Given the recent news about Plex soon charging for remote access, I wanted to finish up my switch to Jellyfin.
What tools/methods have you all used to migrate watch history to Jellyfin?
I have a few family members in there, and would like to get everything switched over without resetting their watch history.
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All the folks saying “just buy the lifetime pass” gonna be in for a big disappointment in about 5 years
I got the lifetime pass 5 years ago. I’ve switched to JF because of the disappointment so far about a year ago.
JF is exactly what I wanted and needed plex to be, and everything added since is a worsened product. The lifetime pass was an attempt at getting the peace of mind of “then you just have it”. If anything, only FOSS can give that.
Yep. Enshitification behavior doesn’t cease once you’re technically a paying customer. If they hadn’t made a habit of enshitification. Clawing features away to put behind a paywall I’d give them some support. But I prefer foss anyhow. And for myself, I’m not missing anything.
And those lifetime subscriptions are also a trap. They know that you have the money and are willing to pay and that you’re using their service. Do you really think that some business suit will be satisfied by your onetime payment back in 2022?
If we got 5yr it’s more than paid for itself. Even FOSS needs support - stop whining and support good things.
Yes, do donate to FOSS projects. At least that money will go to people who do the actual work and not to pad corporate profits.
Point being the whiners won’t.
PLEX is not FOSS, plex is a proprietary fork of XBMC.
My point is that in 5 years a lot of these plex users will wish they made the switch to jellyfin sooner.
Or Plex currently does everything they need it to, and $120 for 5+ years of keeping that going without any interruption of service is very reasonable. In the meantime, jellyfin will only get better and there might even be other options available by then.
Stop trying to make the issue black and white, one-size-fits-all. There are perfectly legitimate reasons for people to use both Plex and Jellyfin.
Or sunk cost fallacy, but whatever helps you justify paying $120 for software i guess. I dont think its a black and White one size fits all thing, i just have seen this patter before with other software, and it was already happening with plex before the price increase.
It’s not sunk cost, dude. We agreed that $120 will get them 5 years of service that meets their needs. Even if they switch to jellyfin after 5 years, they still got their money’s worth.
It’s only sunk cost if they are worse off than if they had switched earlier. I guess if you’re arguing that they would still have $120 if they switch today, I would argue they should still pay that $120 toward jellyfin’s development. And that’s assuming they have time to switch to jellyfin AND it fits 100% of their usecases, either of which could be untrue.
Sunk cost is more then just money… Every reply here is some variation of “i would switch but i have all my ratings and users settings in plex already and dont know how to migrate”
Which i can understand paying because you dont have time, i just also think its foolish to pay for a service like plex when the main use case is piracy, something a company like plex clearly can not continue to support legally forever.
Eventually the big media corps will decide they need to end all library sharing options and plex will not be able to win that fight.
whatever helps you justify paying $120 for software
Does that sound like a lot to you?
Considering the use I got out of it, even if I switch to something else tomorrow, the cost for the lifetime pass was peanuts. I’m sure others making that decision based on the situation today will feel the same in a few years. If Plex seems like the best solution today it’s not going to fall off the cliff before $120 were worth it.
Not like FOSS projects are immune to bad decisions, and then you either fork it yourself or depend on unpaid volunteers to keep the version you like alive. There’s always some risk.
Its about $60 more then ive ever paid for any software, and its literally a tool for piracy, why would i pay a company that clearly want to pivot to being a second rate netflix with ads, when i can get what i need for free and not support a shitty tech company.
It was the same thing with realdebrid, its just foolish to think these companies arent going to start cracking down on any kind of “sharing” features until eventually they get removed due to pressure from the anti piracy goons.
If you got your money worth thats great but id rather direct my money to projects that arent trying to profit off pirates until they can pivot to being a legit service and wall out what actually made them good in the first place.
Its clear at this point plex is getting worse and jellfin is getting better. Almost all the replies sayibg they still use plex have a “BUT” in them about wanting to switch and being stuck because they dont know how to transfer this or that (ratings, view counts, etc), which im going to look more into later to see if i can help with.
I know it’s not FOSS. These whiners aren’t going to support any project - FOSS or not- just whine.
If it takes 5 years to reach that conclusion… A) it’s an easy switch, B) probably saved Jellyfin devs a bunch of moans, C) no regerts.
Thing is, Plex turns out to be less and less of a good thing with each passing day. Bloat, spying, removal of features, price hikes etc.
If you want to pay for software that is good, there’s always Emby.
Already paid for Plex and it works. Im not in favor of every change they’ve made, but it’s still damn solid and takes money to run.
The point being these whiners aren’t going to run off and support FOSS/alternatives… Just leech.
Yeah but you could pay for Emby and not deal with all the bloat and removed features and such. Or use Jellyfin for free and have the same experience. Plex’s value proposition is shrinking by the day.
One day I may. For now I’m not whining.
Cool. Other people are perfectly justified to though.
I never argued that any option is better. If one doesn’t like it, move on. Most of those whining aren’t supporting any project - it’d be better for the FOSS projects to not have to deal with them.
Is there any evidence that Plex has been spying? Genuinely curious. Sure they are closed source so we cant prove they are not.
There was the time that users started receiving emails from Plex telling them about other users and the shows they’ve been watching on their personal server, without permission. Spooked the hell out of me. There was allegedly a pop up that explained this new “feature” that was supposed to function as an opt-in. Problem was it worked more like an opt-out, as many of us never received the pop up, and weren’t even aware of the feature until people reached out to us to let us know Plex was sending them Emails about our library content.
