User Settings - Server vs Device

[yocker 1247]

2 minutes ago, DMazer said:

I have clicked on this link and then HOME SCREEN and all I get is the Media list and then a spinning circle.  Doesn't seem to work, there either.  But thank you for trying to help me.  This seem convoluted to have to update each users profile whenever I make a change to the structure.  I guess I will give up on this.

Seems like there is something wrong.
First the spinning circle and then the missing information in the Library Order.

Go to logs and enable debugging.
Restart your server, go directly to that page again.
After that go to logs and save the latest log file and send it here, i bet the developers would like to see it.

[Luke 42077]

1 hour ago, DMazer said:

I have clicked on this link and then HOME SCREEN and all I get is the Media list and then a spinning circle.  Doesn't seem to work, there either.  But thank you for trying to help me.  This seem convoluted to have to update each users profile whenever I make a change to the structure.  I guess I will give up on this.

Hi there, please attach the Emby server log from when the problem occurred:

How to Report a Problem

Thanks!

 

[DMazer 7]

After doing some checking, I figured out, i can't be in maintenance mode to edit user data from that link.

I always put my server in maintenance mode when I make updates or changes to the system.

I would still prefer a global way to make these change and force them to stick to all profiles vs having to go into 20 profiles to make changes every time I do an update or change to the categories. 

Thank you all for your help.

Edited December 2, 2025 by DMazer

[Luke 42077]

4 hours ago, DMazer said:

After doing some checking, I figured out, i can't be in maintenance mode to edit user data from that link.

I always put my server in maintenance mode when I make updates or changes to the system.

I would still prefer a global way to make these change and force them to stick to all profiles vs having to go into 20 profiles to make changes every time I do an update or change to the categories. 

Thank you all for your help.

HI, good catch about maintenance mode. We'll take a look at this. Thanks.

[Cr8iveLosr 97]

On 12/1/2025 at 2:06 PM, DMazer said:

I have clicked on this link and then HOME SCREEN and all I get is the Media list and then a spinning circle.  Doesn't seem to work, there either.  But thank you for trying to help me.  This seem convoluted to have to update each users profile whenever I make a change to the structure.  I guess I will give up on this.

 

[DMazer 7]

I made the necessary updates to each user profile, re-ordering my categories and ensuring how I want the default screen to look for myself and users. I have them set and saved, but when I go to the device, example my Roku in my room, that device always defaults to "Suggestions" for category vs what I have them set to.  This is new to v4.9 upgrade, it never did this to me before....

Example of the settings under user profile DMazer001 / Home Screen....

 

When I click on the My Media "Spotlight" icon or the Latest "Spotlight" link above the latest content....

I always get "Suggestions" vs the "Movies" option I selected in the above settings for myself and my users.

So, it appears even though I set the settings, it's still not holding them, and not giving myself or the users the experience I was hoping for.  This only just started doing this.

Thanks for taking the time to reply to my messages, and understand if this is something that might be fixed in a future update.

_Derek

Edited December 3, 2025 by DMazer

[warrentc3 47]

keep in mind… they have designed this in such a way that, you “can’t push settings to a device” or even define a “default device config”, but they require websocket connection to the device to remotely stop playback at the device because apparently you can’t force stopping playback from the server side unless you restart the server service. 

so, temper expectations accordingly. 

[Luke 42077]

Hi, we’ll take a look at that with Roku.

@ebr

 thanks

[ebr 16169]

Hi.  The Roku currently has its own default tab setting because it allows you to select any tab in any library as the default and the main setting doesn't.  The setting is accessed from within each library under the "cog".

[DMazer 7]

Strange thing it was working fine before the 4.9 update... to many things have broken my emby experience since this update....

1. Director now listed before cast, which most don't have a photo.... Yes, I use TMM and don't have the option to reorder and have to many movies to go in an manually fix thousands of .nfo's.

