I’m currently a Plex user and access it from Apple TV’s. I find this is a smooth and stable experience that everyone in the house enjoys and is comfortable. I also use PlexAmp on laptops, mobile and CarPlay.
I am interested in Jellyfin and am wondering if I can expect any hurdles or rough edges moving over?
EDIT: Thanks all for the great feedback and suggestions. I think I will give it a try in parallel with Influx and see if it’s worth the $100 lifetime purchase.
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I use the Swiftfin client since I’m not willing to pay a subscription for Infuse. It works fine for video, except the major pain point for me is that it doesn’t refresh automatically, and you can’t refresh from within the app. So if you want to see new items on your server, you have to force-quit / swipe away Swiftfin and reopen it.
I use Swiftfin on the Apple TV and love it. Great UI and responsive.
It buffers occasionally but not much more than a paid for streaming service.
It is excellent with Infuse as the client. Decent, but a bit buggy with the official client or Swiftfin last I checked.
I use Jellyfin server with the Infuse app and it works flawlessly.
ETA: I don’t love Jellyfin for music. I use Navidrome for iOS music and Lyrion for home/multiroom music.
Just checked out Infuse and several of my shows won’t play (they do play on Jellyfin). I guess if you convert your stuff that isn’t a problem.
Yup, same here. Apple TV 4K, Jellyfin, Infuse. Works like a charm.
The best I’ll describe it is usable. Unless you pay for infuse.
I’m using Jellyfin with 2 Apple TV 4Ks, one newer and one older. As other commenters have said there is no complete official Jellyfin app for Apple TV.
Swiftfin is the in development new app for Apple platforms, but it still very incomplete. Basic video playback works, but there are a lot of missing features like music and live tv support. The interface is functional but still fairly crude, and in the current version there’s a lot of ugly overflow issues in the UI. Video playback has always been reliable for me though. It will improve as development progresses but for now it’s very much a work in progress.
The other option is Infuse, which has a much nicer and mature UI, but also isn’t fully feature complete for Jellyfin. It also a proprietary app with a subscription to unlock all features. I’ve tried the free version and it seems to work well enough, video playback was smooth.
I think there are few other small apps but I haven’t tried them.
I wish there were better options for clients as the Apple TV is the best streaming box I’ve found but the Jellyfin support could be better.
Be wary that high bitrate 4K media may cause issues with playback buffering.
This could be Jellyfin, AppleTV, or it could be network/storage related (due to needing high speed data transfer).
I second using the Infuse app for playback. It works wonderfully!
Really interesting that you’ve encountered this, I have no trouble at all watching super-high bitrate media in Infuse. I may be spoiled with my gigabit internet, but the Apple TV caches entire 4K Blu-rays in minutes on my local network (you can watch the seek bar fill up, it’s really satisfying) so I never thought about this. I’m curious why this hits some users and not others.
There’s no official Jellyfin app for TvOS. There’s a couple of apps that a log into JellyFin, but they all seem rough around the edges UX wise. Most of them do not have ability to search, nor filter watched movies/shows. You shouldn’t have any problem with setting up JellyFin, you just point it to your video library and it does its thing just like Plex. If you have multiple users, plan on having to do some reeducation on why things look and work slightly differently.
Overall JellyFin is a slight downgrade in the UX compared to Plex, especially on the Apple TV, but should function the same in playing videos.
Swiftfin is an official tvOS jellyfin app:
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/swiftfin/id1604098728
This is per:
I’ve been using Swiftfin for a while. It’s very much an alpha product. I don’t want to pressure the devs though. They’re volunteers releasing something nice for free. All the other apps in the space are paid or even subscription based. Ugh!
The big update is coming soon. They’ve been working on it for a long time now. Its in the final stretch and should hopefully be in TestFlight soon.
Infuse has a paid tier but their free tier will satisfy the needs of most people.
Swiftfin is app for iOS and TvOS
Jellyfin doesn’t work without complex setup on Apple stuff. For the Apple TV app, you’ll need to know the server’s IP address to get started. It can’t just detect it like Plex can.
I had it up and running at one point, but tried it again this year and it was a complete non starter.
Entering an IP address is complex for someone who has managed to install a Jellyfin server?
Yea, I find needing to know the IP annoying, but by no means difficult or problematic.
I do wish many devs would put some effort into discovery (with Apple stuff, Bonjour works fine, everything else there’s mDNS).
Thankfully the Jellyfin Tizen app (Samsung) at least remembers servers and shows them by name after connecting by IP.
In the exact same boat, I’d love to know what apps people are using (tvOS & iOS)? I don’t have Plex accessible from outside my LAN (I use DirectPlay most of the time), but I do download to my iPhone/iPad with the Plex app for when I travel. Considering the questionable decisions Plex keeps making, I’m leaning towards switching to Jellyfin.
I use Infuse on all my Apple devices - iPhone, iPad, AppleTV
Did you need to buy Infuse Pro or does the free version work for most use cases?
Free Infuse works just fine. If you want the higher quality audio/video like 4K or Dolby, then you need to pay for Pro. Honestly, the app is so good, I paid for Pro even though I only watch 1080p video and stereo audio.
As others have said, Jellyfin server with Infuse as the player on Apple TV is the best experience, especially for Dolby Vision, which works flawlessly. Anyone in your house should find the interface super-easy to navigate. But if the price of Infuse turns you off (which I get), the native Jellyfin app on Apple TV isn’t terrible (Swiftfin), and there are some other less-polished apps for way cheaper than Infuse (MrMc I think?). The native Jellyfin app struggles with Dolby Vision, otherwise you’ll have no trouble with it, but definitely a slightly clunkier experience than with Infuse. I personally find the price of Infuse way too high, but I can’t argue with the stability and slick UI.
The Apple TV also caches content really well, so you won’t run into any issues with high bitrates over streaming. I regularly watch full 4K Dolby Vision Blu-rays (50-70 GB files) with buttery smooth playback, no issues at all.
It’s working pretty smoothly for me. I set it up a while ago, so if I encountered any problems I don’t remember them.
