Products · Product
Jellyfin
Raised as a usability problem by 114 people on Hacker News over 7 years (2020–2026), in 47 threads.
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Every issue, all time, most people first
Subtitles often fail to load or are out of syncUnreviewed
20202026- Extracting embedded subtitles takes up to a minute before playback with subtitles2026-09-08
- Subtitles take a while to appear when playing video, unlike Plex where they show immediately2026-07-24
- Subtitles often fail to load or are out of sync2026-07-21
TV client apps are nonexistent or much weaker than Plex'sUnreviewed
20202026- Third-party Jellyfin Apple TV client has issues with library and cache updates2022-08-24
- Jellyfin's DVR service is practically unusable compared to Plex2022-08-24
- Jellyfin's TV client apps are nonexistent or much weaker than Plex's2021-01-03
Media library mishandles folder layout despite several configurationsUnreviewed
20202026- Mixed-media and nested folder layouts get misidentified, with no way to tell it to rescan a subfolder2026-09-08
- Needs a carefully crafted folder structure before it finds media files2025-02-16
- Media library keeps mis-handling folder layout despite trying several configurations2024-07-22
Unreviewed issues were grouped by machine: Claude Haiku labelled each comment as a usability complaint, named what it's about and summed up the problem in a line, and a small model grouped similar problems. Nobody has checked them by hand. Expect mistakes.
The newest 50 complaints
- Shows with non-standard torrent filenames are listed as raw video files, not identified2026-10-21
- Unusable with a large music library2026-10-21
- Seeking requires manually pressing play again to resume the video2026-10-20
- Some alternative Jellyfin client UIs feel needlessly clunky to use2026-10-20
- Tested third-party clients looked good but were buggy, sometimes unusable2026-10-20
- Many basic behaviors are missing or inconsistent in the alternative clients2026-10-20
- Desktop client breaks at display scaling over 100%, and playback shows judder2026-10-15
- Folder-based library views lack filtering and sorting, and metadata is not collected2026-09-09
- Setup requires clicking through dozens of pages and repeating it for each app2026-09-08
- Extracting embedded subtitles takes up to a minute before playback with subtitles2026-09-08
- Jellyfin is overly sensitive to folder naming and hierarchy, hobbling browsing2026-09-08
- Constantly fixing thumbnails, merging episodes into shows, and forcing rescans to recognise shows2026-09-08
- Left/right remote seeks the timeline but play position only changes after pressing center2026-09-08
- Mixed-media and nested folder layouts get misidentified, with no way to tell it to rescan a subfolder2026-09-08
- Large music library becomes unusable in the RC2 release2026-09-08
- Jellyfin ran so poorly on a Synology NAS it was basically unusable2026-08-25
- No way to remove a series from Continue Watching2026-07-24
- Sign-in on TV apps is awkward, needing a mobile app first unless devices are side by side2026-07-24
- Subtitles take a while to appear when playing video, unlike Plex where they show immediately2026-07-24
- Subtitles often fail to load or are out of sync2026-07-21
- Some UX choices didn't make sense to the commenter2026-07-21
- The official Android client is so bad the commenter couldn't stick with Jellyfin2026-07-21
- Remote access requires setting up a VPN or Tailscale first2026-07-21
- Requires strict Title/Season/Episode folder structure or files aren't recognized2026-07-21
- Jellyfin ignores season and episode info in folders and metadata, and re-mangles manual fixes on scan2026-07-21
- Artist pages take 30+ seconds to load with a large music library2026-07-21
- Live TV setup is buggy and slow, and its leftovers cannot be removed from the interface2026-07-21
- Users must manually rename files and write rules, and can't easily see why files get misassigned2026-07-21
- Subtitle toggle sometimes missing, can't switch subtitle tracks, external subtitles fail to load2026-07-21
- Apple TV app described as pretty unusable last time tried2026-07-21
- Loading placeholders hide titles, so users must stop scrolling to find their place2026-07-21
- Installation left NAS unreachable and Jellyfin service failed to start after reboot2026-06-16
- Metadata fails on certain shows, forcing manual renaming and refreshing until it matches2026-06-15
- Library scan takes forever with unclear progress; clients slow, laggy and hard to navigate2026-06-15
- Forced folder layout and automatic metadata matching make the library hard to organise the way users want2026-06-15
- Clicking one video plays a different video in large folders2026-05-20
- Setting up library structure, file formats, and client devices is too hard to get working2026-05-12
- When things break, most logs are only in plain files, hard to find and see2026-04-14
- Playlists can't multi-select items or move them to other playlists; context menus are missing2026-04-14
- Major bugs after upgrade make it unusable for many users2026-04-14
- Misleading error asks user to log in when the real problem is an unreachable server2026-04-14
- Search shows many unwanted Plex content results with no visible setting to hide them2026-01-07
- Corrupted database and config files force a full reinstall when something goes wrong2026-01-07
- Browsing network shares is ugly and unintuitive; finding the latest added file is difficult2026-01-06
- Works smoothly only if file names match its exact expected naming scheme2025-11-21
- Painfully slow to navigate, nearly unusable; apps took hours of navigation to load caches2025-09-09
- Jellyfin on Xbox never worked right, making family movie nights a humiliation2025-09-08
- Left/right arrows don't seek; must press OK to jump2025-09-08
- Can't override device profile, so TV hides playable videos and transcodes HDR to SDR2025-02-20
- Related TV series and movies in one franchise must be manually grouped into collections2025-02-18