Simplifying New User Registration

[sundevil67 28]

Hello,

I'm hoping for some guidance about the best way to invite and register about 2 dozen new users for access to my photo libraries. I have a lot of family & college friends who would like to be able to access them, but it has been really difficult - especially for non-tech folks...  confusion related to Emby Connect, accessing content through the app vs. web, multiple platforms, etc. In every case I've actually had to register using one of my own email addresses, set up the new account, and then change it to the final user's info. Honestly even I get tripped up a little when trying get them access from their home using just their TV.

Can anyone point me to a really easy set of step-by-step instructions for this procedure?

Thank yoU!

[visproduction 315]

Safari may still be blocking IP addresses.  Use Chrome or Firefox.  You can also try http://###.###.###.###:8096 in Safari normal browser or try an incognito browser window. 

Another approach may be to create a link on a private page if you are a webmaster for some site.  I like putting the link inside an image map, so it is not very visible and on a hiddne page.  Then you can send the page link to your new users and they can click on a part of an image and open the Emby server that way.  This can be a nice way to do it, because if you ever have to change your external IP address, you can update the hidden page link and users won't even notice any change.  This only works if you are a webmaster.  If that doesn't make sense, then it's not an option for you.

Once the user gets to the Emby server with their Internet browser, all you have to do to prepare their access is to give them a login and password.  If they want to use an Emby app, it works the same way.  They just need an IP address or domain name if you have done SSL, login and password.

Part of the difficulty is Apple.  Their browser setup almost bans any access to IP addresses.  You buy Apple, you buy their regulations and rules.

Hope that helps.

 

[sundevil67 28]

28 minutes ago, visproduction said:

Safari may still be blocking IP addresses.  Use Chrome or Firefox.  You can also try http://###.###.###.###:8096 in Safari normal browser or try an incognito browser window. 

Safari is actually another issue ... because my external site doesn't have an SSL, which Safari now adds automatically, my cousin could not remove the "s" in the address bar & just couldn't access the site that way at all (not someone who I could just ask to use a different browser).

Another approach may be to create a link on a private page if you are a webmaster for some site.  I like putting the link inside an image map, so it is not very visible and on a hiddne page.  Then you can send the page link to your new users and they can click on a part of an image and open the Emby server that way.  This can be a nice way to do it, because if you ever have to change your external IP address, you can update the hidden page link and users won't even notice any change.  This only works if you are a webmaster.  If that doesn't make sense, then it's not an option for you.

I had it like that for a while, but still ran into problems getting folks actually registered - and being able to create one account with Emby Connect & not have to mess with any QR codes or PIN #s that are supposed to make it easier but for this group it really doesn't.

Another issue I have, and maybe it's for another thread & impossible, but I'd love it if tags or any metadata in the photos could be used so I could list people in the photos as links in a nav. That'd prevent me from organizing by family & having to duplicate pics when there are people from each family in a picture. It feels like this capability is somewhere in there, as there is a way to add tags to photos and videos within Emby...I just don't know how they can be used as a destination for a hyperlink...if that all makes sense. 

Once the user gets to the Emby server with their Internet browser, all you have to do to prepare their access is to give them a login and password.  If they want to use an Emby app, it works the same way.  They just need an IP address or domain name if you have done SSL, login and password.

It's the Emby Connect vs. personal account info that trips people up...and when I try to add their emby connect username/email to their user panel in Emby, there's trouble .. actually I'm not totally sure myself what that does. It's been a while since I did all of this; just got a few new requests for access & I know a lot more folks would want it.

I do appreciate your taking the time to chime in ... it is helpful actually even though I just complained more lol

 

 

[visproduction 315]

Sun,
I think there is a feature request post re: adding photo data.  Have a look in Feature request forum group and click I agree if you like the feature idea.  If you get the steps writing down in a simple to understand list and number each step, then your users either can follow that, or they need to have their hand held, which means they are probably not savvi enough to have an account, in my opinion.  Ha!

 

[Luke 42077]

@sundevil67has this helped?

