consistency and usability issue. With every device having a slightly different UI, with some apps having issues if playing back natively and some needing transcoding, the experience is inconsistent and frankly doesn’t pass the “wife acceptance factor” test, or the “let your friends use it without needing to handhold them through regular troubleshooting for their particular device” test.
I still don’t use Plex and exclusively use Jellyfin, but it’s still a hard sell to non technical users. Plex has much more polish.
Huh, it works great on my android os Nvidia shield
The TV/mobile apps vary wildly in their capabilities and performance. Swiftfin is better for iOS devices, but not sure about AppleTV. That's my main gripe with Jellyfin overall.
The app on my LG TV is acceptable, but does have random problems, like it can't connect over TLS, and it's kinda slow to navigate. But it works, and my kids know how to work it.
I also use it on an LG TV and sometimes it can't run at its normal framerate with subtitles on. I haven't figured out why yet, but it might be embedded files like someone else says in this thread. Other than that it works like a charm.
Yeah, I did have a to transcode a bluray rip, but I think that might be a network limitation rather than a processing one. 1080p transcode worked fine, so it's not resolution.
One of these days I'll DIY a HTPC, but for now, the Jellyfin app works acceptably well.
I genuinely do not understand the issues people are having with Jellyfin subtitles. I just have Bazarr set up to automatically download and they play on every device (web, android, iOS, roku, android TV) with zero issues.
Depends on how you're viewing Jellyfin. I use Chromecast and Chromecast doesn't support embedded subtitles well with Jellyfin. So I usually just use ffmpeg to extract the subtitles to an srt file, and then they run fine;
pushd "\\nas\Media\Movies\"
fd -e mkv | each {|x| ffmpeg -i $x -map 0:s:0 $x.srt }
Temporarily maps my UNC network location to a usable drive, then using fd and an elvish each loop, iterate over all the mkv files, and use ffmpeg to extract the subtitles.
Ez-pz.
Sounds like it's mostly with embedded subs inside the media files already. Thats where all my subs are so I'm going to test soon but haven't played anything on jellyfin needing subs in a while
I now extract all my subs, but for the first 2 years using it I left everything embedded and it always worked normally. Even with some advanced ones like Jujutsu Kaisen and One Pace, which both use stylized ones.
Just tested and with Findroid on my phone, no subtitle options appeared at all, though it had 4 languages embedded. On my roku they showed up but as soon as I picked it it loaded until it said Error During Playback
I've never used Findroid, but they work on my regular Jellyfin app. I think on Roku transcoding is required, but afaik that's on Roku not supporting the subtitle format.
view more: next ›