Emby folder display issue

[mrmixed 77]

3 hours ago, Teddy said:

Sorry Luke, just to clarify, at some point are you planning on the possibility that version 4.9 will behave like 4.8 in regards to the problem some of us have with the folders issue, or those of us who need folders to work as usual, or will we have to stay on version 4.8?

I too am eagerly awaiting any sort of official word that the devs will agree to fix the single-title-folder display issue (and as discussed above and elsewhere, the issue is more than just the "extra click" toggle in the UI settings, so changing the default for that toggle is not sufficient to address the Folder View concerns).  It would also be nice to know that there might be a reasonable timeframe for a patch, because otherwise I'm going to start messing around with binaries in my non-portable Emby installation to forcibly roll the thing back to 4.8, or brick it in the attempt.  But just getting the commitment would be nice.  Right now we have nothing.

For what it's worth, I've only been using Emby for the past couple of years, and don't have the same MediaBrowser pedigree some others have referenced above.  I just care about the underlying folder structure because I interface with it beyond Emby.  Lots of other people have chimed in on other threads explaining their own organization structure (e.g. folders for directors, genres, etc.), which have all been blown up by this change.  I don't use Radarr.  I don't want to deal with a large flat list of folders where I can't possibly find anything (in the file system) just to make Emby happy.  But I get that there are probably a lot of people who use Radarr and don't want to be bothered sorting out their content and prefer to let Emby manage the entire thing.  Either way, Emby supported all types of users very well through 4.8, and it would be especially nice to restore that versatility.  And hopefully sooner rather than later! 

[cbingor 11]

 

18 hours ago, Luke said:

I think ultimately it will be on by default. We just wanted to give it time to ensure it didn’t bring about any new issues, which it hasn’t.

The bug where folders containing a single movie still display the folder name completely defeats the purpose of scraping and even ruins Emby itself. If that's the case, why bother with the hassle of launching Emby to watch movies when I could just use a local SMB share? I can no longer enjoy the clean interface after scraping is complete, so why go through all this trouble?

[Luke 42077]

17 hours ago, cbingor said:

 

The bug where folders containing a single movie still display the folder name completely defeats the purpose of scraping and even ruins Emby itself. If that's the case, why bother with the hassle of launching Emby to watch movies when I could just use a local SMB share? I can no longer enjoy the clean interface after scraping is complete, so why go through all this trouble?

Hi, just curious, what is wrong with the movies tab of the library?

[mrmixed 77]

1 hour ago, Luke said:

Hi, just curious, what is wrong with the movies tab of the library?

The link below is an example I posted earlier in the thread which never got any responses.  I expect that the Movies tab is passably fine if your library only contains movies and absolutely no other content.  Although I don't really know why anyone would want to traverse an alphabetized list of movies, but I assume it works for those of you that like it.  My preference is instead to use the Genre View or Folder View where I have everything arranged in my own custom categories.

Most everything on my Emby server lives in a single mixed content library.  The top-level view when accessing the server shows my main Library, along with Live TV, Recorded TV, Collections, and Playlists.  This is all I need and all that I want.  It's easy to manage and requires minimal decision-making at the top level entry screen for where I want to go.  When I go into the main Library>Folder View, I can continue to drill down in my very obvious custom categories and find anything that I want very quickly.

I think to abide by your approach to library setup, I would need to split my content into multiple libraries, to separate out movies, tv shows, documentaries, concerts, etc.  It would be really unwieldy.  In vintage 4.8 Emby, I just jump into my main library Folder View, and I'm off navigating through my custom categories to find what I want, spanning both movies and TV, as well as lots of other random videos that are neither movies nor TV.  The Movies tab in my library is utterly useless, as described in the post above.

I honestly don't know why everyone doesn't use a mixed content library, and why the developers continue to maintain library types.  Why separate movies and tv?  No streaming service operates that way.  It strikes me as a crutch to deal with Emby's limitations with auto-identifying things.  But the admins would be better served by consolidating all library types into a single generic "library" and give people the ability to tag things as a movie or tv show (or other?) in the event Emby misidentifies it*.

