Allow synchronization of customization settings across devices

[AngelSing 44]

Hello Emby Team,

First of all, I would like to thank you for the excellent work you continually do with the platform. Emby has been a great solution for managing our media libraries in a very flexible and efficient way.

However, I would like to propose a suggestion that could further improve the user experience, especially for those of us who use Emby across multiple devices and assist others in accessing their libraries.

I have noticed that when I configure customization settings on one device (for example, on my computer), these settings do not automatically synchronize across other devices or platforms.
When switching, for example, from a computer browser to a mobile device, or from a mobile device to a Smart TV, I have to reconfigure important aspects such as:

• Library organization and sorting.

• Visible fields within libraries.

• General interface language.

• Display of background images in libraries.

     

This behavior presents an additional challenge in my case: many of the users whose accounts I manage are elderly people or users with very limited technical knowledge.
I carefully configure everything on one device to make navigation easier for them, but when they switch devices, the personalized settings do not carry over, causing confusion because the environment looks different from what they expect.

I have tried solving this by remotely accessing their accounts to reconfigure, but since customization settings are stored locally on each device and not on the server or user account, the problem persists.

Therefore, I propose the following:

• Introduce an option in Emby’s settings to synchronize customization settings across devices.

• This option could be optional: users could choose whether they want their settings to sync (considering that some users might prefer different settings on different devices).

I believe this improvement would be extremely helpful for server administrators managing non-technical users, as well as for individual users who seek a unified experience without the need to manually reconfigure on each device.

I sincerely hope you will consider this suggestion for future updates to Emby, as it would greatly contribute to a smoother and more user-friendly experience for everyone.

Thank you very much for your attention and for the outstanding work you do!

[Luke 41265]

HI, many options do sync and we try to enable that as much as possible where it makes sense.

The ones that do not sync are generally the kinds of options that you might want to have different depending on screen size or connection.

Language - I can tell you right off the bat that will never sync. The default of Auto uses the device language, which is what most users expect.

[Luke 41265]

And some of these are just not that simple where it might enable table view on your desktop to manage your media, but that view might not make sense on a phone or TV.

[AngelSing 44]

6 minutes ago, Luke said:

And some of these are just not that simple where it might enable table view on your desktop to manage your media, but that view might not make sense on a phone or TV.

@LukeI understand, but maybe it would be possible that if the configured library organization is not available on the device being used, the system could automatically select another compatible organization.
In particular, the organization of libraries is one of the options I care about the most.
Regarding the background image, I believe it is something that could be synchronized across all devices.
I speak from my limited technical knowledge, but based on my personal experience, since I spend a lot of time configuring and customizing interfaces for elderly users where I work, it becomes quite tedious to repeat the entire process every time a new device appears that they want to use.

[Luke 41265]

Quote

Regarding the background image, I believe it is something that could be synchronized across all devices.

One issue is that on a remote connection this can add loading time to the list screens.

[AngelSing 44]

45 minutes ago, Luke said:

One issue is that on a remote connection this can add loading time to the list screens.

At the very least, it would be very helpful not to have to reconfigure the library organization options on every new device.

[PaperPlayn 7]

I concur with this request, and I further suggest that this be implemented in a "tiered" system, similar to the "cascading" model of CSS.

1. Base-level: Default to some Emby vanilla "sensible" layout--whatever it does now.
2. Second-level: Give the admin the option to configure a library as he chooses and then "push" that organization, manually, to all new or existing users, or both; OR to a specific user or device.  A "pull" option might be good too: "Reset my home/library/folder view settings to server defaults" or something.
3. Third-level: device-specific overrides, such as system language, or sidebar expand/contract based on viewport size, etc., override whatever is pushed.  Or there could be a toggle for this.
4. Top-level: Individual user customizations, such as sort/filter, thumbnail size, etc., finally override whatever was last pushed from the admin.

Obviously there is no clean & simple solution for everyone, and obviously each user will still need to do a bit of configuration per device... but personally I get tired of (for instance) switching from "Primary" to "Thumb" image across dozens of folders and a big handful of devices.

Thanks. 

[visproduction 308]

Paper,

Although, I agree in principle, letting the admin adjust other members page options, there are inherit issues that are not so obvious.  The standard for website design does not include much of the customization you request, because the page can often break for users with different hardware.  What looks great on a large monitor - notebook or desktop can break a mobile view in so many ways, the mobile user cannot use the page... Font size, overlapping objects, text runs off the page, buttons move around, under some images or even fly off the page entirely... etc.  These page breaks can also happen for tablet size monitors and you can run into trouble even when the user flips from portrait to landscape.

Standard best practices is to have alternate designs with completely different code for mobile vs. desktop, vs. TV playback.  Even with Mobile, you sometimes need around a dozen custom style collections to make every mobile size look good.  That is normally not done because the effort is too intense and a compromise style and page code is created that looks pretty good for most all mobile users.  When that style is created, then it is no longer possible to easily change one little spacing or button for one type of mobile size.  The overall mobile design is what you get.  Fine tuning is no an option.

Letting the user restyle their own page is pretty much limited to dark vs light themes by almost all online sites, even the huge social media sites.  This is because of two reasons. 

1) The user can easily break a page with design options, not know how to fix it and leave and never come back.

2) Such custom choices have to be stored somewhere and wherever you put them the override and update for each page slows the page load speed down.  Even the best written code for this would cause longer dbase lookups, extra browser use and slow each page, depending on server speed load and user's hardware and network traffic, possibly from 3 to 10 to 20 times longer to load a page.  This slow down is enough to ruin the program's popularity. 

95% of people leave a page if it takes more than 4 seconds to load.  I understand you might be happy to wait for your exact look you like.  You are not the public.  This type of feature can kill a program.

Item 2 second level push to let admin have more say in how the user starts, like showing more info per media, sorting by latest release.    That might be doable and I agree could be a nice improvment. But you can't force a table view, or turn on / off a media poster image, if ihis breaks mobile, for example. C  These reasons are what make the feature request numbered 3,4 not really a possibilty to offer, in my opinion. Currently Emby has picked a base choice that works for all users, no matter what hardware the have. 

This type of custom look requests happens all the time to website production.  Sometimes the account rep will mention that magazine pdf presentations are different from online apps or web design and that some features are just not available at this time.  There are always users and fans that want to know when it might be possible, but the real answer is you cannot do this with Apps  / Web or Mobile design.  It's just not possible, even though many users think it has to be a way.

Go ahead find an online service, TV app or mobile that lets you redesign your users style.  Outside of some simple light vs. dark themes, no major professional app let's you do this.  Anything you might find that offers more, will not be a big online service.  The closest option is web design themes but that is a custom style look for user's sites, not a style for an app like Emby.

I do design for web, apps and mobile for eCommerce and have done some large sites with more than 100,000 users.  I have done styles for Emby Web that handles 15 or so different mobile sizes, tablets, notebooks, TV web browsers and desktops.  You can check out my custom style for Web only at: