Show HN: JellyBox – Jellyfin Desktop Client | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: JellyBox – Jellyfin Desktop Client

testflight.apple.com

82 pointsavdept59 comments

Hey guys, so I've been working on native desktop macos client for jellyfin server.

Feel free to join and try it out https://testflight.apple.com/join/LVj8KwAq

Feedback so far:

* either don't require the `http://` or `https://` prefix for the server URL, or add a note informing users that they need to add it themselves. Technical users can usually figure it out, but others will get angry or lost.

* your icon is slightly larger than literally every other icon in my Dock, and it's mildly jarring

* I have an extensive music library that loads quickly and properly in https://github.com/jeffvli/feishin, my current Jellyfin music player of choice, but nothing loads on the home screen and I see no error at all

I'll definitely keep an eye out for updates, I'd love a good Jellyfin native client for macOS. Consider open sourcing it (or pieces of it), I'd be more than happy to contribute! Good luck!

>Https....

No, detect what was typed and make it work. If it's just an ip address, try https, try http, if they put in http, try https, then try http, if they mistyped https or the like, replace it with https, then try http.

These things are not hard, and are much friendlier to the user.

Yeah, the Android jellyfin client also tells you all the variations it tried when it fails

Hey, thanks for your feedback. As its early beta, you might(and will) experience issues. * HTTP/HTTPS - good point, I'll see if I can drop it off completely * Icon - yeah, known shit, will replace in next build * It must be some error related to parsing server responses(like field was missing when I expected it to be present), so I will check what's wrong and fix it next build

Very cool, I love Jellyfin. Could have sworn there was a macos client but I guess there isn't! Awesome that you're working on it.

There is actually, but its built using react + electron.js and has same issues as web and mobile(same code base)

It's not an electron app, it's a Qt app that does load the web app in a webview and uses mpv as a player.

Link for reference: https://jellyfin.org/downloads/macos/

It’d be cool to have a Jellyfin client that’s a libretro “core”.

This is what will get me to try this an a potential alternative to Plex. I need native apps to even consider a replacement. Glad this is here. Best of luck!

Can I ask why, out of curiosity? Does that remain true if it's built using the web version and electron (which this is)?

I get the need for native apps on media centers, like Roku, Apple TV, etc. I do not understand why anybody would need a native app on desktop. Let alone an unofficial closed-source one from a dev that only has this to say:

> This is unofficial client for jellyfin app. For now macos only. Very early build. Expect any kind of crashes, issues and generally its good if it even runs.

Source: https://github.com/avdept/JellyBox

I'm working on this in my spare time, and making up readme file is the last thing on my list. If you're willing to help with readme I can surely provide you all needed information, screenshots and anything else you'd need

Neither Firefox nor Chrome support H.265 hw-accelerated decoding, and I don't want to use Edge. Using the app is a guarantee that I don't have to worry about the codec compatibility. I know it's an "Electron app so basically browser", but it's not, everything just works in the official Desktop app.

Chrome only has hardware decoding. Has done for a year.

Firefox is the only browser that won't play HEVC. Now AV1 is here, I guess we'll all move everything to that.

Is it open source?

Not yet, since its early stages. I want to make it stable and then put open source

I'll bite too: What is the benefit of a native client? Better codec/transcode support? Lower memory usage?

Accessibility -- native keyboard shortcuts often work better in native apps, and a lot of Electron apps aren't navigable at all without a mouse or with a screen reader.

Lower memory usage than a chromium instance.

Visual consistency.

And, subjectively, the knowledge that the app developer has put more than the minimum effort into the product. I'm not saying that great Electron apps don't exist -- in fact, my current favorite Jellyfin player is one -- but on average, even the best Electron app is worse than a middle-of-the-road native app.

I just did tests and my app uses x/2 memory from official jellyfin desktop client

It just comes up with a blank window - I'm judging by the icon this is only for music?

Yeah, just music

I think most of the Jellyfin ecosystem is open source. Was curious if the code for your desktop client is, too. Would be fun to poke around the GitHub for a project like this.

It will be, eventually. Not ready to share it yet

Please provide download links. Not everyone uses the Apple App Store.