 

*- When I first started using 4.7 a couple of years ago, misidentification of tv shows as movies was the primary issue I had to deal with in setting up my library, because my folder structure didn't have "Season" folders.  It's the main compromise I needed to make to deal with Emby's preferred folder organization.  I don't think it should be necessary to put a "Season 1" directory into my folder structure for a one-season tv show.  But it was the only way to get Emby to properly categorize that folder as TV.  It would've been nicer to leave my folders alone and instead have a right-click option to set some metadata and just get Emby to query the correct online database.  But ultimately I decided that adding a few "Season 1" folders was not that big of a deal.  However, what 4.9 did to blow up Folder View is a big deal--and the fact that myself and so many other people have come out of the woodwork to make first-time posts about this issue should tell you something. 

[Steven 158]

Yeah this affects mixed folders mostly for me. But also as mentioned, the folder view on TV shows still displays year and ratings, etc. It only doesn’t work on movies.

[cbingor 11]

19 hours ago, Luke said:

Hi, just curious, what is wrong with the movies tab of the library?

The Movies tab simply aggregates all films, which is the core issue. Users overwhelmingly need to find movies by genre—unless they're specifically seeking the latest releases or browsing randomly.

Meanwhile, the Genres tab has become overly cluttered and nearly unusable due to the media data source containing numerous user-defined categories.

Building a database based on movie categories would add redundant content to the homepage, making searches inefficient. For example: the latest movies list would span multiple pages/ movie and TV show libraries would be mixed together.

All these issues were perfectly resolved in the highly customizable folder tab feature prior to version 4.8.11, offering users a comfortable and efficient experience. That is, until the foolish update in 4.9.10 completely destroyed the folder tab.

4.9.10 The update to folder options is as foolish as cutting off half a user's head to remove a single, nearly imperceptible dead hair hidden deep within their scalp. For a virtually useless possibility, it destroyed the entire project's main framework. To dislodge a speck of dust invisible to the naked eye from the engine hood, it demolished the car's entire cockpit.

Edited October 30, 2025 by cbingor

[GrimReaper 4739]

30 minutes ago, cbingor said:

The Movies tab simply aggregates all films, which is the core issue. Users overwhelmingly need to find movies by genre—unless they're specifically seeking the latest releases or browsing randomly.

Meanwhile, the Genres tab has become overly cluttered and nearly unusable due to the media data source containing numerous user-defined categories.

Building a database based on movie categories would add redundant content to the homepage, making searches inefficient. For example: the latest movies list would span multiple pages/ movie and TV show libraries would be mixed together.

All these issues were perfectly resolved in the highly customizable folder tab feature prior to version 4.8.11, offering users a comfortable and efficient experience. That is, until the foolish update in 4.9.10 completely destroyed the folder tab.

4.9.10 The update to folder options is as foolish as cutting off half a user's head to remove a single, nearly imperceptible dead hair hidden deep within their scalp. For a virtually useless possibility, it destroyed the entire project's main framework. To dislodge a speck of dust invisible to the naked eye from the engine hood, it demolished the car's entire cockpit.

I'll just add that I disagree basically with everything you said here. 

But I have no horse in this race, and I would sincerely like for you to get back Folder view as you prefer it, though it makes no dirrefence for my usage. 

Good luck. 

Edited October 30, 2025 by GrimReaper

[cbingor 11]

1 hour ago, GrimReaper said:

I'll just add that I disagree basically with everything you said here. 

But I have no horse in this race, and I would sincerely like for you to get back Folder view as you prefer it, though it makes no dirrefence for my usage. 

Good luck. 

Over the past few days, I've browsed several websites and discussion forums. When so many users oppose this meaningless change, as a forum moderator, can your response of “not interested” truly represent the Emby development team's attitude toward users?

Alright, likewise, good luck to you.

[GrimReaper 4739]

16 minutes ago, cbingor said:

can your response of “not interested” truly represent the Emby development team's attitude toward users?

It doesn't represent Emby development team attitude - that one you're discussing with the Devs - just my own. Which is completely within my - or anyone else's - rights to disagree with your statements - not your request for previous folder behavior but basically everything else your said re: genres, tabs, changes etc. 

And I've wished you sincere good luck with your request. 

