Plex has overhauled its apps from the ground up to make them easier to navigate. The teams says it will be able to roll out new features faster as well.
I’m in the same boat as you. I’d love to switch but the user experience of Jellyfin is still pretty bad outside the most basic cases. If you have a media center PC, it’s fine, but if you want to be able to switch between several devices the way you can with Netflix, it’s quite poor.
Plex is slowly trending down and Jellyfin is slowly trending up. I hope Jellyfin outpaces Plex before the enshittification is complete, but it’s a steep hill to climb.
Switching between wasn’t seamless, it kept forgetting where I left off on the last device, which was pretty annoying. Also, mobile/remote connectivity was spotty for me. Never got to the bottom of that, but my best guess is Plex’s relay system makes up for a lot of random network issues. My best work-around was to add my phone to tailscale, but obviously that’s not a great solution and won’t work for a lot of devices.
Overall, my impression was that Plex is a lot more polished. I also bought a lifetime membership years ago, so I have no incentive to switch to something that isn’t better. Plex isn’t perfect, but it was still better than Jellyfin as of a few months ago. I honestly hope that changes soon, I have zero faith in Plex as a company.
The switching thing is really weird, for me it is always saved across devices and I can just play from where I was on the other device. But maybe that is a newer feature that wasn’t yet there when you tried it.
Overall, my impression was that Plex is a lot more polished
That I can understand, but with plex trying to be a streaming provider themselves, it makes it very confusing for not so tech-savvy people
I also have a plex lifetime pass beacuse it was really the only option like 10 years ago and it was pretty solid. I run plex and jellyfin in parallel now and some of my friends use jellyfin, others plex. I myself almost only use jellyfin at the moment and it works pretty well for me
This is a sitting duck for subpoenas to mass punish media libraries once copyright holders get a more friendly government that cares less about citizens rights (which is coming up here soon).
Nothing about my jelly fin instance leaks my information to anyone else’s servers.
Not asking this to be combative, but as Jellyfin convert I’m curious what quality/features you are missing? Also what platform are you using mainly?
I watch mostly using the Android app or Nvidia Shield, and the client does everything Plex did (in terms of just media watching - no DVR or other features ) without all the bloat the current Plex client brings.
For me, Plex works great on my Synology while Jellyfin is completely unusable - video payback simply crashes. Running Jellyfin on my desktop machine gets it to work, but it takes over 24 hours to scan my media library and doesn’t automatically add new media when I add new files.
Yep. I’m guessing it insists on transcoding the video but doesn’t have the horsepower. Plex either has a superior transcoder or detects it doesn’t need to transcode it.
I think the transcode part is decided by the client, but in the Jellyfin server admin you can control if a client can request a transcode (which may not be actually needed - and if you know what client they are running it’s probably easier to decide). This could just be client setting though, because I know on Jellyfin you can change the “backend” in the client that it tries to use and can make the difference on things like x265/HVEC playing back or not.
Hmm, I’m not sure that’s the case here. I tried this with two different browsers (Firefox & Chrome) on two different computers, plus the native client on an Android phone, Android TV, and Android tablet, with various server settings - none of them worked.
Show me an AppleTV JellyFin client that “just works”. Something my mom & dad could use to watch a movie. Something that can do normal media player things like seeking or subtitles.
There is a huge disparity in the quality, support, and features of the various clients.
I set my parents up with infuse and it works fine with no issues. To be fair apple doesn’t seem to be very supportive of foss development on their devices
Right, but the clients I use don’t have these issues. Maybe there’s an issue with the AppleTV client, that’s fair criticism, but saying that Jellyfin has inferior quality is not accurate.
Copy the text from the docker-compose section, and paste it into a file called compose.yaml
You can also add your other programs which rely on each other (Sonarr/Radar/qBitttorrent) in this same compose.yaml file (you can find them on this website).
When copying the other programs, omit the lines:
---Services:
After that, in your terminal, navigate to where the compose.yaml file is, and run this command
docker compose up -d
Now your suite of applications are installed and can talk to each other.
You’ll need to change some of the details of the compose file (to set timezones and media directories).
You can restart programs with
docker restart jellfin
LinuxServer.io are basically your one-stop shop for home-server applications
The UI for the Xbox app is rudimentary and a bit janky, but the performance is undeniably better than Plex. I have Plex and Jellyfin on the same machine, serving the same content, and Plex stutters often. It is especially bad when using subtitles. Jellyfin has no such issues.
I use JF. It’s ok but still rough around the edges and if we count as JF the apps, I have to admit that the Android TV app is pretty bad, it’s chokefull of very basic bugs, like crashing on start, and missing very basic features like delaying subtitles and the navigation is pretty bad, especially for TV show, navigating between series, episodes and home is a hot mess.
Well, Jellyfin is right over there, and it’s FOSS too. Consider switching, it’s pretty great.
The quality and features of JellyFin are nowhere close to Plex. I have used both for years.
I’m in the same boat as you. I’d love to switch but the user experience of Jellyfin is still pretty bad outside the most basic cases. If you have a media center PC, it’s fine, but if you want to be able to switch between several devices the way you can with Netflix, it’s quite poor.
Plex is slowly trending down and Jellyfin is slowly trending up. I hope Jellyfin outpaces Plex before the enshittification is complete, but it’s a steep hill to climb.