It is still possible to use a Mac without an Apple ID, unlike an iPhone. Please don’t bring identity requirements into desktop computing too.

Second this. Lots of folks signed out of Apple ID (for good reason).

Ya rekemo

Give me Iphone

Finamp

I was following jellyfin closely since the day that it forked off from emby. I was active in the reddit community and was in the loop on everything that was happening there. then they decided to shut down the subreddit and it might has well have disappeared from existence over night. this is probably the first time i've even seen it mentioned on the internet since. i also can't be the only one who has had this experience.

you can see how well that has worked out for them since a few weeks ago they made a post crying about how their developer mindshare has been dwindling as of late.

(you will also notice that almost all of the mods who shut it down still have active reddit accounts, so clearly they don't care that much about boycotting reddit)

So, I’ve been seeing Kodi dying and thinking about a move to Plex, Emby, Jellyfin starting from zero knowledge.

I pretty much ruled Jellyfin out for what appeared to be lack of enthusiasm.

Ruled out Plex for privacy issues.

Looks like it’s going to be Emby I guess.

I moved from Kodi to Jellyfin. I'm happy.

Samesies. Kodi’s ui is just straight-up broken and I’m glad I’ll probably never use it again. The number of times I hit the wrong button and ended up with some overlay on my video I couldn’t get rid of, or in some weird mode I didn’t want. The two back buttons that did different things. Full-featured library management inside the TV UI, where it doesn’t really fit. The weirdly-organized settings screen where I’d always have to try three times to find the thing I wanted, then half the time it was actually in some hidden modal-view elsewhere in the UI (but maybe not on other screens that were basically showing the same stuff!) Just… no.

Jellyfin’s the first time I’ve seen people who aren’t me even seriously try to use a self-hosted media thing I’ve set up. And mostly succeed! Usually with Kodi they’d give up within a minute.

Does it cause plex to freeze for a minute or two randomly on startup or when hibernating ends?

I don’t know. I don’t use plex.

I like how in Kodi I need to hook up a mouse just to click into one specific menu to add a new source. The remote works fine for everything except this ONE thing.

I think it’s interesting just how much the next gen servers seem to have ate its lunch.

what do you mean by "for lack of enthusiasm" out of curiosity?

I mean if I look around as a complete know nothing, I see more people talking about both Plex and Emby than Jellyfin.

It was easier to find forums for Emby than Jellyfin.

IDK, it was just an impression I got.

https://jellyfin.org/

Which has a direct link to https://forum.jellyfin.org/

Jellyfin's documentation is good.

It lacks a tad bit of polish compared to Plex, but it can be run entirely offline (meaning without a centralized account like Plex). Plex player on Android TV was awful for even native streaming of 4k, where Jellyfin performs.

It's a strong option for the price.

That's weird, I had a different experience: I definitely heard about Plex the most, but often in a negative light. The alternative presented (again, in my experience) was always Jellyfin.

If you care about nothing else than ease of use it goes

1. plex 2. emby 3. jellyfin

Plex is notable for being able to run the media server software and tv apps without having to pay anything. Emby needs a license payment, and while jellyfin is free it just isn’t as good as emby or plex right now.

Re: plex privacy, I don’t use a real email for plex id and I’m not sure if you even need it. Plex inc. can see what I’m looking up anyways because they provide the service of providing metadata for media (obviously someone gets the stats)

They do say they don’t actually monitor your usage of plex media server but it’s probably bullshit. I just don’t care with a throwaway plex id – they don’t have my name, address, payment info, nothing

> you can see how well that has worked out for them since a few weeks ago they made a post crying about how their developer mindshare has been dwindling as of late.

you say crying, I say trying to get that developer mindshare without contributing to a platform they disagree with.

just because it doesn’t register on your moral or ethical compass doesn’t make it the wrong decision. it’s probably harder on the project but not everything is about picking the easy choice.

> and it might has well have disappeared from existence over night

Gets mentioned more than Plex which had almost completely negative coverage lately and more than Emby: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

> you can see how well that has worked out for them

I can't see a significant difference in actual commits since closing the subreddit https://github.com/jellyfin/jellyfin/graphs/commit-activity

> a few weeks ago they made a post crying about how their developer mindshare has been dwindling as of late

What they actually said: "so the number has been pretty flat for the last 3 years all together". (https://jellyfin.org/posts/a-call-for-developers/)

I'm not sure the way you describe it matches reality.

