I moved all my media to this free streaming tool and haven’t looked back

I own media files that I regularly access on various devices. But moving my media files to Jellyfin has unlocked a whole new world of convenience when it comes to streaming that content.

What is Jellyfin?

Jellyfin is a free and open source media server application that allows you to organize, stream and access your personal media files (such as movies, TV shows, music and photos) across devices.

With Jellyfin, you can self-host your files by creating a Jellyfin server and access those files from other devices. Since Jellyfin does not offer hosting, you need to create a Jellyfin server on one of your devices to act as a media server. You can create a Jellyfin media server on your Windows, macOS or Linux device. Heck, you can even use your Raspberry Pi as a Jellyfin server.

Jellyfin clients are available on the Amazon Appstore, Android TV, Roku OS, and LG WebOS, allowing you to access media files through smart TVs and streaming devices.

Setup is easy

Jellyfin provides a web interface to manage and set up the server, so setting it up is not difficult. For example, on Windows you install Jellyfin like any other application. Once you launch the application, Jellyfin will open its web interface, which contains a guide on how to get your server up and running. I have my server running on Ubuntu and all I had to do to install Jellyfin was run one command from the official site.

A key step in setting up your server is to select the type of media you want to add (such as music, photos, movies, TV shows) and then select the appropriate folder on your system where the files are located. For this reason, it is recommended that you have a dedicated folder on your system where all your service files should be stored.

For example, create a folder named Media and have subfolders for each media type, such as movies, television shows, musicand photo. That way, when you select movies as your content type, you just point to Media/Movies folder for convenience. On Linux, you’ll have to play around with permissions to see your folders in Jellyfin, but if you have some command line experience, that shouldn’t be a problem.

Once you point Jellyfin to the appropriate location, it automatically searches for content metadata (for movies, music, and TV shows) and automatically sorts your media for convenience. Once this is done, you can access these files by connecting to the server using any Jellyfin client application.

It has almost all the features I need

In addition to being free, easy to set up, and providing cross-platform support, I love Jellyfin because of all the features it includes. This makes streaming my personal media files a breeze. Jellyfin has almost all the features I need from a media streaming app.

First, it automatically downloads the metadata of my media, whether it’s movies, TV shows, or music, making it easy to consume. For music, the client has standard features like favorites, playlist creation, and play queues, and the interface makes browsing my library seamless.

For movies and TV shows, Jellyfin has the ability to pick up titles from where you left off. All you have to do is click on the name of the v Continue watching section on the home page. When playing any title, you can adjust the playback quality, speed and aspect ratio. Jellyfin also provides a Search function to fast forward or rewind during playback to any specific part of a movie or show.

Plus, I can use the search icon to find a specific item in the library, and Jellyfin has the ability to play media directly from my phone to the TV thanks to DLNA.

The only issue at the time of writing is offline downloads – official Jellyfin clients do not support offline downloads. For music, you can get them with Finamp, Jellyfin’s music client for Android and iOS. Other than that, Jellyfin has all the features I need.

Streaming my media files has never been easier than using Jellyfin. The server is easy to set up and run, and the platform provides clients on a variety of platforms, from mobile to desktop to TV. If you’re looking for a free media server to manage and stream your personal media files, Jellyfin is the solution. It is one of the best alternatives to Plex.