Edited October 30, 2025 by GrimReaper

[cbingor 11]

3 minutes ago, GrimReaper said:

It doesn't represent Emby development team attitude - that one you're discussing with the Devs - just my own. Which is completely within my - or anyone else's - rights to disagree with your statements. 

And I've wished you sincere good luck with your request. 

OK,GOT IT.

[mrmixed 77]

22 minutes ago, GrimReaper said:

I'll just add that I disagree basically with everything you said here. 

But I have no horse in this race, and I would sincerely like for you to get back Folder view as you prefer it, though it makes no dirrefence for my usage. 

Good luck. 

Please help me understand how you would deal with my example above where individual songs from concert footage with no metadata shows up as multiple titles on the movie tab.  Would you keep this in a separate library?  Or is there some better approach that I am missing?  I don't auto group things into collections and I have a feeling that is probably something that makes a difference.  But I'm generally happy to set up my own collections so only things I care about show up in the Collections view.  (The multi-select added in a previous release was very much appreciated in this regard.)

I greatly appreciate your comment that you would like to restore the functionality that some of us are so passionate about.

I've obviously chimed in here a lot on this issue and probably ought to knock it off, but just to support a fellow rookie, I agree with basically everything @cbingorposted above (referring at least to the one from an hour ago before things seem to have become more contentious).  While Genre View is very close to how I like to view things at the initial view (my folder organization is more or less arranged by genera at the initial level), it has some features that cause me to prefer Folder View:

•  the genre metadata available online is often not what I would have chosen, or includes multiple genres.  I actually like this feature in Genre View, because it potentially gives my users a different "crowd-sourced" way of navigating through my library and not be limited by my own choice of Folder "categories".  But because of multiple genre tags, you wind up seeing the same title in multiple categories, and my type-A personality doesn't want to waste time seeing the same title over and over as I navigate the folders.  I get that I could edit the metadata; I don't really want to have to.  I rarely used Genre View and prefer Folder View, but I liked having both available.
• folders allow for more grouping below the initial level.  I have an "animation" folder with subfolders for various studios/franchises, which allows things to be organized and grouped very nicely in Folder View.  I also find that much of my content spans movies and tv (Peanuts, Muppets, etc.) and it's nice to be able to place all of that content under a single folder, and to group/sort the sub-items however I want it underneath that folder.

My main goal for using Emby was to throw all of my video content together in a nice UI for my kids to navigate and find stuff as I digitized our DVDs.  As discussed previously, I prefer having only a single mixed content library to make it easier to get in and get right into finding content.  And I've gone beyond just capturing DVDs and have started dumping all sorts of random videos into the library folder structure, like the concert footage mentioned in my earlier post.  It all displayed nicely and conveniently in an organized Folder View. 

Since this is a family library for children, there is a lot of rewatching of favorite titles.  It's not like we are only ever going to pull up the newest content where I want to use a flat list of titles like the Movies tab.  You want to rewatch some Despicable Me/Ice Age/Disney movie?  They're each in subfolders under "animation" in my Folder View.  It only takes two clicks to reach the list of titles for each.  (And a third click into a further Minion Mini-Movie subfolder if you want to get to all the bonus shorts that I also captured from my DVDs, which is a very nice way to organize things--only available in Folder View.)

 

My main reason for posting yet another tediously long message on the subject is just to further illuminate how I like to manage and use Emby.  There is clearly a disconnect between how the devs organize their libraries vs this newfound and previously-quiet subset of users who like Folder View.  And our preferred type of folder structure is obviously not represented in the beta testing community.  So I can only assume that you need more insight into how some of us like to manage things.  There are only so many times @Luke can ask about the Movies tab or a combined Movies and TV tab before I start to wonder if he understands how I am trying to use Emby, and the flip side (from my post above) is whether I'm just cluelessly missing some organization/grouping function in the system that is obvious to him.  I'd like to learn.  (Although I'd still probably prefer to do things the way I used to do, because it really did work very nicely.)

I do greatly appreciate the continued engagement from the devs and moderators on this topic.

 

[Steven 158]

If you’re not aware there is a plugin in Emby called “genre cleaner”. If you have a folder of a specific genre you can set all movies within that to only be that genre.

