Jellyfin

Last updated
Jellyfin
Developer(s) Jellyfin Team
Initial releaseDecember 30, 2018;6 years ago (2018-12-30)
Stable release
10.10.5 [1]   OOjs UI icon edit-ltr-progressive.svg / 25 January 2025;3 days ago (25 January 2025)
Repository
Written in C# (Server)
Operating system Cross platform
Platform Microsoft Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, iOS, iPadOS, Amazon Fire TV, Kodi, Roku, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, Docker
Available in Multi Language
Type Media server
License GPLv2
Website jellyfin.org   OOjs UI icon edit-ltr-progressive.svg

Jellyfin is a free and open-source media server and suite of multimedia applications designed to organize, manage, and share digital media files to networked devices. Jellyfin consists of a server application installed on a machine running Microsoft Windows, macOS, Linux or in a Docker container, [2] and another application running on a client device such as a smartphone, tablet, smart TV, streaming media player, game console or in a web browser. [3] Jellyfin also can serve media to DLNA and Chromecast-enabled devices. [4] It is a fork of Emby. [5]

Contents

Features

Jellyfin follows a client–server model that allows for multiple users and clients to connect and stream digital media remotely. Because Jellyfin runs as a fully self-contained server, there is no subscription-based consumption model that exists, and Jellyfin does not utilize an external connection nor third-party authentication for this functionality. This enables Jellyfin to work on an isolated intranet in much the same fashion as it does over the Internet. Because it shares a heritage with Emby, some clients for that platform are unofficially compatible with Jellyfin; however, as Jellyfin's codebase diverges from Emby, this becomes less possible. Jellyfin does not support a direct migration path from Emby. [6]

Jellyfin is extensible, and optional third-party plugins exist to provide additional feature functionality. The project hosts an official repository, however plugins need not be hosted in the official repository to be installable. [7]

Version 10.6.0 of the server software introduced a feature known as "SyncPlay", which provides functionality for multiple users to consume media content together in a synchronized fashion. Support to read epub-format ebooks with Jellyfin was also added. Support for third-party plugin repositories was also added, allowing users to create and install plugins without the need for the official plugin repository. The web front end has been split off in a separate system in anticipation of the move towards a SQL backend and High Availability with multiple servers. [8]

Development

The project began on December 8, 2018, when co-founders Andrew Rabert and Joshua Boniface, among other users, agreed to fork Emby as a direct reaction to closing of open-source development on that project. [9] [10] [11] [12] A reference to streaming, Jellyfin's name was conceived of by Rabert the following day. [13] An initial release was made available on December 30, 2018.

Version history

Jellyfin's unique version numbering began with version 10.0.0 in January 2019.

Major versionRelease dateNotes
Latest version:10.10.0October 27, 2024 [14] Media Segments, DolbiVision HDR, deprecated x32 bit ARM, deprecated Raspberry Pi V4L2, deprecated Network paths
Old version, no longer maintained: 10.9.0May 11, 2024
Old version, no longer maintained: 10.8.0June 11, 2022
Old version, no longer maintained: 10.7.0March 8, 2021
Old version, no longer maintained: 10.6.0July 19, 2020Introduction of SyncPlay feature & epub reading
Old version, no longer maintained: 10.5.0March 8, 2020Hardware acceleration encoding and decoding support added for the Raspberry Pi
Old version, no longer maintained: 10.4.0October 6, 2019
Old version, no longer maintained: 10.3.0April 19, 2019
Old version, no longer maintained: 10.2.0February 16, 2019
Old version, no longer maintained: 10.1.0January 25, 2019
Old version, no longer maintained: 10.0.0January 7, 2019
Old version, no longer maintained: 3.5.2-5December 30, 2018Only release to use original Emby version numbering
Legend:
Old version
Old version, still maintained
Latest version
Latest preview version
Future release

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">GNOME Evolution</span> Personal information manager software and workgroup information management tool for GNOME

