how to disable "More like this" ?

[Kurt13 11]

I'm not old enough here like, probably, all of you, but seeing posts of users frustrated by something they've been asking for so long and no one from Emby replying, is not a good sign.

If it wasn't for the paid users what would Emby be? 

It's all beautiful and wonderful but after you pay, you see that you did what was supposed and then you seem to lose the right to ask for something.

 

Is Emby the new Plex?...  

Edited October 18, 2025 by Kurt13

[Smitty018210 143]

41 minutes ago, Kurt13 said:

 

Is Emby the new Plex?...  

I have my frustration with the emby dev team sure, but I would say 100% no. Not even remotely.

[Kurt13 11]

12 minutes ago, Smitty018210 said:

I have my frustration with the emby dev team sure, but I would say 100% no. Not even remotely.

Thankfully 

Anyway, Plex also used to be good but at some point they stopped listening to their customers and start shifting from what was a good service to a clunky one full of things no one asked for.

[ebr 16169]

10 hours ago, Kurt13 said:

I'm not old enough here like, probably, all of you, but seeing posts of users frustrated by something they've been asking for so long and no one from Emby replying, is not a good sign.

If it wasn't for the paid users what would Emby be? 

It's all beautiful and wonderful but after you pay, you see that you did what was supposed and then you seem to lose the right to ask for something.

 

Is Emby the new Plex?...  

Hi.  We monitor all feature requests and have to weigh the interest each of them has against many factors including our resources.  This request is something that we probably will get to but, to put it in context, it has 8 people supporting it so far so it isn't high on the list of things we feel a large portion of the user base wants right now.

We do not necessarily respond in every FR topic but we definitely read and monitor every one of them.

Thanks.

[Kurt13 11]

2 minutes ago, ebr said:

Hi.  We monitor all feature requests and have to weigh the interest each of them has against many factors including our resources.  This request is something that we probably will get to but, to put it in context, it has 8 people supporting it so far so it isn't high on the list of things we feel a large portion of the user base wants right now.

We do not necessarily respond in every FR topic but we definitely read and monitor every one of them.

Thanks.

Hi, 

But isn't this a simple and quick task to do for a developer?

Thanks 

[visproduction 315]

Kurt,

First the feature popularity should be considered.  I like "More like this'" and it works really well for a collection of movies, TV series without animation. Personally, I don't see an issue. Just ignore it, if you don't like it.  Not everyone feels the need to clean everything on all pages, all the time.  Counting the likes and counter views in an add a feature forum post, gives you some idea of popularity.  But usually, people only post if they agree that a new feature is needed.  It comes down to, say an estimated cost to add a feature is 60 hours and it looks like only 15 people want it. The downside is the extra complexity might hurt the overall look and feel of the program.  Think of the Apple OS. They stayed away from complexity that Windows  / Linux has and Apple gained popularity.  Being able to change everything possible, is not necessarily good for the product.  Would you buy a car with 150 buttons in the dash?

Then, it is not just a turn the feature off option because, if the user doesn't want any "More like this", then you ideally want to remove all the base lookup function running on the page that pulls the list of "More like this" results.  Otherwise, the lookup runs, takes up server bandwidth and then is made invisible on the page.  That is not optimized.

Stopping the database lookup needs to be done in a way that does not just cause page errors or alerts which also would slow down the page load time.  So any code / function dbase lookup steps should be turned off that leads up to serving the dbase look up list of "More like this".

Then running a QA test to see if this causes any other issues or page breaks.  Sometimes, removal of a row can cause other page features to fail. Perhaps it could cause a lower area to overlap on some Emby versions at some monitor sizes.  Ideally, all he different Emby versions for every type should be tested for different monitor sizes and with different optional thumbnail poster size selections.

The code to make this feature work across all Emby versions probably needs a lot of adjustment for every version.  So, to get the feature to work everywhere may need 6 times more effort to work.  I don't know exactly how valid this statement is.   In any case, it would have to be tested separately for each version.

Then the admin controls need to be designed and made to turn "More like this" on or off and also tested for all setups.  The location of these controls in the admin dashboard need to be logical and easy to find.  Help files should be updated.  QA tests need to be run on the admin controls to make sure the new feature options don't break the admin page for all Emby versions and monitor sizes.  And additional testing needs to be run to make the admin controls work, in all situations.

Any bugs have to be reported and investigated and fixed.

I really don't understand why people often say "it should be a quick task" about changing features in a program.