However I do also use the folder view in my movies collection as I organise them in genre folders as well, so it is a shame they have lost displaying their metadata.

edit: I just checked the plugin and it’s not as I described. It allows you to limit genres by putting certain genres to a main genre, which helps to reduce how many genres display.

Edited October 30, 2025 by Steven

[GrimReaper 4739]

On 10/11/2025 at 9:15 AM, mrmixed said:

What do I do with Pixar shorts that show up as movies?  In Folder View, they are easily found under "animation/Pixar/shorts/".  But Emby thinks they are movies, and displays them in the "Movie" view, and not in a particularly organized fashion--they are simply mixed through the list where ever they happen to sort alphabetically based on my current filter.  Oddly enough, I had manually added all of my Pixar content into a Collection and I thought this might have caused the Movies tab to group them together, but it doesn't.  I'm not sure if this is a setting I need to enable.  At any rate, the Pixar Collection looks great on the Collections tab, which is all I really want it to do

There is: "Group items into collections" in your Movies tab three-dot menu, all those shorts will be displayed behind single entry, you Pixar collection, between other single movie items. 

[GrimReaper 4739]

2 hours ago, mrmixed said:

Please help me understand how you would deal with my example above where individual songs from concert footage with no metadata shows up as multiple titles on the movie tab.  Would you keep this in a separate library?  Or is there some better approach that I am missing?  I don't auto group things into collections and I have a feeling that is probably something that makes a difference.  But I'm generally happy to set up my own collections so only things I care about show up in the Collections view.  (The multi-select added in a previous release was very much appreciated in this regard.)

I greatly appreciate your comment that you would like to restore the functionality that some of us are so passionate about.

I've obviously chimed in here a lot on this issue and probably ought to knock it off, but just to support a fellow rookie, I agree with basically everything @cbingorposted above (referring at least to the one from an hour ago before things seem to have become more contentious).  While Genre View is very close to how I like to view things at the initial view (my folder organization is more or less arranged by genera at the initial level), it has some features that cause me to prefer Folder View:

•  the genre metadata available online is often not what I would have chosen, or includes multiple genres.  I actually like this feature in Genre View, because it potentially gives my users a different "crowd-sourced" way of navigating through my library and not be limited by my own choice of Folder "categories".  But because of multiple genre tags, you wind up seeing the same title in multiple categories, and my type-A personality doesn't want to waste time seeing the same title over and over as I navigate the folders.  I get that I could edit the metadata; I don't really want to have to.  I rarely used Genre View and prefer Folder View, but I liked having both available.
• folders allow for more grouping below the initial level.  I have an "animation" folder with subfolders for various studios/franchises, which allows things to be organized and grouped very nicely in Folder View.  I also find that much of my content spans movies and tv (Peanuts, Muppets, etc.) and it's nice to be able to place all of that content under a single folder, and to group/sort the sub-items however I want it underneath that folder.

My main goal for using Emby was to throw all of my video content together in a nice UI for my kids to navigate and find stuff as I digitized our DVDs.  As discussed previously, I prefer having only a single mixed content library to make it easier to get in and get right into finding content.  And I've gone beyond just capturing DVDs and have started dumping all sorts of random videos into the library folder structure, like the concert footage mentioned in my earlier post.  It all displayed nicely and conveniently in an organized Folder View. 

Since this is a family library for children, there is a lot of rewatching of favorite titles.  It's not like we are only ever going to pull up the newest content where I want to use a flat list of titles like the Movies tab.  You want to rewatch some Despicable Me/Ice Age/Disney movie?  They're each in subfolders under "animation" in my Folder View.  It only takes two clicks to reach the list of titles for each.  (And a third click into a further Minion Mini-Movie subfolder if you want to get to all the bonus shorts that I also captured from my DVDs, which is a very nice way to organize things--only available in Folder View.)