I’ve had a lifetime pass for years, but have considered making the switch several times. So far I’ve held back because, and correct me if I’m wrong, there are tools to transfer watch state, but not ratings, and while there’s a plugin for dynamic collections, it’s based on tags, so you can’t just have a collection based on something like rating. My library also contains “custom” shows where there’s no match for it online, so I’ve manually assigned it some details.
Won’t take that long before the enshittification is complete.
I think you’re looking for https://github.com/arabcoders/watchstate Watchstate will pull from Plex and migrate it into a Jellyfin instance. Emby is also supported. Works with multiple users as well, just do yourself a favor and make sure all usernames match up!!!
I think this is the tool you are looking for: https://github.com/luigi311/JellyPlex-Watched
I haven’t used it myself but I plan on it eventually when I do make the switch.
I recently made the switch, worked pretty well :)
I used this: https://github.com/arabcoders/watchstate
It works, really, really well. You just connect it to the servers, and it syncs them by user. You can even let it run regularly while you are in your transition phase as a docker container right next to Plex and Jellyfin.
Mine’s even a bit more advanced, as I used
samba-domainto set up an LDAP active directory for my fam, then the above to sync the Plex users to those users in Jellyfin, and it still worked great.Edit: The WebUI is also pretty intuitive, but I did have to run it twice for my user the first time for it to get 100% in sync. Everything was fine after that.
Thanks! Sounds like the best option
If someone wants my Lifetime Plex account they can have it.
I’ll take it if you haven’t already given it away. This Plex change is not great for me, since I’m using remote access. I’ve got a Jellyfin server too, but I’m finding it less convenient for me, mostly for various nitpick reasons
You get it? I have one too, never going to use it again.
Yep!
Are you offering yours up? I would be very interested if you are.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t think jellyfin offers remote access to your media
It does, just not thorugh their servers like Plex does.
Do you have a guide somewhere on how to set it up? I’ve poked around online and didn’t see anything short of tailscaling your container to a web browser which I don’t want to do for a few different reasons (opening ports / security mostly)
Tailscale doesn’t require any ports open, or using a web browser with a container, it’s just a VPN which is a good way of doing it.
Or you can just open it up with a reverse proxy like any other web server, but I prefer not to do that.
I get that it may be technically possible but that is leaps and bounds different than having my senior dad make a Plex account on his fire stick so he can watch movies with his niece, or my fiance’s boss is in the hospital with cancer right now and is watching things on his iPad.
I already have a hard time getting people to just make a Plex account and watch on my server and that’s the “easy” route.
Yeah I don’t bother with other people on my server unless they really want to, I’ve long ago given up trying to convince anyone to change their ways, it’s up to them.
I use nginx proxy manager and expose it behind a subdomain entry on cloudflare (though you can use any DDNS service i bet). NPM handles the security so I get HSTS and HTTPS on Plex and Jellyfin without either needing it set themselves.
From there anyone can access Jellyfin/Plex via my subdomains (plex.mydomain.com or watch.mydomain.com at the mo)
The entire point of jellyfin is being able to remotely access media (with an good interface and functionality). What do you mean by remote access?
As in watch the media not on my own network or have other users do the same from their homes.
Music is another big one that jellyfin can’t compete with Plex with in its current state. I currently have 718 GB of music that I stream with plexamp when I’m driving.
You may have to use port forwarding or a reverse proxy but the end result is functionally identical to plex. IMO the server detection feature of Plex is overengineered for what it is, and I just sit it behind my reverse proxy and connect to it that way.
As for music and apps yeah Plex is pretty nice, but even for audio you could use other services if Jellyfin didn’t fit your needs like Navidrome
You simply expose jellyfin to the internet like you would with any other service. Why did you think it specifically wouldn’t work over the internet for jellyfin?
oh no, this is the first im hearing about this.
If you have Plex pass you dont have to worry about it. Others can still remote play from your server free. Actually more so because the mobile app is free for them too now.
But if you don’t already have lifetime and are paying monthly or annually then that price is also almost doubling
Just buy the lifetime Plex pass before the price goes up then.
Not the answer to your question but thanks for the reminder to cancel
I sync my watch history with trakt.tv – I believe there are plugins for both Plex and Jellyfin which can transfer those watch histories via that service. I don’t know of any other way.
Just buy the lifetime Plex Pass before the price hike and you’re golden.
I thought about it, but remote access is just something I use so rarely that it doesn’t seem worth the cost to me.
Also I really distrust anything ‘lifetime’, historically those don’t work out very well on most services.
“just give the bully more money and he’ll stop bullying”
Bully lol. Such hyperbole.
It’s quite similar scenario. This service is getting shittier to use, so you recommend paying more
It’s not getting shittier, they’re just asking for you to pay because you haven’t been paying. If anything, the service is improving. I paid once and never have to pay again and I’m saving a ton by not needing to pay for Netflix, Disney+, Hulu, Paramount, AppleTV etc. etc.
Well, the addition of Plex Movies and Live Channels is certainly shittier.
What’s the reason for $120 to stream my local files to a friend or family member? What exactly does Plex do in this process that would warrant a cost?
pay the license costs for the codecs your using…
granted… none of us care about that. but thats what they’re doing. also developement on the software (for good and bad)
Doesn’t the player itself handle the codecs, not the Plex Media Server?
