Emby folder display issue

[cbingor 11]

10 hours ago, cp41 said:

I am similarly afflicted where most of my movies were updated to this new (less desirable) folder structure, but a random assortment of movies remain viewed as single items, even though they ALL are in the same folder structure. The upgrade to 4.9 inconsistently updated items in my library. So I cannot sort alphabetically since it puts all folders first and then my random non-folder movies. 
 

Emby has a recommended naming structure that involves folders. That’s what we all have followed. So why change the way these folders are handled now? It seems backwards. 

@Luke

This community isn’t a very bustling one, but since the 4.9.1.80 update, there have been numerous posts and replies stating that the changes to the folder options page have frustrated many users — a matter that requires attention.

 

The issue is actually quite simple: now users have to click to open a folder containing a single movie to access the corresponding film, whereas before they could open the movie directly. This system logic not only adds an unnecessary extra click for users but also undermines the interface’s aesthetics. What advantages could possibly be worth the cost of creating such a serious flaw?

 

The existence of this situation is almost equivalent to an unfinished project.

[GrimReaper 4739]

3 minutes ago, cbingor said:

The issue is actually quite simple: now users have to click to open a folder containing a single movie to access the corresponding film, whereas before they could open the movie directly. This system logic not only adds an unnecessary extra click for users but also undermines the interface’s aesthetics. What advantages could possibly be worth the cost of creating such a serious flaw?

That is actually not an issue, you can skip through that one click, there's a setting for that. 

From what I've gathered, major issue is on functionality side, not as much on presentation side itself, as folders have been "decoupled" from items within and do not inherit underlying item metadata. 

[mrmixed 77]

4 minutes ago, GrimReaper said:

That is actually not an issue, you can skip through that one click, there's a setting for that. 

From what I've gathered, major issue is on functionality side, not as much on presentation side itself, as folders have been "decoupled" from items within and do not inherit underlying item metadata. 

The main issue is the fact that the newly-inserted folder metadata layer makes it impossible to use Emby's presentation functions of sorting content based on metadata.  (Not to mention the fact that the upgrade caused a slew of broken images and lost metadata due to things in this new unwanted folder metadata layer getting misidentified or otherwise torched upon the first rescan). 

Out of curiosity, how do you break down functionality vs presentation?  I'm flummoxed trying to tease out this difference, since Emby's primary job is to present content in an organized manner--to me, functionality and presentation in this regard are the same thing.  I think the issue is that I use Folder View to navigate and play my content, whereas I know you don't use it at all, but perhaps view it as some sort of back-end utility interface? 

 

@Luke

What are the use cases for which the devs would advocate using Folder View going forward?  Does it solely exist to make it easy for a server admin to locate some particular content that is misidentified by the system and therefore harder to find on the other views?  This seems unnecessarily limiting, especially given how rich and functional the collapsing folder function for single-title-folders used to be in 4.8, especially in providing workarounds for the lack of nested collections, and so on. 

Emby's Folder View had an incredibly useful and robust capability of presenting a organized, hierarchical grouping of titles.  Which has now been ruined in 4.9.

[GrimReaper 4739]

8 minutes ago, mrmixed said:

The main issue is the fact that the newly-inserted folder metadata layer makes it impossible to use Emby's presentation functions of sorting content based on metadata

Isn't that exactly what I've said? 

57 minutes ago, GrimReaper said:

folders have been "decoupled" from items within and do not inherit underlying item metadata. 

And as a consequence, sorting methods that rely on item metadata are feasible no more. You can still sort on metadata - just strictly folder metadata (fairly - or very - limited values there). 

Edited November 21, 2025 by GrimReaper

[mrmixed 77]

2 minutes ago, GrimReaper said:

Isn't that exactly what I've said? 

And as a consequence, sorting methods that rely on item metadata are feasible no more. You can still sort on metadata - just strictly folder metadata (fairly limited values there). 

Right.  I was just trying to understand what you meant in terms of "functionality side" vs "presentation side".  How you are able to sort and display a list of titles in a view is sort of the main purpose of having views, so I don't really understand the distinction you are making between function and presentation.

Regardless, I know from your earlier comments that you fully understand how I (and others) prefer using Emby, and appreciate your continued engagement on this topic.

 

Given that I am relatively newer to Emby and haven't spent much time looking under the hood yet, can someone elaborate on how the collapsing metadata worked previously?  Assuming that single-folder-titles didn't previously have folder nodes in the metadata, and that @Lukeneeds to have folder nodes for every folder going forward for his metadata system design, isn't there still a compromise path forward where the folder metadata layer would exist but would implement and inherit every field from the underlying titles provided there was only one title?  Even if this would require every scan to also incorporate a second metadata traversal (to properly regenerate folder metadata by bubbling it up from the child nodes), wouldn't this be worth it to accommodate everyone?