 

My main reason for posting yet another tediously long message on the subject is just to further illuminate how I like to manage and use Emby.  There is clearly a disconnect between how the devs organize their libraries vs this newfound and previously-quiet subset of users who like Folder View.  And our preferred type of folder structure is obviously not represented in the beta testing community.  So I can only assume that you need more insight into how some of us like to manage things.  There are only so many times @Luke can ask about the Movies tab or a combined Movies and TV tab before I start to wonder if he understands how I am trying to use Emby, and the flip side (from my post above) is whether I'm just cluelessly missing some organization/grouping function in the system that is obvious to him.  I'd like to learn.  (Although I'd still probably prefer to do things the way I used to do, because it really did work very nicely.)

I do greatly appreciate the continued engagement from the devs and moderators on this topic.

 

Thanks for your extensive feedback, I'm sure the Devs will appreciate it. I can only assume there wasn't enough of it during 4.9 beta cycle - and I know there were a number of users requesting for Folder view to more closely represent their actual filesystem structure (which, truth be told, maybe it should have from the beginning), I suppose they were simply quite vocal. 

Before replying to some of your actual queries, do note that I'm somewhat metadata-anal and devote considerable amount of time to curating my collection - but I understand that not all users have time/opportunity/willingness - or are simply lazy - to also do that, or simply have better things to do instead. And that's completely legit. But calling something unusable or broken because of it simply isn't argument enough in my book. 

2 hours ago, mrmixed said:

Please help me understand how you would deal with my example above where individual songs from concert footage with no metadata shows up as multiple titles on the movie tab.  Would you keep this in a separate library?

I actually do have concerts in separate library, but even in Movie library - yes, Collections are the way to go, together with "Group items" from post above. 

2 hours ago, mrmixed said:

While Genre View is very close to how I like to view things at the initial view (my folder organization is more or less arranged by genera at the initial level), it has some features that cause me to prefer Folder View:

•  the genre metadata available online is often not what I would have chosen, or includes multiple genres.  I actually like this feature in Genre View, because it potentially gives my users a different "crowd-sourced" way of navigating through my library and not be limited by my own choice of Folder "categories".  But because of multiple genre tags, you wind up seeing the same title in multiple categories, and my type-A personality doesn't want to waste time seeing the same title over and over as I navigate the folders.  I get that I could edit the metadata; I don't really want to have to.  I rarely used Genre View and prefer Folder View, but I liked having both available.

Which is about exactly opposite to how I feel about it: I'd rarely consider a movie to be a single-genre item, I actually appreciate that same Action/Comedy movie can be found under both Genres; tbh, I don't think I've clicked on Folders tab in any of my Movies or TV show libraries for better part of a decade. 

I do keep my Genres quite tight, in line with TMDB Genres Bible, with the occasional custom genre few and far between. For everything else, there are Collections and something I haven't seen you mentioning so I assume you haven't get around to be using: tags. As far as I'm concerned, tags are almost single greatest Emby's feature, on my system practically everything is controlled by them: user access, grouping, "bridging" (between different content types), term-searching (as opposed to pure-title-search)... Between different libraries collections and tags, I have yet to find scenario in which Folder view would work better. 

2 hours ago, mrmixed said:

folders allow for more grouping below the initial level.  I have an "animation" folder with subfolders for various studios/franchises, which allows things to be organized and grouped very nicely in Folder View.  I also find that much of my content spans movies and tv (Peanuts, Muppets, etc.) and it's nice to be able to place all of that content under a single folder, and to group/sort the sub-items however I want it underneath that folder.

Above paragraph basically covers this one as well. 

I'd say fundamental difference between our organizational structures is single vs. multiple libraries, in effect I imagine that whatever folders you have as your root folders/categories I'd likely have as libraries (also note that dedicated content libraries offer more features than mixed-content one) or a collection/tag-group within them. 

2 hours ago, mrmixed said:

You want to rewatch some Despicable Me/Ice Age/Disney movie?  They're each in subfolders under "animation" in my Folder View.  It only takes two clicks to reach the list of titles for each.

Create Animation library and they'll be reachable in single click. 

2 hours ago, mrmixed said:

And a third click into a further Minion Mini-Movie subfolder if you want to get to all the bonus shorts that I also captured from my DVDs, which is a very nice way to organize things--only available in Folder View.)

Add the collection as per above and they be displayed in-line with other movies. 