Edited October 18, 2025 by visproduction

[Kurt13 11]

3 hours ago, visproduction said:

Kurt,

First the feature popularity should be considered.  I like "More like this'" and it works really well for a collection of movies, TV series without animation. Personally, I don't see an issue. Just ignore it, if you don't like it.  Not everyone feels the need to clean everything on all pages, all the time.  Counting the likes and counter views in an add a feature forum post, gives you some idea of popularity.  But usually, people only post if they agree that a new feature is needed.  It comes down to, say an estimated cost to add a feature is 60 hours and it looks like only 15 people want it. The downside is the extra complexity might hurt the overall look and feel of the program.  Think of the Apple OS. They stayed away from complexity that Windows  / Linux has and Apple gained popularity.  Being able to change everything possible, is not necessarily good for the product.  Would you buy a car with 150 buttons in the dash?

Then, it is not just a turn the feature off option because, if the user doesn't want any "More like this", then you ideally want to remove all the base lookup function running on the page that pulls the list of "More like this" results.  Otherwise, the lookup runs, takes up server bandwidth and then is made invisible on the page.  That is not optimized.

Stopping the database lookup needs to be done in a way that does not just cause page errors or alerts which also would slow down the page load time.  So any code / function dbase lookup steps should be turned off that leads up to serving the dbase look up list of "More like this".

Then running a QA test to see if this causes any other issues or page breaks.  Sometimes, removal of a row can cause other page features to fail. Perhaps it could cause a lower area to overlap on some Emby versions at some monitor sizes.  Ideally, all he different Emby versions for every type should be tested for different monitor sizes and with different optional thumbnail poster size selections.

The code to make this feature work across all Emby versions probably needs a lot of adjustment for every version.  So, to get the feature to work everywhere may need 6 times more effort to work.  I don't know exactly how valid this statement is.   In any case, it would have to be tested separately for each version.

Then the admin controls need to be designed and made to turn "More like this" on or off and also tested for all setups.  The location of these controls in the admin dashboard need to be logical and easy to find.  Help files should be updated.  QA tests need to be run on the admin controls to make sure the new feature options don't break the admin page for all Emby versions and monitor sizes.  And additional testing needs to be run to make the admin controls work, in all situations.

Any bugs have to be reported and investigated and fixed.

I really don't understand why people often say "it should be a quick task" about changing features in a program.

Good text but your last paragraph wasn't for me, right? 

Because what I said/ask was: "But isn't this a simple and quick task to do for a developer?". 

Asking is different than stating.

 

 

Edited October 18, 2025 by Kurt13

[Davey's 37]

I can understand that implementing something new (or undoing it) can be quite involved. In this case, it would be nice to have the user's control over what they see and what they don't. Of course, "more than this" depends on properly scraped content. It would also be nice if I could edit the content more easily within Emby, but that's off-topic, but not entirely unimportant in this case.

[ZanderKeen 72]

5 hours ago, ebr said:

it has 8 people supporting it so far

9 now lol. I forgot to react to the OP.  

[IAmHugh 63]

On 10/17/2025 at 8:09 PM, Smitty018210 said:

On 10/17/2025 at 7:25 PM, Kurt13 said:

Is Emby the new Plex?...  

I have my frustration with the emby dev team sure, but I would say 100% no. Not even remotely.

I would agree that Emby isn't the new PLEX cause the bad behavior from the devs would have to be new and it far far far far far from new

[ebr 16169]

22 hours ago, Kurt13 said:

Hi, 

But isn't this a simple and quick task to do for a developer?

Thanks 

I'm afraid very few FR are as simple as they may seem but, also, when you assemble 100 "simple" things, that is also, not so simple .

[C.S. 93]

On 10/18/2025 at 6:05 AM, ebr said:

This request is something that we probably will get to but, to put it in context, it has 8 people supporting it so far [...]

Another way of stating this, in context, is that it has more support than the vast majority of ideas in this forum.

Extraneous Stuff on the screen is something most people can ignore, so it ends up being a lower priority than other issues, but it's still an issue.

This isn't really a Feature Request - it's more of a Can I just have have the option of reducing the visual clutter on my screen? Please?

Maybe there should be a forum for that.

[ebr 16169]

3 hours ago, C.S. said:

Another way of stating this, in context, is that it has more support than the vast majority of ideas in this forum.

It is still placed as about FR #200 in the list.

[IAmHugh 63]

9 hours ago, ebr said:

It is still placed as about FR #200 in the list.

That list is [redacted] and we all know it. Getting search fixed once and for all is one of the most request. Within the top 10.

Edited October 20, 2025 by GrimReaper
Language

[GrimReaper 4739]

22 minutes ago, CummingCowGirl said:

Getting search fixed once and for all is one of the most request. Within the top 10.

Is actually 38th (not including In-progress FRs), on quick count. That doesn't detract from its validity, just putting things in perspective. 