[GrimReaper 4739]

3 minutes ago, mrmixed said:

I was just trying to understand what you meant in terms of "functionality side" vs "presentation side".

I'd say that current situation is good example of that: in 4.9, you can still have upper level item (folder) presented as poster and enter an item with single click - presentation-wise it's literally the same way as in 4.8 - but functionally it's a different matter, under the hood, as that same upper-level item (folder) is not collapsed as it once was, no linking with item metadata. 

[Steven 158]

3 hours ago, GrimReaper said:

as folders have been "decoupled" from items within and do not inherit underlying item metadata. 

Unless they are TV show..

[cp41 42]

Presentation wise it is not the same. In 4.8 all the folders with sub-folders would be presented first, and then all the single-item folders would be displayed. 
 

Now all the folders with sub-folders are presented alphabetically along side all the other single-item folders. 
 

A lot of us a had a structure built around this presentation layout. Actual folders first, followed by single items. 
 

And as far as I can tell, the AppleTV app still doesn’t allow the single click option for folders. 

[GrimReaper 4739]

12 minutes ago, cp41 said:

Presentation wise it is not the same. In 4.8 all the folders with sub-folders would be presented first, and then all the single-item folders would be displayed. 
 

Now all the folders with sub-folders are presented alphabetically along side all the other single-item folders. 
 

A lot of us a had a structure built around this presentation layout. Actual folders first, followed by single items

You can still achieve same with folder Sort Titles. There's hardly any view you could've had previously that can't be reproduced in this version. Additional effort? Yes. But possible? Also yes. I have a feeling I'm repeating myself. I'm not forcing anyone to do anything nor fighting anyone, just giving a broader perspective. 

[GrimReaper 4739]

17 minutes ago, Steven said:

Unless they are TV show..

IIRC Dev has said that TV show folders will eventually behave the same - possibly that was reply to you exactly, in some other thread. 

[mrmixed 77]

41 minutes ago, GrimReaper said:

You can still achieve same with folder Sort Titles. There's hardly any view you could've had previously that can't be reproduced in this version. Additional effort? Yes. But possible? Also yes. I have a feeling I'm repeating myself. I'm not forcing anyone to do anything nor fighting anyone, just giving a broader perspective. 

Only when sorting by title.  Not by sorting by anything else, and most all other sorts are broken on account of the crippled folder metadata.  Which causes other changes to presentation, such as not displaying the release date that used to display for single-title-folders, and so on.  If you have movies with extras alongside standalone movies, now you are requiring that the movie extras be converted from subfolders into suffixes just to make them sort and display the way they used to.

Regardless, yes, we've already covered this in detail above.  Nested folder levels is the one thing that is absolutely impossible, and for everything else you can perhaps get close but with additional effort (and a much more limited feature set, since currently-permitted organization such as extras subfolders can no longer be used if you care how things are going to display).  You would have to abandon any use of Folder View in favor of something else (which doesn't even exist yet for mixed libraries) to avoid having the display issues.  But for a custom organized/curated collection, the nested folders is really the whole point, to capture categories, subcategories, etc.

 

39 minutes ago, GrimReaper said:

IIRC Dev has said that TV show folders will eventually behave the same - possibly that was reply to you exactly, in some other thread. 

That was here: 

While I appreciate that the proposed change to TV show folders will make things more consistent, it's also the exact opposite of what I would want.  I don't know who wants to replace Folder View with what is essentially Windows File Explorer.  Can you point us to the original posts that started the devs down this path?

 

I also don't want this idea to get lost in the discussion:

2 hours ago, mrmixed said:

... isn't there still a compromise path forward where the folder metadata layer would exist but would implement and inherit every field from the underlying titles provided there was only one title?  Even if this would require every scan to also incorporate a second metadata traversal (to properly regenerate folder metadata by bubbling it up from the child nodes), wouldn't this be worth it to accommodate everyone?

While it seems simplest to me to simply restore collapsing single-title-folders/4.8 Folder View, given that it's been a month with no actual engagement by the devs on the root cause of this issue, it seems reasonable at this point to prod them to enhance the crippled folder metadata that they are currently sticking us with.

[Steven 158]

1 hour ago, GrimReaper said:

IIRC Dev has said that TV show folders will eventually behave the same - possibly that was reply to you exactly, in some other thread. 

Oh I must have missed that. There goes the hope it was a bug and will be fixed for movies then!

It’s not a deal breaker for me as much as others, but I do like browsing by folders sometimes and this takes away functionality.

[lost4 5]

I think this is a failed change that takes away such a good feature

[Teddy 100]

Hopefully, the developers will bring back this functionality as it was in version 4.8.

In the meantime, those of us who have been lucky enough to recover and work with version 4.8 will have to stick with it.