Practically everything you're currently accessing via folder view can be achieved through library management/organization (and in some instances it might require even less clicks) - but as said above, it does take some of your time. 

I'm typing from mobile so I hope you'll understand this would about be it. 

Regards

 

Edited October 30, 2025 by GrimReaper

[Teddy 100]

I think this discussion topic is the closest thing to Windows 10/11.

I tried Windows 11 and wasn't convinced, so I bought Windows 10 Enterprise and have support until 2032, or that Windows 12 is better. 

I'm personally much happier with version 4.8 than 4.9 ((I tried it a couple of times with 4.9 and after a few days I went back to 4.8) and will stick with 4.8 until it's possible, or until there's some possibility that 4.9 (if the developers allow it) will handle folders the same way as legacy 4.8.

But I think many of us who came from Mediabrowser didn't like this change.

[Zelig 48]

29 minutes ago, Teddy said:

I think this discussion topic is the closest thing to Windows 10/11.

I tried Windows 11 and wasn't convinced, so I bought Windows 10 Enterprise and have support until 2032, or that Windows 12 is better. 

I'm personally much happier with version 4.8 than 4.9 ((I tried it a couple of times with 4.9 and after a few days I went back to 4.8) and will stick with 4.8 until it's possible, or until there's some possibility that 4.9 (if the developers allow it) will handle folders the same way as legacy 4.8.

But I think many of us who came from Mediabrowser didn't like this change.

For what you are saying, I'm assuming that uninstalling 4.9 and installing 4.8 will resolve the issue for as long as you don't have automatic updates enabled

I'm thing of doing the same thing. Have some questions if you don't mind:

Where did you get the 4.8 installer?. 

Can you describe the metohod used? For example, How did you uninstalled the 4.9 server? Did you also delete the library files?. What about the .nfo files for the movies (I have them stored in the movie folder). Did you delete them too?

Thanks man

 

[Luke 42077]

6 hours ago, cbingor said:

 

Meanwhile, the Genres tab has become overly cluttered and nearly unusable due to the media data source containing numerous user-defined categories.

Hi, what is the exact issue with the genres tab?

[Teddy 100]

2 hours ago, Zelig said:

For what you are saying, I'm assuming that uninstalling 4.9 and installing 4.8 will resolve the issue for as long as you don't have automatic updates enabled

I'm thing of doing the same thing. Have some questions if you don't mind:

Where did you get the 4.8 installer?. 

Can you describe the metohod used? For example, How did you uninstalled the 4.9 server? Did you also delete the library files?. What about the .nfo files for the movies (I have them stored in the movie folder). Did you delete them too?

Thanks man

 

Hi, in my case I usually create images of my C drive using Acronis Backup.

With this, I can restore the entire disk or individual files. What I've done is restore the entire disk, including version 4.8 with all the metadata, NFO files, etc.

If you don't have this type of image backup, I think that if you replace the binaries in C:\Users\xxxxxx\AppData\Roaming\Emby-Server with those in C:\Users\xxxxxxx\AppData\Roaming\Emby-Server\system.old, after performing a Scan Media Library, everything should be exactly as it was when it was running version 4.8.

I've never done it this way, but I think it should work for you.

[cbingor 11]

10 hours ago, Luke said:

Hi, what is the exact issue with the genres tab?

As the main slogan on Emby's official page states, manage your media, your way.

Emby aims to be a media management platform that maximizes user freedom.

I'm unsure if the “Tags tab” you mentioned was a typo, so I'll directly list the disadvantages of the Tags tab and Genre tab compared to the Folders tab.

The Tags tab requires manually opening each movie to edit custom tags, while the Folder tab only needs placing movies into predefined folders—a difference in efficiency by orders of magnitude.

Logically, the Genre tab is merely a system-automated category, not a user-customizable one, whereas the Folder tab fulfills user needs.

The Genre tab has the following issues:

1. High organizational difficulty: When customizing film categories, you must manually inspect and annotate each movie individually to place it in the desired category. In contrast, the folder tab allows you to simply drag and drop movies into predefined category folders.

2. Some genres are irrelevant to users' interests. Take “TV Movie” as an example—frankly, most of my friends don't care about this category, and many major video platforms don't even list it. Yet it automatically appears in the Genre tab, cluttering the filtering process with redundant, useless categories.