GNOME Evolution is the official personal information manager for GNOME. It has been an official part of GNOME since Evolution 2.0 was included with the GNOME 2.8 release in September 2004. It combines e-mail, address book, calendar, task list and note-taking features. Its user interface and functionality is similar to Microsoft Outlook. Evolution is free software licensed under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pidgin (software)</span> Open-source multi-platform instant messaging client

Pidgin is a free and open-source multi-platform instant messaging client, based on a library named libpurple that has support for many instant messaging protocols, allowing the user to simultaneously log in to various services from a single application, with a single interface for both popular and obsolete protocols, thus avoiding the hassle of having to deal with new software for each device and protocol.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">VideoLAN</span> Non-profit organization developing software

VideoLAN is a non-profit organization which develops software for playing video and other media formats. It originally developed two programs for media streaming, VideoLAN Client (VLC) and VideoLAN Server (VLS), but most of the features of VLS have been incorporated into VLC, with the result renamed VLC media player.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Psi (instant messaging client)</span> Instant messaging client

Psi is a free instant messaging client for the XMPP protocol which uses the Qt toolkit. It runs on Linux, Windows, macOS and OS/2.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kodi (software)</span> Free software media player

Kodi is a free and open-source media player and technology convergence software application developed by the Kodi Foundation, a non-profit technology consortium. Kodi is available for multiple operating systems and hardware platforms, with a software 10-foot user interface for use with televisions and remote controls. It allows users to play and view most streaming media, such as videos, music, podcasts, and videos from the Internet, as well as all common digital media files from local and network storage media, or TV gateway viewer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">MediaPortal</span>

MediaPortal is an open-source media player and digital video recorder software project, often considered an alternative to Windows Media Center. It provides a 10-foot user interface for performing typical PVR/TiVo functionality, including playing, pausing, and recording live TV; playing DVDs, videos, and music; viewing pictures; and other functions. Plugins allow it to perform additional tasks, such as watching online video, listening to music from online services such as Last.fm, and launching other applications such as games. It interfaces with the hardware commonly found in HTPCs, such as TV tuners, infrared receivers, and LCD displays.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lyrion Music Server</span> Open-source streaming audio server

Lyrion Music Server is a streaming audio server supported by the LMS community and formerly supported by Logitech, developed in particular to support their Squeezebox range of digital audio receivers.

A home server is a computing server located in a private computing residence providing services to other devices inside or outside the household through a home network or the Internet. Such services may include file and printer serving, media center serving, home automation control, web serving, web caching, file sharing and synchronization, video surveillance and digital video recorder, calendar and contact sharing and synchronization, account authentication, and backup services. In the recent times, it has become very common to run hundreds of applications as containers, isolated from the host operating system.

This is a comparison of digital video recorder (DVR), also known as personal video recorder (PVR), software packages. Note: this is may be considered a comparison of DVB software, not all listed packages have recording capabilities.

Video Acceleration API (VA-API) is an open source application programming interface that allows applications such as VLC media player or GStreamer to use hardware video acceleration capabilities, usually provided by the graphics processing unit (GPU). It is implemented by the free and open-source library libva, combined with a hardware-specific driver, usually provided together with the GPU driver.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Plex Inc.</span> Streaming media service

Plex Inc. is an American software company that runs its namesake ad-supported television and movie streaming service, and allows discussion and discovery of content on major subscription streaming services. Plex also develops media server software and apps to let users stream their personal media collections to their devices. Plex Inc. is based in Campbell, California.

Digital Audio Control Protocol (DACP) is a protocol used by iTunes and other audio player and server applications on Mac, Windows and Linux computers, enabling remote control by mobile devices such as iPhone and Android phones and tablet computers. By connecting the personal computer to loudspeakers the mobile device is used as a two-way remote control, allowing selection and control of music playback within a traditional listening environment such as a home or apartment.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">LXC</span> Operating system-level virtualization for Linux

Linux Containers (LXC) is an operating system-level virtualization method for running multiple isolated Linux systems (containers) on a control host using a single Linux kernel.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">OpenMediaVault</span> NAS operating system

OpenMediaVault (OMV) is a free Linux distribution designed for network-attached storage (NAS). The project's lead developer is Volker Theile, who instituted it in 2009. OMV is based on the Debian operating system, and is licensed through the GNU General Public License v3.

mpv (media player) Free and open-source media player software

mpv is free and open-source media player software based on MPlayer, mplayer2 and FFmpeg. It runs on several operating systems, including Unix-like operating systems and Microsoft Windows, along with having an Android port called mpv-android. It is cross-platform, running on ARM, MIPS, PowerPC, RISC-V, s390x, x86/IA-32, x86-64, and some other by 3rd party.