2. All movies treated as folder, which puts an icon in the top corner of every movie, when in each category, doesn't on the home screen, when looking at latest added ( which doesn't look good ), and I lost my DVD/BluRay/4K overlay's that used to show what type of movie it was.

3. The way the categories display as noted above....

To many things have messed up all at once.

Thank You to Luke and the Admin team for trying to help, I did purchase the Emby premier 5 years ago, and really did enjoy the product, over the years.  I guess nothing last forever...  Keep up your efforts to make the product better.

Edited December 5, 2025 by DMazer

[ebr 16169]

Hi. Neither of those things are "broken".  They both are now more faithfully following the data.

17 hours ago, DMazer said:

Director now listed before cast

Only if that's how it is in your metadata

17 hours ago, DMazer said:

All movies treated as folder

Only if you specifically are viewing by folder.

We understand you don't like these changes but they are not bugs nor broken.  We are monitoring feedback and will adjust accordingly.

Thanks!

[DMazer 7]

On 12/6/2025 at 7:16 AM, ebr said:

Hi. Neither of those things are "broken".  They both are now more faithfully following the data.

Only if that's how it is in your metadata

Only if you specifically are viewing by folder.

We understand you don't like these changes but they are not bugs nor broken.  We are monitoring feedback and will adjust accordingly.

Thanks!

Greetings...

I never said the EMBY product itself was BROKEN, I said "Broken MY EMBY EXPERIENCE". Which is 100% true.  I am the user and my experience has been broken by the updates, which after paying for this product, leaves me with a bad experience with Emby as a product, which i used to love. Also claiming something "more faithfully following the data" is a matter of perspective and since your team is the developers, I grant that perspective to you.  However, it doesn't change the negative experience the change made for those who never asked for it or setup their systems to display a specific way when there was no standard way of making .NFOs.  Those with large libraries, the change, "breaks" that experience, as it would be a tremendous about of work to pivot to a new "forced" standard.

The point of only viewing by folder, is misleading. If the entire library is folder based, which is what your dev team recommended on how to build a library, based on your documentation, that breaks the experience since most people using your product built their libraries off your recommended process. So, it's not only if viewing by folder, it's because of how the libraries were built, which ruined the experience, and makes the library look like crap, with a folder icon on every movie image and overlays no longer work.

The one thing that has actually broken (that I use or see), is the plugin for DVD/BR/4K overlays by the folder change.  

I find the whole experience disappointing.

With that said, I don't plan to reply to this thread again... it's beating a dead horse on what appears to be deaf ears.... so as I said in closing above...

"Thank You to the Admin team for trying to help, I did purchase the Emby premier 5 years ago, and really did enjoy the product, over the years.  I guess nothing last forever...  Keep up your efforts to make the product better."

[Luke 42077]

15 minutes ago, DMazer said:

 

The point of only viewing by folder, is misleading. If the entire library is folder based, which is what your dev team recommended on how to build a library, based on your documentation, that breaks the experience since most people using your product built their libraries off your recommended process. So, it's not only if viewing by folder, it's because of how the libraries were built, which ruined the experience, and makes the library look like crap, with a folder icon on every movie image and overlays no longer work.

Hi, stay tuned because we will be adding an option in library setup to use the legacy library scanning method.

[ebr 16169]

13 hours ago, DMazer said:

If the entire library is folder based, which is what your dev team recommended on how to build a library, based on your documentation

HI. Where are you seeing that?  We do not recommend viewing by folder.  The vast majority of our users use the dedicated Movies/Shows, etc. views.

[DMazer 7]

On 12/11/2025 at 6:40 AM, ebr said:

HI. Where are you seeing that?  We do not recommend viewing by folder.  The vast majority of our users use the dedicated Movies/Shows, etc. views.

This is how I built my library, based on the documentation (folder based library). Each movies is in it's own folder as shown below.....

Example of my "Movies" folder structure is:

2000-Present (Category Folder) / A (folder) / Avatar (2009) (folder) / Avatar (2009).mkv (Movie file).