3. The Genre tab relies on MediaInfo, while the Folder tab offers high flexibility and powerful organization capabilities. For instance, if I want to create a custom collection of a director's or actor's classics, or a collection with specific characteristics—like Snow White-themed movies spanning decades—TMDB can't provide such collections. However, custom folders can effortlessly group these logically coherent human-curated collections.

...

P.S. Today's work has been quite busy, so I may have overlooked some points. If possible, I'll supplement these in a follow-up reply.

[GrimReaper 4739]

1 hour ago, cbingor said:

The Tags tab requires manually opening each movie to edit custom tags

You can edit items in bulk with Bulky plugin or you can use some external metadata manager, which would offer expanded feature set. 

1 hour ago, cbingor said:

Folder tab only needs placing movies into predefined folders—a difference in efficiency by orders of magnitude.

You are partially correct there, there is difference in efficiency - not by order of magnitude but considerable, yes. It was pointed out above. 

1 hour ago, cbingor said:

1. High organizational difficulty: When customizing film categories, you must manually inspect and annotate each movie individually to place it in the desired category. In contrast, the folder tab allows you to simply drag and drop movies into predefined category folders.

As above: Bulky or TMM, you don't need to do it individually. 

1 hour ago, cbingor said:

2. Some genres are irrelevant to users' interests. Take “TV Movie” as an example—frankly, most of my friends don't care about this category, and many major video platforms don't even list it. Yet it automatically appears in the Genre tab, cluttering the filtering process with redundant, useless categories.

You can easily sort that with previously mentioned Genre Cleaner plugin. 

1 hour ago, cbingor said:

3. The Genre tab relies on MediaInfo, while the Folder tab offers high flexibility and powerful organization capabilities. For instance, if I want to create a custom collection of a director's or actor's classics, or a collection with specific characteristics—like Snow White-themed movies spanning decades—TMDB can't provide such collections. However, custom folders can effortlessly group these logically coherent human-curated collections

As can custom collections, principle is basically/practically/exactly the same - with the added bonus that you can have multiples of them, same item can "fit" into however many collections/categories you'd like - and all of those would be presented practically at the top-level, not in a single folder 3-4 levels deep in your folder structure. 

Again, noone is disputing your request to get old Folders tab back - nor its validity. But for every argument you make there exists a counter-argument. Do some of those methods take more time? They do. Do they offer more flexibility in return, as opposed to very rigid folder structure/view? They also do. It's up to each user to weigh their pros and cons, I reckon it ultimately boils down to basically that. 

Edited October 31, 2025 by GrimReaper

[Steven 158]

@LukeCan you confirm that the folder view of movies not displaying metadata is not as expected, as it still works with TV shows. Or should it not be appearing for TV shows?

[mrmixed 77]

14 hours ago, GrimReaper said:

Thanks for your extensive feedback, I'm sure the Devs will appreciate it. I can only assume there wasn't enough of it during 4.9 beta cycle - and I know there were a number of users requesting for Folder view to more closely represent their actual filesystem structure (which, truth be told, maybe it should have from the beginning), I suppose they were simply quite vocal. 

Before replying to some of your actual queries, do note that I'm somewhat metadata-anal and devote considerable amount of time to curating my collection - but I understand that not all users have time/opportunity/willingness - or are simply lazy - to also do that, or simply have better things to do instead. And that's completely legit. But calling something unusable or broken because of it simply isn't argument enough in my book. 

I actually do have concerts in separate library, but even in Movie library - yes, Collections are the way to go, together with "Group items" from post above. 

Which is about exactly opposite to how I feel about it: I'd rarely consider a movie to be a single-genre item, I actually appreciate that same Action/Comedy movie can be found under both Genres; tbh, I don't think I've clicked on Folders tab in any of my Movies or TV show libraries for better part of a decade. 