[sundevil67 28]

On 5/14/2025 at 8:32 PM, visproduction said:

Sun,
I think there is a feature request post re: adding photo data.  Have a look in Feature request forum group and click I agree if you like the feature idea.  If you get the steps writing down in a simple to understand list and number each step, then your users either can follow that, or they need to have their hand held, which means they are probably not savvi enough to have an account, in my opinion.  Ha!

 

I saw a couple of threads about it, but none with that title...but I think my post merged two issues together and made it a little convoluted. I wouldn't ever expect users themselves to upload photos. 

1. Simplifying new user registration & the Emby Connect piece

2. Setting up a bridge between Mac Photos or other photo management app running on the server that'd copy over new photos matching predetermined criteria. Copying the files over is easy enough; just need Emby to be able to pick up the metadata, like the facial recognition data, date added, etc., as keeping those albums current manually isn't realistic; for me anyway.

[visproduction 315]

Sun,
Facial recognition sounds fairly advanced.  I don't have experience with Mac Photos.  Other apps, I have used include a circle or oval that aims at the person in the photo and then you either assign a name or member account.  Does Mac Photos, then do this automatically for new photos?  If so, that's really an advanced feature that involves a lot of AI type of image processing.  That would really seem to be outside of the realm of Emby possible features.    Can you explain exactly how facial recognition data works and what you would ideally like to see happen to those of us who never use this service?

[sundevil67 28]

22 hours ago, visproduction said:

Sun,
Facial recognition sounds fairly advanced.  I don't have experience with Mac Photos.  Other apps, I have used include a circle or oval that aims at the person in the photo and then you either assign a name or member account.  Does Mac Photos, then do this automatically for new photos?  If so, that's really an advanced feature that involves a lot of AI type of image processing.  That would really seem to be outside of the realm of Emby possible features.    Can you explain exactly how facial recognition data works and what you would ideally like to see happen to those of us who never use this service?

I almost got what I wanted a while back with a script that would write the name Mac Photos' facial identification had stored into the comments or other EXIF tag, and then have Emby pick it up. The photo albums retain the fields from the movies, i.e. "actor", so I had it populate there I think; or even just into the comments field, but I was having a hard time generating links within emby. My goal was to build a menu that would allow the user to click a name & pull up all photos with that name in the metadata. If I couldn't do that, I wanted to at least make them searchable. I remember not being able to get it quite right, then I made a bad mistake trying to port my photo library over to Mylio, which destroyed >100 hours of photo organization work. Now I'm back with Mac Photos, with a ton of duplicates and misindentified photos...It's a 15k photo mess I'll probably never organize again.

[visproduction 315]

Interesting.  I went to lookup EXIF data on a sample image.  I do not see a data entry for who is in the image.
https://ezgif.com/view-metadata/

Is there a standard data field where you can see the names of people or items in the image?  The reason I ask, is perhaps the Mac photo program creates a special field for that.  The question is will that be different from another software?  How many data fields with names of the people are there with different image editing software?  Hopefully, just one, under People.  The problem becomes tricky when each software has a different list of data fields to store the names.  Will Emby need to read EXIF data from 25 possible permutations of a data field name?  Is this an issue? 

Is there a command line that you can run to extract the names of people from EXIF?  Is there a plug-in to help do this?  Is there another forum post on EXIF?  I think maybe it's a good idea to make a separate post about EXIF, either a new feature request or something that should work but doesn't.  I was not aware this feature existed in Emby or in Plug-ins?  Does it?

All for now...

 

Edited June 6, 2025 by visproduction

[guunter 49]

For user registration you can use wizarr. Let’s you pick the libraries and allows you to send an invite code. The user then picks their own username and password. 

[visproduction 315]

On 5/14/2025 at 4:05 PM, sundevil67 said:

It's the Emby Connect vs. personal account info that trips people up...and when I try to add their emby connect username/email to their user panel in Emby, there's trouble .. actually I'm not totally sure myself what that does. It's been a while since I did all of this; just got a few new requests for access & I know a lot more folks would want it.

I've noticed that users like viewing the login with a collection of user images.  I start them off with nice photos that does not show their image.  For guys, I often give just attractive looking woman celebrity.  No one bothers to change the images, but a couple of users mentioned they liked looking for their image. instead of looking for, or having to enter in their usernames.