[WinXP 15]

"Emby truly allows you to access your media your way!" - until it doesn't.

So before Emby 4.9, movie folders were like this as if it were ONE media item:
/Movies/
   The Matrix (1999)/
       The Matrix (1999).mkv
       poster.jpg
       fanart.jpg

So Emby would collapse the folder into a single movie entry:
➡ The Matrix (1999)
(no extra layers to click through)
The folder itself behaved like the movie:
It had a watched/played indicator
It sorted like a movie
It was displayed like a movie
UI didn’t show a “folder level”
Clicking it took you straight to the movie page
This behaviour is what we users loved.

After Emby 4.9 — “Literal folder structure”
Emby now treats that same folder as an actual folder, not a movie.
So the structure becomes literal:
Movies (library)
  ↓
  The Matrix (1999) (folder)
     ↓
     Metadata container (fake folder that Emby adds)
         ↓
         The Matrix (1999).mkv (the actual movie file)

So on our screen we now see:
Folder: The Matrix (1999) (not a movie!)
Inside it: a NEW Emby-generated “metadata” item
Inside that is the real movie file

This adds a useless extra layer that:
has no sort order
has no watched state
has no proper metadata
cannot be configured
slows navigation
breaks folder-based setups
(further) wrecks Android TV usability

For years, Emby let power users organise libraries using:
movie-per-folder
nested folder collections
custom artwork stored in folders
deep directory structures
And 4.9 broke all of it in one stroke by removing folder collapsing.
We now have:
a folder that is NOT a movie
a metadata layer that is NOT a folder
a movie file buried under both

This seems to be an intentional “philosophical shift” in how Emby wants folder libraries to behave.
They consider the new behaviour “more correct” from a metadata-architecture point of view, even if it destroys usability for people like me.
This is the “literal folder behaviour” that 4.9 introduced — and it’s not optional.

[Zelig 48]

5 hours ago, WinXP said:

This seems to be an intentional “philosophical shift” in how Emby wants folder libraries to behave.
They consider the new behaviour “more correct” from a metadata-architecture point of view, even if it destroys usability for people like me.
This is the “literal folder behaviour” that 4.9 introduced — and it’s not optional.

Have not tried it yet but I think you cannot apply the CoverArt plugin with this change to the movie folder. As someone said WORSE THAN NETFLIX.

At this point, IT'S A MUST that the devs say something about this so we, THE USERS, can do somenthing about it.

Going back to 4.8 will have nearly desastrous effects because you have to delete your actual library and create it again (seems updating to 4.9 makes your library not campatible with 4.8 anymore) which means all your metadata (Manual changes, corrected errors in indentification, watch-not watch, ect..) will be LOST FOREVER. I've been making this changes for YEARS and YEARS.

Staying in 4.9 means having to change the folder structure and NOT TO USE ANYMORE THE DEVS RECOMENDATION OF HAVING MOVIES IN IT'S OWN FOLDER. With a collection of more than 8.000 movies you can imagine how much work you have to put into this.

If you have any other solution please say so. What it's NOT ACCEPTABLE is having to stay with this new folder view.

So PLEASE DEVS, TELL US IF YOU ARE GOING TO ADRESS THIS OR NOT.

I've opened an official request here

So let your voice be heard and PLEASE DEVS, GIVE US AN ANSWER

Edited November 23, 2025 by Zelig

[JeremyG 30]

So I'm confused here...is there any way to get back a manually organized library?  It's driving me crazy.

 

[JeremyG 30]

So I *think* that if move all my movie collection to ONE folder (instead of across mutliple drives) and I eliminate the folder for each movie...maybe i'll get back to something functional.

HOWEVER, can someone tell me how to deal with movies that have more than one copy in different formats/qualities?  I think they might appear twice, which would suck. 

I'm scared to try stuff cause I feel like I will mess up my whole library. 

 

[Teddy 100]

Unfortunately, until the developers provide a solution to this new way of organizing movies in version 4.9 (if they ever fix it), if you're lucky enough to have a backup of the entire disk where you had version 4.8, you can restore it and disable the 4.9 update.

[One2Go 120]

I am totally confused with this issue and only came here because a post of mine from 2019 providing a solution was linked and I have no problem at the present. Here is my setup.

I am running version 4.9.1.90 on a QNAP NAS. I have all kinds of different libraries and ALL of them are mixed content with the following exceptions having the default content type.

TV Show = TV Shows, Music = Music, Music Videos = Music Videos, Collections = Collections, Home Videos & Photos = Home Videos & Photos

All my Movies, Documentaries, Sports and Conventions are mixed content and I select the Folder View Tab on the browser and the Emby Theater pages and it behaves the way it did under version 3.

