u/AstroTrain4412

Just as a preface; I’m what might be considered very ignorant compared to this entire community, as I… don’t know the first thing about coding. At all. I’m looking into tutorials and possible courses, but I’ve never really used GitHub outside of just automatic scrapers and easy programs. And I haven’t started using Jellyfin yet, I just wanted to ask a few general questions before diving into it fully. Just thought I’d let that be known before getting into it.

So I collect and save a lot of media from Archive and rips from my own home media. I’ve tried to save most of them for posterity and entertainment, but for one reason or another I had to get rid of them (not exactly the best idea to try and save all of Totally Spies, The Big O, and Motorcity on my Google Drive lol). So I was looking for media storage alternatives, and started to think about the possibility of finding a personal server service that could function as a streaming service of sorts. I tried Plex and Stremio, but they didn’t really have what I was looking for. I was browsing and eventually found Jellyfin, and it’s EXACTLY what I’m looking for! From what I’ve seen and watched, it looks absolutely amazing! It lets me host, organize, and stream your personal movies, TV shows, music, and comics without any subscriptions, paywalls, or cloud tracking?! Totally free and community-based?! And organize my shows accordingly however I want from adding to removal, with a personal server I can share with friends and family anytime I want?! Sign me up IMMEDIATELY!

But as I’m about to get into this, I thought about a few things that I haven’t really seen answered anywhere else, so I thought this’d be the best place to do so. I have a MacBook and know how to set the program up, but I still have a few questions before getting into this. I guess I’m saying/asking that I’ve already seen the pitch and already sold, but have a few follow-up questions before diving in. Sorry if this is a sort of break in flow for regular posts on this sub, and this long intro, but if you don’t mind indulging this a little, I’d really appreciate it!

Storage. Okay, so I get patching my files onto the server, but what I want to ask is do I have to keep them on file at all times to keep them on the server, or once the file is patched can I just delete the file from my computer and it’ll stay on the server? I can most likely redownload them if the files get corrupted or lost, but I just want to know if I can delete them on my desktop and they’ll stay on Jellyfin. And on the topic, does Jellyfin have an upwards upload storage limit?

So how exactly does Jellyfin know which media is being uploaded to the point of titles and descriptions? I get the main titles, but what about the episodes contained in them? Is it up to the user to fix those? Is it connected to IMDB or something similar? And can you change titles or descriptions as you want?

How extensive do folders get? Like can I put a folder within a genre folder and so on? And how many can I make?

Can I set up multiple access accounts within the server? Like, say, a kids account?

Can the iOS app play any of the media from the server library, or only aircast it?

Any recommended addons? Anything to put in that might improve the experience on Jellyfin?

Thanks for answering some of these questions, if any at all! I might have some follow-up questions, but hopefully things go smoothly. Although, again, most likely need to get some more coding expertise before really getting into it. I’m just trying to sort things out for what I’m sure will be a wonderful service. I hope I can start soon! Thank you for your time!