Docker is a set of platform as a service (PaaS) products that use OS-level virtualization to deliver software in packages called containers. The service has both free and premium tiers. The software that hosts the containers is called Docker Engine. It was first released in 2013 and is developed by Docker, Inc.

Emby is a media server designed to organize, play, and stream audio and video to a variety of devices. Emby's source code was mostly open with some closed-source components as of August 2017, releases of the software published via the Emby website are however proprietary and cannot be replicated from source due to the build scripts also being proprietary. As of version 3.5.3 Emby has been relicensed and is now closed-source, while open source components will be moved to plugins. Due to this, a free open source fork of Emby was created called Jellyfin. Emby uses a client–server model.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Unraid</span> Linux-based operating system for network attached storage.

Unraid is a proprietary Linux-based operating system designed to run on home servers in order to operate as a network-attached storage (NAS) device, application server, media server and a virtualization host. Unraid is proprietary software developed and maintained by Lime Technology, Inc. Users of the software are encouraged to write and use plugins and Docker applications to extend the functionality of their systems.

References

  1. ↑ "Release 10.10.5". 25 January 2025. Retrieved 25 January 2025.
  2. ↑ "Jellyfin Docker Compose: Powerful FREE Media Server in 5 min | SHB". 2023-03-17. Retrieved 2023-05-01.
  3. ↑ Sava, Alexandra (July 20, 2020). "Collect, manage, organize and stream all your favorite movies". Softpedia. Archived from the original on July 23, 2020. Retrieved July 22, 2020.
  4. ↑ Anand (March 13, 2020). "Plex vs Emby vs Jellyfin vs Kodi: In-depth Comparison". SmartHomeBeginner. Archived from the original on July 13, 2021. Retrieved July 22, 2020.
  5. ↑ "Home | Documentation - Jellyfin Project". jellyfin.org. Archived from the original on 2021-07-23. Retrieved 2020-05-06.
  6. ↑ "Migrating from Emby to Jellyfin". Jellyfin. Archived from the original on July 23, 2020. Retrieved July 22, 2020.
  7. ↑ "Plugins". Jellyfin. Archived from the original on July 23, 2020. Retrieved July 22, 2020.
  8. ↑ "Jellyfin Release - v10.6.0". Jellyfin. July 19, 2020. Archived from the original on July 21, 2020. Retrieved July 22, 2020.
  9. ↑ "Jellyfin: Free Software Emby Media Server Fork Is Announced After Emby Becomes Proprietary". Linux Uprising. December 19, 2018. Archived from the original on July 22, 2020. Retrieved July 22, 2020.
  10. ↑ Malmlund, Matt (July 14, 2020). "7 Best Home Media Server Software Choices". Heavy.com. Archived from the original on July 23, 2020. Retrieved July 22, 2020.
  11. ↑ Ashwin (August 19, 2019). "Jellyfin is an open source alternative for Plex, and here's how to setup a server on Windows". Ghacks. Archived from the original on July 23, 2020. Retrieved July 22, 2020.
  12. ↑ King, Bertel (August 14, 2019). "The 8 Best Media Server Software Options for Linux". MakeUseOf. Archived from the original on July 11, 2020. Retrieved July 22, 2020.
  13. ↑ "A new name for the project #2". Jellyfin via GitHub. August 9, 2018. Archived from the original on January 17, 2023. Retrieved July 22, 2019.
  14. ↑ "Release Blog for 10.10.0 | Jellyfin". jellyfin.org. 2024-10-27. Retrieved 2024-09-19.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.