I guess I don't see the big deal about a project deciding to have their online presence be somewhere they control, and not a company that doesn't have your best interests in mind.

Their forum is also fairly active, so it might just be you ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

yeah i mean if they want to remove themselves from the internet and go off on their own to die that's their choice to make. certainly not what is best for the health and reach of the project though.

> remove themselves from the internet

I didn't realize Reddit was the internet. I'm convinced you're trolling at this point.

yes, that is where the lion's share of people are. on places like reddit and twitter. most people aren't on random web forums or mastadon instances. if you are trying to grow your reach, expand your community, and have presence outside of a niche group of people who already know you exist, you need to have presence in the place where people are. you obviously can have web forums and matrix channels and other such things as well, but you will stagnate if that is all you have.

> that is where the lion's share of people are. on places like reddit and twitter

Facebook dwarfs reddit and twitter combined - Does that make Facebook the #1 place to host an open source community?

Lets talk about several groups and how choice of social media might influence "reach"

Prospective users: Virtually no chance of encountering the jellyfin subreddit without subscribing or subscribe without already using MIGHT encounter mention of jellyfin on other tech focused subreddit.

Random satisfied users: Unlikely to interact on average with anything.

Users with problems motivated enough to seek support. Unlikely to be put off by the fact that the forum isn't reddit. If you have already installed and set up the software you already have enough investment that taking 30 seconds to create an account on reddit OR a forum.

Potential developers: more interested it where the source is hosted than reddit.

Most of your users are on Facebook and twitter but both are toxic and uniquely unsuitable for fostering a tech community. Reddit with an anemic 1/40th the market of Facebook provides at best a moderately adequate forum alternative but has little to recommend it especially when recently they

- Killed the API and with it every good mobile experience available at a time frame when better than half of users are apt to interact via mobile

- Are pushing a shitty desktop experience that you can only temporarily opt out of

- Hired an employee who kept her dad on in her political campaign after he was arrested for raping and torturing a child in the same house that they both lived in as adults. We are asked to believe that she was unaware of her dad bringing home kids to rape while she was an adult living in the house.

- Upended communities by awarding moderator-ship to random bob users of the channel when channels wouldn't implement the policies they desired

- Have misused internal access to data to silently edit a users post out of spite

- Have regularly used their position to silence dissent or discussion they didn't like

I mean it IS their sandbox and they can run it as they like but why would anyone depend on Reddit for their community at this point in time?

Jellyfin will be around longer than you'll care about them moving from Reddit to their own personal forums.

I wish everyone would go to platform-specific or interest-based forums. I think the Internet was a better place when you just banned the occasional crazy from your forums, whereas mass social media seems to promote their craziness and create an echo chamber of negative reinforcement for them.

Crying about other people not putting the community for something they created on your preferred site is a bad look. You should reconsider what you're doing right now.

Either trolling or a reddit employee. No one shills this hard for reddit anymore.

yeah totally. i've been a secret underground reddit employee posting on hacker news for years just laying in wait for the perfect opportunity to shill for reddit on a random jellyfin thread that will disappear within a few hours on a random weekday. unfortunately for me you showed up just in time to foil my plan.

> this is probably the first time i've even seen it mentioned on the internet since.

> since a few weeks ago they made a post crying about how their developer mindshare has been dwindling as of late.

Not the first time you've seen them since then, then.

It wasn't really a "as of late" issue. They have had an issue with too few developers since at least last year. I've seen a similar thread on the subreddit you mentioned before as well.

>Not the first time you've seen them since then, then.

the only reason i know about that blog post is because they stickied it on their locked subreddit. i didn't stumble upon it out in the greater internet.

It was posted here as well, for example.

Its not a good idea to go off of what one person has seen to make a judgement on what "exists" on the internet.

Its the same issue people have had with reposts on Reddit. Even after 10+ reposts on Reddit, somebody will not have seen it. People arent terminally online, generally.

Reddit should not be the yardstick.

Besides, what's really to follow? I have it installed and it runs great. What else do I need to know besides looking at the roadmap occasionally?

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