Your own Netflix for the films and shows you already own
Jellyfin turns a folder of video files into a Netflix-style app with posters, descriptions and "carry on watching". Free, open source, no account with anyone, and it runs on the laptop you already have.
- Your films on your phone and TV over your home Wi-Fi, with the free Jellyfin apps
- About 750MB of free disk space for Jellyfin itself, plus room for your videos
- Some video files you own, such as your own recordings, or DRM-free films you've bought as downloads. No files to hand? We'll use Big Buck Bunny, a free Creative Commons film from the Blender Foundation
- The terminal basics from Level 0 (opening a terminal and pasting a command)
Download Jellyfin and start it
Jellyfin is the free, open-source media server. The portable zip runs from a normal folder, so it never needs admin rights.
Jellyfin's official Windows downloads live on repo.jellyfin.org ↗. There's an installer (.exe), which asks for admin rights and can set itself up as a Windows service, and a zip that runs from a normal folder. This mission uses the zip: one folder you can delete when you're done.
Open PowerShell and paste these lines. They make a
Jellyfinfolder in your user folder, look up the current stable zip on Jellyfin's own server (so the command keeps working when a new version comes out), download it (about 209MB) and unpack it:Windows PowerShell$dir = "$env:USERPROFILE\Jellyfin" New-Item -ItemType Directory -Force $dir | Out-Null $base = "https://repo.jellyfin.org/files/server/windows/latest-stable/amd64/" $zip = ([regex]::Match((Invoke-WebRequest $base -UseBasicParsing).Content, 'jellyfin_[\d.]+-amd64\.zip')).Value "Downloading $zip" curl.exe -L -o "$dir\jellyfin.zip" "$base$zip" Expand-Archive "$dir\jellyfin.zip" -DestinationPath $dirUnpacking takes about a minute and leaves a
jellyfinfolder of around 500MB. It already includes its own copy of FFmpeg, the tool that converts video, so there's nothing else to install.Now start it:
Terminal& "$env:USERPROFILE\Jellyfin\jellyfin\jellyfin.exe"Text scrolls past. Wait for the line that says Startup complete:
Output[13:45:03.298] [INF] [12] Main: Jellyfin version: 12.2.0 ... [13:45:16.921] [INF] [18] MediaBrowser.MediaEncoding.Encoder.MediaEncoder: Found ffmpeg version 8.1.3 ... [13:45:19.505] [INF] [18] Main: Startup complete 0:00:18.6448087The first start takes around 20 seconds while it builds its database. Later starts take under 10. Leave this window open: closing it stops Jellyfin.
CarefulWindows may pop up a firewall box asking whether Jellyfin can use your network. To watch on phones and TVs in your house (step 6), tick Private networks only, never Public. If you only want to watch on this laptop, cancel it.On a Macdownload the macOS .dmg from jellyfin.org/downloads/macos ↗, drag Jellyfin into Applications and open it. A Jellyfin icon appears in the menu bar: click it and choose Launch. Apple Silicon Macs need macOS 14 or newer for the native build.
On Ubuntu, Debian or Linux MintJellyfin's official script adds its repository and installs the server. Download it, check it against the published checksum, then run it:
Ubuntu / Debian / Mintcurl -s https://repo.jellyfin.org/install-debuntu.sh -O curl -s https://repo.jellyfin.org/install-debuntu.sh.sha256sum -O sha256sum -c install-debuntu.sh.sha256sum sudo bash install-debuntu.shThe checksum line must print
install-debuntu.sh: OKbefore you run the last line. On Linux Jellyfin runs as a background service, so it starts on its own and keeps running after you close the terminal. On other Linux distributions, Jellyfin recommends its Docker image ↗.
If it breaksThe download fails or Expand-Archive says the file isn't a zip + 2 more
The download fails or Expand-Archive says the file isn't a zip
-amd64.zip by hand, save it as jellyfin.zip in your Jellyfin folder, and run just the Expand-Archive line.On Linux, Jellyfin can't see my video folder
jellyfin user, which can't read inside your home folder by default. Put your Media folder somewhere like /srv/media, or give that user read access to it.