I just finished setting up my own Jellyfin server. Lately I’ve been getting into using open source software and this weekend I thought it would be nice to self host on an old thinkpad I had from my college days. There were a few roadblocks I encountered, but ultimately I got it working. Now with the Finamp/Jellyfin app I can have a Spotify/Netflix-like experience completely free (well minus the domain name cost). I highly recommend it if you have been thinking about doing it for a while like I was. I’m so glad we have open source software like Lemmy and Jellyfin available to us.
Just keep in mind. It is against cloudflare’s TOS to use it for media streaming, plenty do and most don’t have an issue. But if you try to share access and there is excessive traffic, cloudflare may shut you down.
You can look into running pangolin on a small VPS or just opening the ports and using your home IP (of course behind a HTTPs proxy)
Also worth looking into tailscale if it’s just for personal use but not ideal for sharing
psa: using something like wireguard is much more secure over exposing services directly.
And reverse proxies are overkill anyway unless OP’s planning to allow lots of tech-illiterate people access who will never know how to import a Wireguard config file or even what any of those words mean.
Damn. Thanks for this I’ll look into it.
I don’t think it is, there are differences in their terms for these tunnels and other services. I don’t recall the specifics, but I did look it up before I set up the same thing.
I think there was something with the tunnel not actually running on the CDN.
Give it time. I was very careful to setup my tunnel for media streaming like those guides, disabling any sort of caching, etc. and they killed it 2 months ago.
Ended up just getting a cheap simple VPS and running Pangolin myself instead.
Good to know. If I’m using it, it’s through a VPN to my local network, but I do have it set up at family members’ houses through the external link too.
I’ve been quite happy with Jellyfin on my NAS at home, but I haven’t set up remote access yet. I’m planning on a headscale/tailscale setup that, when I find my RaspPi.
How is Jellyfin for music? I’ve only used it for TV/Movies.
I use the Finamp app to access my Jellyfin music collection, which works well. It gives a dedicated music app rather than a generic Jellyfin everything app.
The Jellyfin web app is ok for music playback, if you mostly listen to albums. It’s a video first platform.
There are third party music apps that can access your Jellyfin music library. I like both Finamp (iOS) and Feisin (Linux). Those being music centric, are a bit better than the web UI, but they are still hampered by Jellyfin’s album centric design.
There is no real easy way to build playlists , regardless of what front end you use. Importing playlists is borderline impossible due to the playlist being a table in Jellyfin’s database.
If you prefer to listen to music through playlists, I’d recommend Navidrome as a separate service for music. While building playlists can still be painful, it can import playlist files so your not just limited to whatever workflow your frontend pushes.
Ohh, Navidrome looks great. Thanks for the suggestion!
I’ve really enjoyed it for music. My favourite part has been throwing a decades old collection into it and shuffle playing the whole lot. So many forgotten tunes.
I currently run mine through Tailscale, but plan on getting a domain this year and then handing out access to my family. I’ve got traefik mostly set up, but would also like to add in authelia as well. I’ve also got navidrome for music, audiobookshelf for audiobooks, mealie for recipes, calibre for books, bookstack for a wiki and immich for photos but I haven’t actually started imported anything yet on those 2, though both do work. I think I also would like to run vaultwarden
Before I get a domain I should maybe just try out headscale and see how that goes
Nice!
I’m using my own Wireguard tunnel to make it accessible: https://codeberg.org/skjalli/jellyfin-vps-setup
I can vouch for a wireguard+jellyfin setup - I don’t have it on a VPS though. Instead, I have a little mini PC running opnsense (and wireguard) in the attic. I can open one port, connect from almost everywhere and have access to my whole internal network while I’m away.
My problem is that I don’t have a fixed IPv4 address and jot even a ‘real’ one (don’t ask, Germany Cable internet…). So if I am somewhere where I don’t have an IPv6 I cannot connect to it. I also did this via VPS to share with family without having them to set up wireguard etc.
Nice work! Self-hosting is a lot of fun.
But also: https://community.cloudflare.com/t/using-cloudflare-for-remote-access-to-jellyfin/855051
Cloudflare is gonna smack you.
We have Jellyfin with remote streaming as well though we use Tailscale for that and works great
Haven’t personally verified it but I’ve heard some people say Jellyfin hosting (or the sorts) is against Cloudflares ToS. No idea if this is accurate but might be worth looking in to
