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This article doesn't mention the limitations of remote access for Jellyfin, which requires some tricks like reverse proxy or Tailscale. I think Jellyfin is a great option if you only watch/listen on your home network, but if anyone wants to replicate the remote access capabilities of Plex, I typically warn them they are going to have to roll their sleeves up.
Tailscale truly could not be easier/simpler.
A reverse proxy is a trick? That's like standard practice for web servers.
You're right, I missed that.
I personally use a reverse proxy and Wireguard setup to access remotely.
Not something that unfortunately works as easily for me to connect my ailing mom's TV to, and do NOT want to manage the reverse proxy + cert + etc setup for a number of reasons
There are a ton of reverse proxy options that manage the cert for you
There's lots of reasons I don't want to set this up
But Jellyfin! It solves all your problems, you don’t have to pay for it (because fuck paying for software of any type even if it provides you some value), and did I mention Jellyfin‽
Why aren’t you using it yet? Are you a plex sympathizer? Get outta here with that!
What?
I don’t care if you have a good use case for using plex / Emby / Kodi / VLC / WMC / etc; you will assimilate and use Jellyifn!
JELLYFIN!!!!!11!1!1!1!1!. /s
Jellyfin once located my lost puppy. Which Plex had stolen.
I believe it! Emby probably kicked the dog whole plex stole it.
If you have a machine at her place that is on most of the time you can have tailscale on that device and then make it ssh into itself with ssh portforwarding on!
Edit: You can also selfhost headscale and do the same as the comment below said
My mom lives 900 miles away and she can barely turn a computer on
I set up a free dns from duckdns.org and pointed it to my jellyfin server. All my parents had to do was to use that https://randomserver.duckdns.org/ as the server url in the jellyfin app.
Yeah then this might not be a great idea for you, unless you have the possibility to fix a machine if you visit. But I want to make it clear this is not a fix all thing just trying to help :D
<3
What in the goddamn fuck, sir
Step 1) Install tailscale (headscale also exists if you wanna fully self-host it)
Step 2) Done, solved
That doesn't slove the problem if your Smart TV doesn't support tailscale or something like Wireguard. Using another machine connected to a VPN like for example Tailscale/Headscale and then using ssh portforwarding allows you to access the service(jellyfin) on the device without support.
It would be like this:
Jellyfin <-- Tailscale/Headscale <--- Machine forwarding the jellyfins port <-- Smart TV
This can be done with a command like this:
ssh -L 0.0.0.0:8096:jellyfin_tailnet_ip:8096 -f -N user@machine
Yeah it can be more limiting. Personally I got lucky and my mom's TV runs Android so I could just install a wireguard client.
I will probably at some point bridge her network with mine since I want to install a TrueNAS box at her house for remote backup. So the VPN client will be moot at that point.
How do you go about doing that?
Which part? For the TV there was literally a wireguard app. I just had to install it on the TV and configure the connection to my wireguard server.
For the bridging I gave her my old router which I haven't tested but I believe should support VPN bridging. I already have her on a subnet that won't conflict with my network for that reason.
FYI, scrcpy can be an excellent tool for remote support, but you'd better trust the network the interface is on
Just fucking yeet it online
expected advice from typical JF users.
What's the worst that can happen. Someone watches your movies
Someone breakes in, then moves laterally to your home assistant running frigate to watch you sleep at night. Then uses your residential uplink as a proxy to resell on an open market.
After that, the possibilities are practically endless.
No reason to connect jellyfin to any sort of local network, router will still hairpin for local connection.
With that setup its honestly more secure than 99% of IOT devices, and like 50% of routers.
edit: and if youre running it in the pentagon or something just toss authentication like keycloak in front of it, plus a bit of crowdsec/fail2ban and an IP whitelist, I'd be surprised if you'd even get an attack, much less one violating that strict of a threat models.
It's a rootless container. Chances are they are not going to do any of that.
Things are on the internet all the time.
Yeah docker isn't the isolation sandbox some people make it out to be. It's not meant for that. You very well may have a setup that's meant for that but it's more than I'm willing to expose.
Yup! That's the worst thing that can happen. Now would you be so be kind as to send us the link to your private unsecured Jellyfin server?
I'm tempted to. But I'm not. Just because I dont want to fox my domain here.
Is running in a rootless podman container. I'm confident
How does Plex get around that? I've only ever used jellyfin.
Plex operates TURN servers
There is a third option, the program that Jellyfin was originally forked from back in 2018, Emby.
Sort of the middle child between the two. Nearly identically to Jellyfin for obvious reasons, several third party apps for Jellyfin work with it as well like Jellyseer, it has apps for nearly every device, and easy external connections via their servers like Plex does.
They do however have a premium subscription system like Plex to support things like those servers. It's not as expensive as Plex, even before the recent rate hike, but it is there and some stuff is locked behind that premium license.
At this point if I were to switch from Plex I would go with Emby just because a bunch of sweaty nerds don't simp over it every time Plex comes up in the news.
So all the bad things of both, still a proprietary product that you can funnel your cotent through servers you don't control while simultaneously not being plex.
But also benefits of both, reduced cost with easier remote setup, while simultaneously not being plex
Also you dont have to be lumped in with the frothing at the mouth Jellyfin users.
Beats frothing for a company, if I gotta froth
It's only frothing if you insist that installing tailscale on your grandma's DSL modem is the best way to share home movies
Can't you just setup a dyndns and port forwarding?
Yes, and if that falls within your risk tolerance it’s rather easy to set up.
Most of the people in the discussion here don’t want to open a port to the internet.
To be fair Plex also requires open ports (or worse upnp) to remotly stream at full quality, without transcoding.
Oh, 100%. I was just trying to sum up the feelings in here.
Its just a pain in the ass to manage at home and easy to leave your ass open for attacks.
It’s just another attack surface. Threat tolerance is up to each person.
I found it annoying at first when I started because I didnt know about any management tools. I was updating the firewall rules everywhere myself to allow each remote IP at the router and machine level lol
Oooof, yeah that would suck.
That's why I'm running both. I use jellyfin, everyone else uses Plex 🤣