The Ability to Search the Plugin Catalog

[sydlexius 316]

Being not just a lazy person, but also one who prefers keyboards over mouse clicks I sure would love the ability to search the plugin catalog!  Horizontally scrolling through each category is needless tedium, IMO.  A search box would be heaven-sent!

BTW, I wasn't too lazy to search the FR section for prior requests on this subject...if this is a duplicate, it wasn't for want of searching (BTW, this forum software is really crummy at it.  Booleans operators like "AND" are ignored as far as I can tell).

[neik 874]

You could use the browser's search to achieve that, at least that's how I do it.

[sydlexius 316]

6 hours ago, neik said:

You could use the browser's search to achieve that, at least that's how I do it.

My experience with that is inconsistent at best.  Further, that's an incomplete solution as it does nothing for those who also use the apps to manage their servers.

[kricker 2]

Seems to be a basic function that has long been overlooked.

[sydlexius 316]

TBH, the Plugins UX kind of reminds me of the phrase "when your only tool is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a nail."  I don't browse plugin installs from a 10ft interface, so why does it have to mimic one?

[TMCsw 275]

On 10/6/2022 at 10:54 PM, sydlexius said:

Being not just a lazy person, but also one who prefers keyboards over mouse clicks I sure would love the ability to search the plugin catalog

Just what would you search for? 

A plugin name? What good is that?

The biggest problem with the catalogue is that most Plugins don't give a good description of what they do!  

[IAmHugh 68]

On 6/7/2026 at 12:39 PM, kricker said:

Seems to be a basic function that has long been overlooked.

Not overlooked, ignored is far far far more accurate. Search across the board since 2018. While I don't personally care if the plugins section ever gets search cause it takes less than 2 minutes to go through all of them. It's not having perlibrary search and separate search for settings that drives ne nuts.

[sydlexius 316]

On 6/10/2026 at 5:02 PM, TMCsw said:

Just what would you search for? 

A plugin name? What good is that?

The biggest problem with the catalogue is that most Plugins don't give a good description of what they do!  

How about any attribute?  For giggles, I mocked up something that's a (bastard) child of Emby + Unraid Community Apps that might have some useful ideas?

https://sydlexius.github.io/Segment_Reporting/plugins_mockup.html

Some are aspirational, such as install counts, crash-happiness, and free/paid/premium.

[TMCsw 275]

21 minutes ago, sydlexius said:

How about any attribute? 

Hu? What attributes?

21 minutes ago, sydlexius said:

For giggles

Just shows how ridiculous this is.

Bye. and NOT clicking your link.

Edited yesterday at 12:25 AM by TMCsw
typo

[seanbuff 1373]

35 minutes ago, sydlexius said:

I mocked up something that's a (bastard) child of Emby + Unraid Community Apps that might have some useful ideas?

https://sydlexius.github.io/Segment_Reporting/plugins_mockup.html

I love it, exactly what we need. The Plugins UI is in need of a serious overhaul.

[sydlexius 316]

For the benefit of anyone else interested in seeing improvements on this that aren't interested in clicking on links, some of the attributes I'd like to search or filter would be:

Status: Installed / Not installed / Updates available
Category: Metadata, Playback, Notifications, Subtitles, Live TV, Reporting, Library, Channels, Themes
Author
License: MIT / GPL-3.0 / Apache-2.0 / Commercial
Pricing: Free / Paid / Emby Premiere
Last Updated

Edited yesterday at 12:47 AM by sydlexius

[ebr 16442]

11 hours ago, sydlexius said:

Status: Installed

This already exists in the "My Plugins" tab

11 hours ago, sydlexius said:

Category:

They are already separated by category...

11 hours ago, sydlexius said:

License: MIT / GPL-3.0 / Apache-2.0 / Commercial

We don't have this information for 3rd parties

Otherwise, not bad suggestions but probably not worth the effort until it is saving you more than a minute or two given the number of plugins in the catalog at this point.

[sydlexius 316]

15 hours ago, ebr said:

This already exists in the "My Plugins" tab

It does, but being able to filter/exclude already installed plugins would cut down on some of the noise.

15 hours ago, ebr said:

They are already separated by category...

No arguments here...they are, but it would still be nice to see all plugins for a given category on the screen without having to scroll to the right (or hope that CTRL/CMD-F finds it)

15 hours ago, ebr said:

We don't have this information for 3rd parties

This is a bit aspirational and low-priority, TBH.  Nevertheless, it probably wouldn't take a motivated forum member enough to put together an evidence-based dossier on the state of licensing and have at least partial data on it.  I'd volunteer for it if it was worth implementing.

[yocker 1620]

The catalog is indeed awkward.

When browsing you only get a logo and name, often that is no help what so ever to what the plugin does.
While there isn't that many plugins in the catalog, in the future when there are some more it will take a long time to browse it.

A "simple" fix IMO would be to have it work like movies in Emby.
Press a category and have it scroll like movies do with a small description under the logo and name.