How does it not work for you? I use it on my phone, laptop, ipad, kodi, … without issues
Switching between wasn’t seamless, it kept forgetting where I left off on the last device, which was pretty annoying. Also, mobile/remote connectivity was spotty for me. Never got to the bottom of that, but my best guess is Plex’s relay system makes up for a lot of random network issues. My best work-around was to add my phone to tailscale, but obviously that’s not a great solution and won’t work for a lot of devices.
Overall, my impression was that Plex is a lot more polished. I also bought a lifetime membership years ago, so I have no incentive to switch to something that isn’t better. Plex isn’t perfect, but it was still better than Jellyfin as of a few months ago. I honestly hope that changes soon, I have zero faith in Plex as a company.
The switching thing is really weird, for me it is always saved across devices and I can just play from where I was on the other device. But maybe that is a newer feature that wasn’t yet there when you tried it.
That I can understand, but with plex trying to be a streaming provider themselves, it makes it very confusing for not so tech-savvy people
I also have a plex lifetime pass beacuse it was really the only option like 10 years ago and it was pretty solid. I run plex and jellyfin in parallel now and some of my friends use jellyfin, others plex. I myself almost only use jellyfin at the moment and it works pretty well for me
The big thing for me is privacy and control.
Plex requires Cloud access via accounts.
This is a sitting duck for subpoenas to mass punish media libraries once copyright holders get a more friendly government that cares less about citizens rights (which is coming up here soon).
Nothing about my jelly fin instance leaks my information to anyone else’s servers.
You can’t say the same about Plex.
Can you elaborate on how it’s poor in that regard? That’s how I and many of my friends use it, and none of us have had any issues relating to that.
Not asking this to be combative, but as Jellyfin convert I’m curious what quality/features you are missing? Also what platform are you using mainly?
I watch mostly using the Android app or Nvidia Shield, and the client does everything Plex did (in terms of just media watching - no DVR or other features ) without all the bloat the current Plex client brings.
No Chromecast support was a dealbreaker for me.
The Android version at least has Chromecast support, not sure on other platforms.
For me, Plex works great on my Synology while Jellyfin is completely unusable - video payback simply crashes. Running Jellyfin on my desktop machine gets it to work, but it takes over 24 hours to scan my media library and doesn’t automatically add new media when I add new files.
So the server part runs worse from your NAS? That seems odd but I have never run either from a NAS so no idea how to help. =(
Yep. I’m guessing it insists on transcoding the video but doesn’t have the horsepower. Plex either has a superior transcoder or detects it doesn’t need to transcode it.
I think the transcode part is decided by the client, but in the Jellyfin server admin you can control if a client can request a transcode (which may not be actually needed - and if you know what client they are running it’s probably easier to decide). This could just be client setting though, because I know on Jellyfin you can change the “backend” in the client that it tries to use and can make the difference on things like x265/HVEC playing back or not.
Hmm, I’m not sure that’s the case here. I tried this with two different browsers (Firefox & Chrome) on two different computers, plus the native client on an Android phone, Android TV, and Android tablet, with various server settings - none of them worked.
Quality is fine, sounds like user error. Features sure, but that’s to be expected with a paid app.
Show me an AppleTV JellyFin client that “just works”. Something my mom & dad could use to watch a movie. Something that can do normal media player things like seeking or subtitles.
There is a huge disparity in the quality, support, and features of the various clients.
I set my parents up with infuse and it works fine with no issues. To be fair apple doesn’t seem to be very supportive of foss development on their devices
I don’t use Apple products so I can’t speak to the AppleTV support.
But your criticisms seem to be of clients for Jellyfin rather than Jellyfin itself.
They are effectively one and the same. You cannot use JellyFin without a client.
Right, but the clients I use don’t have these issues. Maybe there’s an issue with the AppleTV client, that’s fair criticism, but saying that Jellyfin has inferior quality is not accurate.
I jumped to linux and downloaded jellyfin… shit is too complicated I havent got time to get to terms with it
Guy who runs Plex on a Ubuntu container on Proxmox.
Are you using the LSIO docker image, or did you install it manually via the official website instructions?
Ahh think I did the website
There’s a much easier way.
https://docs.linuxserver.io/images/docker-jellyfin/#usage
Copy the text from the docker-compose section, and paste it into a file called compose.yaml
You can also add your other programs which rely on each other (Sonarr/Radar/qBitttorrent) in this same compose.yaml file (you can find them on this website).
When copying the other programs, omit the lines:
--- Services:After that, in your terminal, navigate to where the compose.yaml file is, and run this command
Now your suite of applications are installed and can talk to each other.
You’ll need to change some of the details of the compose file (to set timezones and media directories).
You can restart programs with
LinuxServer.io are basically your one-stop shop for home-server applications
yeah… containers are easy as long as you know wth you’re doing.
Is there a jellyfin app on the Xbox? The ps5? Roku TV app store?
I think no so it’s hard to switch if you have family using many different devices to watch plex.
The UI for the Xbox app is rudimentary and a bit janky, but the performance is undeniably better than Plex. I have Plex and Jellyfin on the same machine, serving the same content, and Plex stutters often. It is especially bad when using subtitles. Jellyfin has no such issues.
I use JF. It’s ok but still rough around the edges and if we count as JF the apps, I have to admit that the Android TV app is pretty bad, it’s chokefull of very basic bugs, like crashing on start, and missing very basic features like delaying subtitles and the navigation is pretty bad, especially for TV show, navigating between series, episodes and home is a hot mess.