Security is definitely a tradeoff, and you have two good features missing. I think they'll make their way over, but it's a pain for sure.

Unless I'm missing something, Jellyfin can do playlists just fine for my liking anyway.

What are Smart Collections?

tailscale is the easiest option. learning curve isn't too bad, but definitely a hurdle for users.

fair assessment. there are two major features i still miss from plex:

1. bulk editing metadata
2. smart playlists

also setting up users with tailscale is a struggle, even the ones relatively tech literate.

As a former Plex user who is on Jellyfin now, I'd say Smart Collections and playlists. Their are tools out there you can use to try to achieve similar results, but the Plex implementation is far better.

Everyone is either saying I'm staying on plex or Move to jellyfin and I here just enjoying Emby. Its functional, easy to setup, and is a good middle ground for sharing without having to train people how to use it.

Yes, I paid for the license, and I know it isn't foss so the potential for enshitification exists, but for now its fine.

My kids can use it, so can my inlaws, and its been reliable.

They do not need a subscription, assuming you (the server owner) have a plex pass.

What little things? I've been using Jellyfin for a while now with very few complaints, but maybe I don't know what I'm missing.

I got the lifetime Plex like 13 years ago. I gave up on it about five years ago.

Yeah, switching isn't that easy. Especially if you have a lot of "unique" media types with different requirements for scraping metadata. Things like anime, audio books, or comedy albums.

TBF Plex doesn't handle those all that well either from a stock install. It was a lot of work to get it to handle everything well.

But also, Plex's proxy service for remote streaming, is it's killer feature that prevents me from switching. I need to access my media from networks where my private domain is blocked.

tried JellyFin, and it's just not there yet. lots of little things…

Good thing i got a lifetime PlexPass, like, 15 years ago when it was on sale for $35

The conversion is not the biggest issue. For my dad or Grandmother to stream my content, Plex as a streaming app is something they can easily understand and digest (though Plex's new streaming app has done quite a bit to undo that -_-). I have the subscription, I acquire the content, I choose who to share it with. Now they need a subscription, too? Where's the value? Why wouldn't they just pay for a streaming service at that point? I'm using my hardware and doing all the work and they are paying Plex? And if I accepted payment for the same thing it would be a crime! BUT I'm not sure I'm comfortable opening Jellyfin to the internet, even behind nginx, and I don't want to have to spend time setting things up for them or troubleshooting their issues w/ Jellyfin. I put enough labor into this thing already.

So yes obviously everyone should switch to the FOSS option, but in reality it's not that simple because the services aren't 1:1.

How are you doing remote streaming with Jellyfin?

Before the influx of "just use jellyfin" bros come in let me get ahead of it.

I ran Plex for a decade and loved it, had the subscription, was happy to pay for software I found value in. This however was the kicker, not because it i was directly affected (not because I had a lifetime subscription), but it signaled the end of Plex that I knew from before.

So I did switch. It was not easy or painless like people here claim. Metadata is stored in different ways that made conversion difficult. I tried multiple conversion tools and none of them worked for me, or left my library in a half state. I ended up just staring from scratch, and it was a couple of months before I was happy with it.

That being said, I think it's worth it. It's pretty much at feature parity, but mostly because Plex hasn't been doing anything for server owners while jellyfin devs have been for years now. I'm happier with jellyfin than I was with Plex.

So, to the "I use jellyfin LOL" guys here, no that's not helpful, and it's condescending. It pushes people away, but I have a weird feeling they want to push people away (and honestly if that's your only comment it's the same energy as crypto bros).

Instead, I empathize with Plex hosters, I was there, it's not a fun place to be anymore, and I am here to say that yes you can switch, no it's not as easy as Plex, but I personally think it's worth the effort. With all open source things the user interface and experience is definitely lacking, but if you're willing to put in the time it will be worth it.

Hey look it's One-Face.

Good thing I moved over to Jellyfin

You're better off googling how if you still haven't.

It should be the same way you edit it for other media which I do use Plex for. I just don't for music specifically.

But I can't stress enough that if it's just happening to one item, don't put too much effort I to this.

Some things Plex just doesn't recognize randomly. It is insanely rare and I think it's happened to me twice in a dozen years? And my Plex is large bro

Youll probably never have this problem again, so just Google how to manual make Plex recognize it, even if you have to type all the song titles out. It'll take 15 minutes and you'll probably never have to do it for anything else

Thank you very much for your prompt response.

Last.fm is an option for the data , but it affects your entire library and you constantly get a warning that the source is outdated and will stop working soon or something like that. I don't understand why, last.fm is far from abandoned and even Plex lets you connect your usage statistics to the site to receive suggestions.

If you don't use Plex for music, I guess you won't be able to help me with some data I don't know how to edit manually, like the most popular songs on the album. Thanks in any case.

Short answer:

Plex is just bad at random items.

For whatever reason there's just some things it will refuse to identify correctly and it needs done manually.

There are settings where you can change what source it uses to identify. I don't use it for music, so I'm not sure if last.fm is an option, but as far as I know there's no way to set it up to check one place first than another if no result, you have to manually cycle.

So it really is just easiest to manually add the info the rare times you run into it.

I don’t plan on doing that

That doesn’t happen very often either, but I only have 2 people outside my house who use it.

Let me know how that scales when you have 6+ people and cellular devices (with ever changing IP addresses).

“I don’t know. I’m not clicking a number thing.” - My normie family and friends. I have an address that literally my name. Like literally my legal name. And they’re skeptical of it.

Once while trying to troubleshoot something we wanted one person to install WireGuard. In his words “I’m not installing some random software I’ve never heard of just to fix this”.

Sometimes it’s worth remembering that the simple act of being here on Lemmy means we’re probably the most tech literate people we know and if you’re lucky enough to have a tech literate bubble around you as well then a simple invite to Jellyfin really is simple. But my group of friends are… less techy…

Give them the new one. It doesn’t happen very often. 3 months since the last time.

As for if their’s changes, they just let me know if they can’t get in and I investigate and it’s because I need to whitelist a new IP.

That doesn’t happen very often either, but I only have 2 people outside my house who use it.

What do you do when your IP changes?