The annoying problem with browsers is the often add an 's' to http automatically, or just refuse to look up any IP number because the browser security (Safari and Apple hardware) thinks it must be a scam link.  Instead, the browser searches for the IP number on Google and comes up with a lot of network info links.  That's why I suggest:

1. Putting up an image on a website that you admin, if you have one.  You need control over the HTML.  This does not work with Facebook or Instagram. 
2. Make a hidden html page, not linked from anywhere.  The nicest way is to just add index.html inside an easy to remember subdirectory.  I just use 'a'.  http://mydomainname.com/a .  No file name automatically picks up index.html. 
3. Then put some nice movie scene or comical image on the page and use image map page to create a selection traced out an area in the image. 

The user can touch or click on that area inside the larger image and the link goes directly to your correct IP for Emby.  Here is an example that works, just change the IP address from the 192.168.1.1:8096 to your correct remote address.  It would be best to use a copy of the image, locally to your server, maybe use a smaller image copy and run the online image-map app again to set up the new image size.  You can start the process with any image at the web map site.  http://www.image-map.net/

<!-- Image Map Generated by http://www.image-map.net/ -->
<img src="https://media.architecturaldigest.com/photos/5d8249c185d456000831151f/master/w_1600,c_limit/carnival-row-CR_101_09296_1_rgb.jpg" usemap="#image-map">

<map name="image-map">
    <area target="" alt="Welcome to the Media Server" title="Welcome to the Media Server" href="http://192.168.1.1:8096" coords="998,955,1011,889,995,886,964,789,882,773,858,842,849,828,861,776,946,595,957,572,924,536,927,509,951,428,1005,391,1001,359,984,348,996,343,1004,310,1029,300,1052,307,1061,329,1077,346,1066,358,1069,372,1061,377,1061,390,1131,430,1152,499,1163,558,1163,633,1163,656,1146,684,1167,838,1141,865,1111,876,1101,923,1088,927,1094,937,1098,964,1091,977,1057,978" shape="poly">
    <area target="" alt="" title="" href="" coords="" shape="0">
</map>

You can also create a QR code that goes directly to your IP address.  A lot of QR code creators allow a center image or logo.  Put the image of the QR code on this hidden page.  This helps mobile users get directly to your media server.

Now you have a hidden page with an image map and QR code that bots should not find.  You can limit the bots in a robots.txt file, but if there is no link to this page and you tell your users never to post a link to the private page, then your Emby IP is somewhat well protected.  If you need to update the remote IP address or change the port, all you have to do is update the link code in the hidden page and your users won't even notice a change.  You can suggest they bookmark but never tell anyone the private access image page.  Their user's bookmark will still continue to work even after an IP address change.

For them, going to the private page is pretty easy, then click somewhere in the image and arrive at Emby login. 

Hope that helps.

 

Edited June 20, 2025 by visproduction

[sundevil67 28]

Deleted

Edited June 22, 2025 by sundevil67
New info found

[Luke 42077]

Quote

1. Simplifying new user registration & the Emby Connect piece

@sundevil67what do you suggest?

[sundevil67 28]

On 7/16/2025 at 10:30 PM, Luke said:

@sundevil67what do you suggest?

I think the emby connect integration needs to be a lot clearer... When new users are presented with that option - which is obviously necessary as it is certainly still better than trying to login with a specific URL, but no one ever knows their Emby Connect credentials and their username/password for their account on my media server for example... People can't keep track of their Gmail password so this just feels like too much to ask. A very basic set of steps for people to download & install the Emby App from the app store on their iOS device, Samsung Smart TV, or Google Play, etc. - what to do when you launch that app, and without needing to then go to emby.media & figure out how to create an Emby Connect account & needing to know the difference ... it's confusing to me too.

[Luke 42077]

On 7/18/2025 at 8:32 AM, sundevil67 said:

I think the emby connect integration needs to be a lot clearer... When new users are presented with that option - which is obviously necessary as it is certainly still better than trying to login with a specific URL, but no one ever knows their Emby Connect credentials and their username/password for their account on my media server for example... People can't keep track of their Gmail password so this just feels like too much to ask. A very basic set of steps for people to download & install the Emby App from the app store on their iOS device, Samsung Smart TV, or Google Play, etc. - what to do when you launch that app, and without needing to then go to emby.media & figure out how to create an Emby Connect account & needing to know the difference ... it's confusing to me too.

