Parental Controls Not Respecting Tagged Collections

[Halliphax 4]

Hello,

I've recently started sharing my Emby server with friends and family. There are some custom Collections I don't wish to share with other users so I've tried using the tagging function to accomplish this but it doesn't appear to be working as I expect. 

Here's what I'm doing:

1. Right-click and edit metadata on the chosen collection (in this example the 28 Days/Weeks Later Collection)
2. Add whichever tags I choose, in this case "Hide" and "PersonalCollection" (I've tried both and one or the other but same result)
3. Head over to the chosen user (in this example TestUser) and go to the Parental Control tab
4. Add both tags; "Hide" and "PersonalCollection"

Expected Behaviour: 

• When logged in as TestUser and navigating to the Collections library, I would expect the 28 Days/Weeks Later Collection to no longer be visible

Actual Behaviour:

• When logged in as TestUser and navigating to the Collections library the 28 Days/Weeks Later Collection is fully visible and can be interacted with (i.e items played)

Is this a bug or am I misunderstanding the feature? I've tagged thousands of individual items (i.e individual episodes) as well as movies for use with VirtualTV and these work just fine - tagging Collection "items" themselves doesn't appear to work for me.

 

Attached Emby Server log where I've added tags to the Collection item, to the user and accessed the Collection as the restricted user. Let me know if I need to/can provide anything else - thanks! 
 

embyserver (1).txt

[Halliphax 4]

Just to add: 
 

I realise a playlist can technically do what I'm attempting. However, a playlist will show episodes as individual items so it quickly becomes unwieldy with thousands of items. 

To clarify, I'm only looking to hide the Collection item, not the films within them if that makes sense (for context, myself and my partner keep a Collection as a sort of archive/list of the stuff we've watched together or have yet to watch - this is obviously irrelevant to other users so wanted to hide the Collection item, not the movies or shows that are contained within it).

[Luke 42791]

@Halliphaxcurrently collections are not personal although it is a possibility for future updates.

For now I would consider using playlists instead. Please let us know if this helps. Thanks.

[Halliphax 4]

So is the tagging function working as expected then? I’ve tagged a collection with “Hide” and blocked that tag on user profiles but it’s still visible to them. 
 

 

[Luke 42791]

On 8/2/2025 at 9:50 AM, Halliphax said:

So is the tagging function working as expected then? I’ve tagged a collection with “Hide” and blocked that tag on user profiles but it’s still visible to them. 
 

 

Hi, do you mean the tag itself?

[Halliphax 4]

On 09/08/2025 at 06:35, Luke said:

Hi, do you mean the tag itself?

So as it stands - you can add tags to collections but as far as I can tell the tags don’t actually do anything at that level. 

As you can see from the logs, I blocked a tag in the parental control section of a user account but that user account could still see the Collection when they logged into Emby. Shouldn’t the expected behaviour here be that the account cannot see the collection as it has been given a tag that is blocked via parental controls? 

[Luke 42791]

Collections skip that and are based on whether or not a user has access to any of it's items.

[Halliphax 4]

Gotcha thanks Luke understood!

[Neorun 0]

On 8/13/2025 at 12:07 AM, Luke said:

Collections skip that and are based on whether or not a user has access to any of it's items.

Hi, is there a eta on this feature or any other way to hide collections from users? Id also be fine with me being the only user that can see collections at all. 

[Luke 42791]

16 hours ago, Neorun said:

Hi, is there a eta on this feature or any other way to hide collections from users? Id also be fine with me being the only user that can see collections at all. 

Do the users have access to the items within the collection?

[Jdiesel 1469]

@LukeBump for this.

Parental controls should respect Collection folders. As it currently stands the parental controls do not block tagged collection folders.

There is a currently a gap between Playlists and Collections. While playlists can be user specific, there is no way to have a only a parent series item in a playlist without including all playable episodes in the series. Collections fix this but collections are pubic and visible to all users. 

 

We need a way to filter collections to specific users. 

 

How this should work:

 

To completely hide a collection on a per-user level, you need to tag it and block it:

1.Tag the Collection:

Navigate to your Collections tab in the Emby web interface. Hover over the collection you want to hide, click the three-dot menu, and select Edit Metadata.

2.Assign a Custom Tag:

Scroll down to the Tags field. Type a unique identifier (e.g., Restricted, HideKids, or NoBox), click the + button to add it, and then click Save.

3.Access User Settings:

Open the Emby Server Dashboard (the gear icon in the top right) and select Users from the Server Management menu. Click on the profile of the user you want to restrict.

4.Block by Tag:This setting is found under the Parental Control tab, not Access..

Navigate to the user's Parental Control tab. Scroll down to the Block items with tags section, type in the exact tag you created in Step 2, and click Save.

Important Note: This method only hides the Collection folder itself. If the user still has library access to the individual movies or shows inside that collection, they will still be able to find and play those items by browsing their main libraries. If you need to block the media completely, you must apply the same tag to the individual media files, or remove their access to the library entirely.

 

 

I'm currently developing an Emby companion app and ran into this road block. Searching the forums it seems that this was once possible?

 

Edited 22 minutes ago by Jdiesel