1950-1999 (Category Folder) / B (folder) / Backdraft (1991) (folder) / Backdraft (1991).mkv (Movie file).

Emby Document Link:  https://emby.media/support/articles/Movie-Naming.html

Complex Folder Structure

If you plan on having thousands of movies in your library you may want to add an additional folder to your hierarchy to aid in navigation. For example you could create folders for all movies starting with the first letter or number such as:

\Movies\A\Avatar (2009)\Avatar (2009).mkv
\Movies\P\Pulp Fiction (1994)\Pulp Fiction (1994).mp4
\Movies\R\Reservoir Dogs (1992)\Reservoir Dogs (1992).mp4
\Movies\T\The Usual Suspects (1995)\The Usual Suspects (1995).mkv
\Movies\T\Top Gun (1986)\Top Gun (1986).mp4

When viewing your media outside of Emby using conventional tools such as Windows Explorer this allows you to navigate your library much quicker without having to wait for thousands of folders to load. It saves you from scrolling through thousands of folders to get to your "W" movies for example. Emby will work just fine with or without this additional folder!

Edited December 23, 2025 by DMazer

[Luke 42077]

11 hours ago, DMazer said:

This is how I built my library, based on the documentation (folder based library). Each movies is in it's own folder as shown below.....

Example of my "Movies" folder structure is:

2000-Present (Category Folder) / A (folder) / Avatar (2009) (folder) / Avatar (2009).mkv (Movie file).

1950-1999 (Category Folder) / B (folder) / Backdraft (1991) (folder) / Backdraft (1991).mkv (Movie file).

Emby Document Link:  https://emby.media/support/articles/Movie-Naming.html

Complex Folder Structure

If you plan on having thousands of movies in your library you may want to add an additional folder to your hierarchy to aid in navigation. For example you could create folders for all movies starting with the first letter or number such as:

\Movies\A\Avatar (2009)\Avatar (2009).mkv
\Movies\P\Pulp Fiction (1994)\Pulp Fiction (1994).mp4
\Movies\R\Reservoir Dogs (1992)\Reservoir Dogs (1992).mp4
\Movies\T\The Usual Suspects (1995)\The Usual Suspects (1995).mkv
\Movies\T\Top Gun (1986)\Top Gun (1986).mp4

When viewing your media outside of Emby using conventional tools such as Windows Explorer this allows you to navigate your library much quicker without having to wait for thousands of folders to load. It saves you from scrolling through thousands of folders to get to your "W" movies for example. Emby will work just fine with or without this additional folder!

Right that mainly just means that the video files will be detected properly when organized in that way. But only folder view will actually reflect that folder structure.

[ebr 16169]

7 hours ago, Luke said:

Right that mainly just means that the video files will be detected properly when organized in that way. But only folder view will actually reflect that folder structure.

Yeah, we should probably be more specific in the docs as to why one might want to do this and also point out that structure will only be visible with folder view.  As written, I can see how the user thought this is what we recommended.  In reality, the only reason one would want to do that with Emby would be the fact that some file systems may bog down after a very large number of items in a single directory (but this is like 35k I think).

@sa2000

[DMazer 7]

7 hours ago, ebr said:

Yeah, we should probably be more specific in the docs as to why one might want to do this and also point out that structure will only be visible with folder view.  As written, I can see how the user thought this is what we recommended.  In reality, the only reason one would want to do that with Emby would be the fact that some file systems may bog down after a very large number of items in a single directory (but this is like 35k I think).

@sa2000

Thank for taking the time to reply to my posts.  Very much appreciated.  At least, I know you understand what I mean and why I setup the system the way I did, and we are now on the same page.  Hopefully future updates will make this better.   

[sa2000 674]

On 24/12/2025 at 14:31, ebr said:

Yeah, we should probably be more specific in the docs as to why one might want to do this and also point out that structure will only be visible with folder view. 

The Movie Naming article has now been updated. 

@DMazerI have gone for your year band categorization in the examples !