Install Jellyfin on a Mac or PC

The simplest way to run Jellyfin is on a computer you already own. No Docker, no command line, no monthly bill. By the end of this you will have a server on your network that your phone, your tablet and your browser can all reach.

Before you start

Sort the filenames out first. Jellyfin reads titles from filenames, and fixing the names after a scan means a second scan and some manual matching. Getting started with Jellyfin has the naming conventions, and they take five minutes to read.

Note where your media actually is, as a path you could type. On Windows that is something like D:\Media\Movies. On a Mac it is /Volumes/Media/Movies for an external drive, or /Users/you/Movies for an internal one.

Careful

An external drive that unmounts when the computer sleeps will empty your library, not just pause it. Jellyfin scans, finds nothing, and removes the entries. If your media is on USB storage, deal with the sleep settings at the end of this guide before the first scan.

Install on Windows

Download the Windows installer from jellyfin.org/downloads, choosing the stable release rather than a nightly build.
Run it. It installs Jellyfin as a Windows service, which means it starts with the machine and keeps running when you log out.
Let it through Windows Firewall when asked, for private networks. Decline public networks: nothing outside your house should reach it yet.
When it finishes, a browser opens at http://localhost:8096. If it does not, open that address yourself.

Install on macOS

Download the macOS build from jellyfin.org/downloads, picking the one that matches your chip, Apple silicon or Intel.
Drag Jellyfin to Applications and open it. macOS will ask you to confirm an app downloaded from the internet; that is expected.
Jellyfin runs as a menu bar item rather than a window. Its menu has a Launch Jellyfin entry, which opens http://localhost:8096.

Note

On macOS, Jellyfin runs as the logged-in user, so it stops when you log out. Leave the account logged in and let the display sleep instead, which is fine: a sleeping screen is not a sleeping computer.

Work through the setup wizard

The wizard runs once, in the browser, and covers four things.

Pick your display language.
Create your own account. This is the administrator, so give it a real password. Everyone else in the house gets their own account later.
Add your first library. Choose the content type first, Movies or Shows, then point it at the folder you noted earlier. Films and programmes get separate libraries; do not combine them.
Leave the metadata language as it is unless you want artwork and descriptions in another language.

The last screen asks about remote access. Turn it off for now. Getting to your server from outside the house is worth doing properly, and doing it properly is not a checkbox.

Let the first scan finish

Jellyfin now walks the folders, matches every title and downloads artwork. A few hundred films can take an hour or more. Watch it happen at Dashboard, then Scheduled Tasks.

While it runs, some things will look wrong. Missing posters and mismatched films are almost always a filename Jellyfin could not read, and they are much easier to spot once the scan has finished than halfway through.

Reach it from another device

Your server is at http://<the computer's address>:8096 on your own network. To find that address:

On Windows, open Command Prompt and run:

ipconfig

Read the IPv4 Address under your active adapter.

On a Mac, System Settings, then Network, then the connection you are using. Or in Terminal:

ipconfig getifaddr en0

Then, on your phone or tablet on the same Wi-Fi, open http://192.168.1.50:8096, substituting your own address. If the sign-in page appears, the server is working and every Jellyfin app on your network can now find it.

Tip

That address can change when the computer reconnects, at which point every app stops finding the server. Reserving a fixed address for it in your router, often called a DHCP reservation or a static lease, takes two minutes and saves that happening in a year’s time when you have forgotten all of this.

Stop the computer going to sleep

A sleeping server is indistinguishable from a broken one, from the sofa.

On Windows, Settings, then System, then Power, and set the computer to never sleep when plugged in. The screen can still turn off.

On a Mac, System Settings, then Energy or Battery, depending on the model, and prevent automatic sleeping when plugged in. Leave the display sleep alone.

And if your media lives on an external drive, stop that sleeping too: on Windows under the same power settings, on a Mac by turning off the option to put hard disks to sleep.

Now install an app

The web interface is for administration. It is not how you want to watch anything.

Note

JellyMold is a Jellyfin client for iPhone and iPad from the people who write these guides. It plays your files directly rather than asking the server to re-encode them, which keeps the picture intact and stops a laptop turning into a heater. It is out now on iPhone and iPad.