Modified 'Contine Watching' on Home Page for Announcements

[Lyfesaver 133]

Okay, first off... hear me out. The reason I am suggesting this particular flow is because from my very limited understanding of how Emby actually works behind the UI it might not be that hard of an ask. A home page section that works just like Continue Watching for series were when the next one is there it shows up, but we use for announcement videos that we can make. Here is a very specific example.

I am going to over share here but I really do not think I am outside the norms that much. I have about 10 people that I let access my Emby that only has my personal content and public domain media as well as about 6 OTA tuners for live TV. 7 family members and 2 (sometimes 3) close friends.
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As I was saying, about 10 people and I am changing some tuners and doing some restricting on recording and such, as this part is a bit new to me. I am changing daily and when all said and I done I need to let everyone know the rules behind recording, etc. Maybe in the future I will add more tuners and things will change, etc.. what ever, but this will allow me to create a "TV Series" of my announcement videos that everyone will automatically have in the feed and once they watch will never see again.

 

Anyway, just an idea. Heck maybe it can already be done and I missed this feature

 

[EDIT]

Another way is just to have a hardcoded name of a fake "TV series" that you can make videos and name to match that will always be at the start of the continue watching already there but my fam can choose to not use that

Edited September 29, 2025 by Lyfesaver

[Luke 42077]

Hi, maybe a proper announcements system would be better?

[Lyfesaver 133]

30 minutes ago, Luke said:

Hi, maybe a proper announcements system would be better?

Oh for sure, I just figured that would take a while to be able to get on the roadmap where this would leverage something already in place, but yes a full announcement system would be best

[Lyfesaver 133]

For now, I created a dummy TV series with 2 episodes. One is just a music video and the other is an announcement video i made. Next, I am just logging into each user (wish there was a better way of doing this part but at least i dont have a lot of people to go thru) and marking the first video marked as watched so that episode 2 of "Lyfe Says" will be on their Continue Watching.

It's a cheesy work around but should suffice until the powers that be are able to work something better into the roadmap

[Happy2Play 9780]

45 minutes ago, Lyfesaver said:

For now, I created a dummy TV series with 2 episodes. One is just a music video and the other is an announcement video i made. Next, I am just logging into each user (wish there was a better way of doing this part but at least i dont have a lot of people to go thru) and marking the first video marked as watched so that episode 2 of "Lyfe Says" will be on their Continue Watching.

It's a cheesy work around but should suffice until the powers that be are able to work something better into the roadmap

Might be a little faster using the api to mark the item as played per userid.

http://localhost:8095/emby/Users/{UserId}/PlayedItems/{Id}?api_key={apikey}

 

curl -X 'POST' \
  'http://localhost:8095/emby/Users/{UserId}/PlayedItems/{Id}?api_key={apikey}' \
  -H 'accept: application/json' \
  -d ''

Edited September 30, 2025 by Happy2Play

[Lyfesaver 133]

28 minutes ago, Happy2Play said:

Might be a little faster using the api to mark the item as played per userid.

http://localhost:8095/emby/Users/{UserId}/PlayedItems/{Id}?api_key={apikey}

curl -X 'POST' \
  'http://localhost:8095/emby/Users/{UserId}/PlayedItems/{Id}?api_key={apikey}' \
  -H 'accept: application/json' \
  -d ''

 

Oh snap!!! You da man! Will try this. Not 100% sure I understand the flow/howto but thank you so very much for this!!!

[Happy2Play 9780]

Just now, Lyfesaver said:

Oh snap!!! You da man! Will try this. Not 100% sure I understand the flow/howto but thank you so very much for this!!!

You can go directly to the api via the link at the bottom of the dashboard and look at the PlaystateService endpoint.  Might get errors depending on your connection method as swagger requires localhost or https connect but there are ways around it mentioned in the first part of the how to by changing browser flags for your server.