So, PLEASE no feature updates that break this as I don't want to spend the remaining years of my life working on the WAF.

[mrmixed 77]

8 hours ago, One2Go said:

I am totally confused with this issue and only came here because a post of mine from 2019 providing a solution was linked and I have no problem at the present. Here is my setup.

I am running version 4.9.1.90 on a QNAP NAS. I have all kinds of different libraries and ALL of them are mixed content with the following exceptions having the default content type.

TV Show = TV Shows, Music = Music, Music Videos = Music Videos, Collections = Collections, Home Videos & Photos = Home Videos & Photos

All my Movies, Documentaries, Sports and Conventions are mixed content and I select the Folder View Tab on the browser and the Emby Theater pages and it behaves the way it did under version 3.

So, PLEASE no feature updates that break this as I don't want to spend the remaining years of my life working on the WAF.

Thanks for joining the conversation--and sorry to inadvertently drag you into it if your environment is still working.  All of us posting on this topic have found that new with the 4.9 upgrade, folders that contain a single movie no longer collapse to "pass through" to the movie metadata, so you can't interact with them directly for editing (and instead have to jump into the folder to get to the underlying title).  This issue is most obvious when attempting to sort titles based on movie metadata (such as Release Date)--folders don't have a release date in the metadata, so they are no longer sortable with the new folder layer getting in the way.

This is primarily a change to how metadata is organized, so if your metadata has not changed since 4.8, everything will still display the way it used to.  However, once the scan library background task is run, it will rearrange the metadata and cause this problem.  And this was a deliberate change by the Emby dev team (in an attempt to address some other concerns), which is why we now have a new feature request to change it back or at least offer an option to choose.

Out of curiosity, have you disabled the scan library background task?  I'm curious if it's possible that you have not performed a library scan since upgrading, which would explain why you have not yet encountered this problem.  Otherwise, it may be possible that your custom sorting method offers a partial workaround.

[One2Go 120]

10 hours ago, mrmixed said:

Out of curiosity, have you disabled the scan library background task?  I'm curious if it's possible that you have not performed a library scan since upgrading, which would explain why you have not yet encountered this problem.  Otherwise, it may be possible that your custom sorting method offers a partial workaround.

I am adding content every week but I do it perhaps an Old School way. First, on a separate drive outside Emby, I create a folder for the movie, then create an empty MKV file the directory has name and year in it. Then I use Media Center Master and drag the directory into it. I will get a pop up dialogue to confirm that this is the movie I want. In the movie folder I now have all the images, including logo.png file and a movie.xml file with the movie meta data. then I drag it into the corresponding library without the empty MKV file. Copy the real MKV file and then run a scan library process. Job done.

Emby will bypass any additional meta data search and it displays as a folder on the movie library home page. If I want to make a collection in the movie library , like the Titanic collection, I create a collection folder in it are the Backdrop.jpg, folder.jpg and logo.png images. In addition I put a folder.xml file there.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" standalone="yes"?>
<Title>
  <LocalTitle>Titanic Collection</LocalTitle>
  <OriginalTitle>Titanic Collection</OriginalTitle>
  <SortTitle>Titanic Collection</SortTitle>
  <ForcedTitle></ForcedTitle>
  <Rating>8.6</Rating>
  <IMDBrating>8.6</IMDBrating>
  <Description>● Titanic (1997) - 101-year-old Rose DeWitt Bukater tells the story of her life aboard the Titanic to her granddaughter, 84 years later. A young Rose boards the departing ship with the upper-class passengers and her mother and her fiancé.&#10;
● Titanic: 20 years later (2017) - The movie’s writer-director explores what he got right and wrong in National Geographic’s Titanic: 20 Years Later with James Cameron.
</Description>
</Title>

Then in this folder structure I create the Titanic movie (1997) and the 20 years later movie folder with the Media Center Master created meta data. Run the library scan and I have now 1 folder Titanic collection click on it and have 2 movie folders. I like that kind of navigation because it is Windows Explorer like which I am used to. I found out that if you provide all the meta data Emby will just display it in the libraries home page and all you have to do is make sure you select the folder tab as default. Finally I lock the folders so that Emby does not "upgrade" them. Done this since Media Browser 2.*

 

Edited December 2, 2025 by One2Go

[Luke 42077]

Hi, an option is being added for the next release to allow you to control this:

Thanks.

[beardontcare 2]

On 12/13/2025 at 10:49 PM, Luke said:

Hi, an option is being added for the next release to allow you to control this:

Thanks.

Does this solution include the merged series and movies view mentioned in the thread below? 

[Luke 42077]

6 hours ago, beardontcare said:

Does this solution include the merged series and movies view mentioned in the thread below? 

They are two separate things. The merging of the two tabs is actually something we've wanted to do for a long time anyway. Does that answer your question?