Maybe it would just be easier to just give them your server url and have them connect manually without Emby Connect?
Yes it is cumbersome on a TV, but outside of that it is usually easier.

[sundevil67 28]

I just had to spend another 30 minutes trying to help one of my users login. The tech support calls are killing me. He (nor any of my users) understand Emby Connect or were able to even sign up for accounts. I had to do it with my own email addresses & then change them to theirs. However once I helped the others login, they don't have to keep going through this PIN nightmare, a process that exactly none of them are able to go through without an enormous effort.

I don't know how to help him enable automatic login & bypass that PIN request screen, or why it keeps happening on his end. 

Anyone able to point me to this setting? He is on a Samsung TV & using Emby with a Firestick. 

Also, I just noticed that the subtitle preferences for his account seem to revert to default settings by itself. Things like the background color, size, etc. Why could that happen?

PS> The attached screen is very confusing, and I've seen people click "sign in" every single time when landing on this page.

Edited October 16, 2025 by sundevil67
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[Luke 42077]

On 10/15/2025 at 8:44 PM, sundevil67 said:

I just had to spend another 30 minutes trying to help one of my users login. The tech support calls are killing me. He (nor any of my users) understand Emby Connect or were able to even sign up for accounts. I had to do it with my own email addresses & then change them to theirs. However once I helped the others login, they don't have to keep going through this PIN nightmare, a process that exactly none of them are able to go through without an enormous effort.

I don't know how to help him enable automatic login & bypass that PIN request screen, or why it keeps happening on his end. 

Anyone able to point me to this setting? He is on a Samsung TV & using Emby with a Firestick. 

Also, I just noticed that the subtitle preferences for his account seem to revert to default settings by itself. Things like the background color, size, etc. Why could that happen?

PS> The attached screen is very confusing, and I've seen people click "sign in" every single time when landing on this page.

HI, are they confusing the difference between signing in with emby connect vs signing in with your local server credentials?

[sundevil67 28]

On 10/21/2025 at 8:31 PM, Luke said:

HI, are they confusing the difference between signing in with emby connect vs signing in with your local server credentials?

Yes - that was definitely an issue. I made it so that they had no password at all from my end. I mean, I know you can only do so much, but there are some cues for more advanced users that I think tripped them up too - like manual login, and the IP address that was there just as an example - things you really don't think people will get stuck on until you watch a senior try to navigate the process. The QR code that's supposed to make it easier can be an obstacle. I'm not saying I have the answers, just it's been a recurring problem for me. 

[sundevil67 28]

Does this setting allow my users to enter a preset pin vs. the one generated during that login process they all have trouble with?

[Luke 42077]

45 minutes ago, sundevil67 said:

Does this setting allow my users to enter a preset pin vs. the one generated during that login process they all have trouble with?

Hi, did you read the help text about what it is used for? It's not a substitute for the initial login process.

[sundevil67 28]

36 minutes ago, Luke said:

Hi, did you read the help text about what it is used for? It's not a substitute for the initial login process.

If you mean the paragraph above the entry field, yes. The first part sounds like it could apply to people who have logged in successfully on a device and at some point for some reason have been signed out & are struggling to log back in - the exact use case I'm talking about... It's not multiple people using the same device with different profiles, but I'm trying to see all of the possibilities here that might allow someone who'd previously signed in on the same device to get back in without the Emby Connect loop that's giving them trouble...kind of like how I enter a PIN to unlock my Bitwarden browser extension rather than my whole password. I'm not raising this to complain, but to open it up for discussion. Every user I've ever added has needed hand holding, password resetting, etc., every time another login was required, or gave up after the first time. 

[Luke 42077]

Quote

The first part sounds like it could apply to people who have logged in successfully on a device and at some point for some reason have been signed out & are struggling to log back in

OK then I will change the wording from "already signed into" to "currently signed into".