 

Edited October 20, 2025 by GrimReaper

[C.S. 93]

On 10/18/2025 at 8:45 AM, visproduction said:

Then, it is not just a turn the feature off option because, if the user doesn't want any "More like this", then you ideally want to remove all the base lookup function running on the page that pulls the list of "More like this" results.  Otherwise, the lookup runs, takes up server bandwidth and then is made invisible on the page.  That is not optimized.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with that. If the default setting is to show the list, then the vast majority will just leave it, and nothing changes. The fact that 10 or 15% might disable the list does not mean their servers would then be running in some degraded state. The experience would be identical to the default, just without the list.

 

On 10/19/2025 at 3:50 PM, ebr said:

It is still placed as about FR #200 in the list.

Soooo... top 2% ? I'm guessing. Please don't make me do math. If you were ranked the 200th best pro tennis player in the world, you would tell people at the bar, and they would rightly be impressed, even though they never heard of you and likely wouldn't remember your name.

If you can't bring yourselves to allow us to hide the list, then at least give us some control over how it's constructed. Of course that's even less likely to happen, because it's obviously more work than just hiding the list, but either way you would burnish your reputation as a company that listens to its customers.

[ebr 16169]

On 10/21/2025 at 3:03 PM, C.S. said:

Soooo... top 2% ? I'm guessing. Please don't make me do math. If you were ranked the 200th best pro tennis player in the world, you would tell people at the bar, and they would rightly be impressed, even though they never heard of you and likely wouldn't remember your name.

Even though that analogy is completely off-base I'll run with it - I still wouldn't get into Wimbledon.

The bottom line is there are just more important things to do at this point in time and we have limited resources.  This is a great FR that a very few people really want. There are a lot of great ones that a whole more people really want and that's just what we're working on right now.

I still think we'll likely get to this one.

[tehcupcakes 8]

Thanks @ebr.

I definitely understand the software development life cycle and this being lower priority. Even though it sounds like a quick and easy one, I also know how seemingly simple tickets can drag on with unexpected challenges.  If the devs aren't personally bothered by this, I can see this getting set aside, as there are simply more urgent and more interesting things to work on.

That said, I think there was some initial frustration because it seemed like a very long period of time passed without any acknowledgement. Even if it is low priority, waiting for > 1 year is an awfully long time. It raises the question if anyone is ever going to get to it, or if it will simply sit in limbo forever at the bottom of an endless list of requests. For a complex request with little support, this is understandable. For a simple toggle... well, I would hope one day someone feels like "I'll knock out some low hanging fruit" and takes care of it in an afternoon.

One more other thing that I will add is that I made an account on the forum specifically to +1 this request. That is highly unusual and something most users won't do. But that doesn't mean demand is low; just that your forum traffic is probably more representative of power users than the average joe. A less invested user is more likely to see these small issues with the service and decide "eh I'll try something else" and not bother with feature requests. Or it may be functionality which disproportionately effects less tech-savvy users, whom are still users of the platform, but again are less likely to post on the forum.

Anyway, you have addressed my main concern which was just that the request is acknowledged and it is in scope of things you would like to address. I appreciate the response. I do hope it doesn't take another year or two before it is worked on, but I also understand you can't commit to anything. For now I suggest that everyone just +1 the topic and leave it at that. No sense in complaining; they'll get to it when they get to it.

[C.S. 93]

7 hours ago, ebr said:

Even though that analogy is completely off-base I'll run with it - I still wouldn't get into Wimbledon.

First, how dare you. Second, there's a qualifying tournament for lower ranked players. You just need to believe in yourself.

[IAmHugh 63]

8 hours ago, tehcupcakes said:

as there are simply more urgent and more interesting things to work on.

I call fixing search urgent. ESPECIALLY where in settings Emby search EVERYTHING except in settings. Now tell me that wasn't just stupid.

[ebr 16169]

11 hours ago, tehcupcakes said:

Even though it sounds like a quick and easy one

It really isn't - not done properly.  This is really one single variation of a much bigger item which is being able to customize what you see on some of the screens.  This is in our plans but is a lower priority than many other things primarily because the vast majority of people do not take advantage of customization options even when they are available.  This coupled with the relative "cost" of such options (in complexity, maintenance, etc.) makes them very low value for the larger user base.

Still, such customizations are in our plans.  The home screen will be the first target though.

[xLifu 18]

On 10/23/2025 at 3:30 PM, ebr said:

It really isn't - not done properly. 

By the time it’s properly implemented, it will be 2032.

Currently, it’s already working on the web using a script. We’re looking for a similar quick solution for the other devices.

[IAmHugh 63]

On 10/26/2025 at 11:53 AM, xLifu said:

By the time it’s properly implemented, it will be 2032.

LOL I said something along those lines.