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this post was submitted on 19 Mar 2025
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This might be a good time to remind everyone that Jellyfin is open source, free (as in beer) and is, at this point, a better media streamer than Plex. No fees, no ads, no constant pushing of their streaming content, and still has the watch together feature that Plex went and removed.
TBH Plex is years ahead on maturity, their dev team is excellent, unfortunately it seems like enshittification has begun for them.
Support Jellyfin not because it’s better, but because it’s open source and it puts users and tech first. Don’t expect it to beat Plex’s performance, quality, or cross-platform availability yet, but expect it to become better as more people donate or get involved.
What's better, exactly?
I switched years ago from Plex to Jellyfin, and while the UI wasn't quite as nice, everything else is better.
And I don't have to pay to use HW transcoding on my own hardware...
Honestly, I don't really understand how people prefer the Plex UI to Jellyfin. No shade, it just doesn't make sense to me. Plex is incredibly cluttered and busy. Jellyfin is simple and clean. I like the latter a lot more.
Jellyfin looks pretty bad on an iPad. Subtitles setting keep getting reset on their own, it doesn’t understand basic keyboard controls (spacebar to pause), the UI is overall tiny. Oftentimes it will forget to save the spot where I finished watching and on the next launch will happily play the movie from beginning.
Was this with the first party Jellyfin app or with Swiftfin?
If it was with the first party app, I'd definitely recommend giving Swiftfin a try.
First party app, yes. Thanks for the recommendation, I’ll give swiftfin a try.
Plexamp. Genuinely my favorite audio player since Winamp.
There's 'finamp' for jellyfin which I really like so far.
I haven't used plexamp though, so I can't vouch for it as an alternative.
For Android users there's Symfonium which I find really great
I cannot upvote this enough. "Just migrate to X, it's every bit as good!" when end users know it's not is a disingenuous argument and even if they don't have the technical know-how to explain exactly why they feel this way, they'll feel the deception. It only reinforces a growing distrust in tech.
The argument has to be made honestly. It's not quite as good, but almost. Those few things you'll miss will require an adjustment, but the overall value (a lot of times just literally, it costs less!) will become evident.
I know we're all Linux nerds here and enthused to get people onboard, but the battle right now we're facing is one of trust and security and must be grounded in those notions because while great strides have been made in convenience and accessibility, big corps will always be able to bankroll themselves over those points.
Yeah, my problem with it is that it's always something. I've been giving it a go about once a year since they forked from Emby and everytime something has made me drop it.
If I'm having problems with it the handful of times I go to watch something using it, the people I share with DEFINITELY would and now I have to handle their auth crap myself as well.
I'll probably prioritize just keeping a server going side by side now for a lot longer than a month or two at a time and try to find solutions to my problems. it's never really been a priority before since Plex worked, but the writing has been on the wall for a while now that the enshittification is in full swing and now I need to make sure I'm ahead of it.
Blah, this sucks.
The only thing Plex has on Jellyfin are client apps. Sever-side… Jellyfin hands down. I was super surprised to see av1 transcoding support… In Plex we JUST got HEVC.
I’m not hating on Plex by any means, but when I have an issue with Plex, Jellyfin picks up the slack. I’ll be using Jellyfin full time after the ATV app re-write.
I am curious, though, what is it that makes you think Jellyfin’s software is inferior? Since I’ve been following, Jellyfin has released new features long before Plex.
I need client side apps and easily sharing libraries with remote friends. Both are pretty hard to give up and not quite there yet.
Jellyfin has native apps for Android, Android TV and iOS.
Does Plex offer native apps (that aren't just stripped down browsers) for more platforms?
Atm Xbox is my most reliable media player. PlayStation isn't quite there, but would be a nice to have. My parents aren't very tech literate and they use their smart TV/cable box. I have a friend with an older Roku/smart stick that's incompatible. Have they added an app for Apple TV yet?
There is an app, but it’s not receiving updates at the moment. They’re doing a complete re-write. The iOS app has been released, and it’s fantastic. The Infuse app is a great band-aid for the time being.
I've since switched to jellyfin, but I initially chose plex because it was the only option with a client for Tizen. It certainly felt native but very well could just be a web app.
What's wrong with progressive web apps tho? If every device has a browser why bother writing native code for an app that doesn't need it? A single code stream for numerous platforms is a win if you ask me.
I find the Jellyfin webapp a pretty bad experience on mobile, compared to FinDroid.
I really like the webapp on my LG webOS TV (especially good with the Magic Remote) though.
So I guess it kind of depends on the platform.
LDAP can be used, which isn’t bad. There are plenty of options. It’ll never be as easy as letting a 3rd party handle it for you. But, that’s a pro in my book.
I agree the client side apps are taking some time, but the developers are absolute gems.
Plexamp is phenomenal. To my knowledge, Jellyfin doesn't have anything remotely comparable.
Finamp is great.
Plexamp is a dandy. Managing music locally is pretty cumbersome, so it hasn’t bothered me much. There are a few decent Jellyfin music apps, but nothing quite as polished. Manet looks promising on iOS, but I haven’t tried it yet. Haven’t jumped back to GrapheneOS quite yet, so I’m a little out of the loop there.
wut
There are 2 types of "free". Liberty, and price. "Free as in beer" means they mean the price version of the word. It's a really old saying now.
Isn't this confusing, though? It's free, as in libre (open-source AND costs no money). "As in beer" implies some sort of restriction.
The is just better rhetoric gets a bit frustrating tbh, it's a great bit of software do not get me wrong, but sure still has a lot of issues with more exotic codecs and various colour space conversions. Among some other tech issues