I do keep my Genres quite tight, in line with TMDB Genres Bible, with the occasional custom genre few and far between. For everything else, there are Collections and something I haven't seen you mentioning so I assume you haven't get around to be using: tags. As far as I'm concerned, tags are almost single greatest Emby's feature, on my system practically everything is controlled by them: user access, grouping, "bridging" (between different content types), term-searching (as opposed to pure-title-search)... Between different libraries collections and tags, I have yet to find scenario in which Folder view would work better. 

Above paragraph basically covers this one as well. 

I'd say fundamental difference between our organizational structures is single vs. multiple libraries, in effect I imagine that whatever folders you have as your root folders/categories I'd likely have as libraries (also note that dedicated content libraries offer more features than mixed-content one) or a collection/tag-group within them. 

Create Animation library and they'll be reachable in single click. 

Add the collection as per above and they be displayed in-line with other movies. 

Practically everything you're currently accessing via folder view can be achieved through library management/organization (and in some instances it might require even less clicks) - but as said above, it does take some of your time. 

I'm typing from mobile so I hope you'll understand this would about be it. 

Regards

 

I do agree with your point about titles rarely being single-genre in reality, and I readily admit I have an old school approach to organization.  I think my relatively modest collection of family-oriented titles makes it easier for me to simplify things along my own custom genre categories.  I do occasionally use "subgenre" folders at a second folder level to separate movies/shows that just don't really have the same vibe to appear together.  Regardless, my own navigation preference is to use a view where every title only appears once; for example, I get annoyed when using Netflix for constantly showing me the same titles across multiple categories that I've already skipped over.  But I set it up, so it's easy for me to find things.  I do appreciate Genre View for adding a little more flexibility for other users.  (But as an aside to the other posts in regards to Genre View, I agree that it's often annoying to see what the crowd has selected for some titles.  I do have to edit the genre metadata from time to time to keep things streamlined.  I still prefer my own custom genre Folders and wouldn't want to have to maintain the Genre metadata just to get to the same place.)  And ultimately this issue is bigger than just my moderately redundant approach to folder organization; lots of other people have posted even more compelling use cases about folders for directors, or years, etc.

And I get that I would be better served based on how the system is designed to have multiple content libraries that are geared for different things.  However, when I started setting Emby up a couple of years ago, my plan was always to have a digitized collection of my DVD content, along with the connections to my TV antenna--so for the top-level navigation, being able to drill directly into my entire home library vs. Live TV vs. Recorded TV just made a tremendous amount of sense.  Segregating my main library across several libraries just complicates that initial navigation.

As I mentioned before and in other posts on this issue, I think the Emby project as a whole would be more streamlined without having special content type settings on libraries, and for the identification process for any given title to include a user-selectable option for movie vs. tv vs. anything else--or just blatantly allow me to choose which online metadata provider to query.  That would allow stubborn users like me a workaround for Emby misidentifications when it insists on querying the wrong online metadata providers, and would also simplify the testing process you have to go through when putting out a release since all library types would be homogenized.  I'm not advocating for this change.  I was fine with how it worked before.  But from my relatively new and outsider perspective, it seems that the devs kept making things more complicated in terms of library types/folder structure/file naming for the sake of making auto-identification easier, when you could've gone the other direction and just make the entire project simpler and more streamlined (but with slightly more user intervention needed from time-to-time).

I do use Tags but only for intros.  I haven't explored their use in terms of organizational structure.  It doesn't appear they can be nested, which is the main thing Folders offer.  I tried your suggestion about the Movies "... Group Items into Collections" and have some feedback...

 

My preferred approach, using Folder View (the images are jacked because I've had to restore my 4.8 database multiple times and things just have been going haywire as a result, but you get the idea).  In my library structure, this exists in /Animated/Despicable Me/.  There is a subfolder "Minions Mini-Movies" which holds all of the shorts, neatly tucked out of the way.

Although I typically use Collections to identify holiday titles that cut across genres, I do make collections for large franchises/studios, so I don't mind your suggested approach.  For the "Despicable Me" collection, I added each individual movie title and the Folder of shorts.  When I switch to the Movies tab, and even when I group it as you suggested above, every single short appears as an individual "movie," because only the parent Folder is part of the collection, and this doesn't resolve through to the shorts contained within.

If I manually add all of the shorts to Collection as well, I can keep them off of the main Movies list as you suggested, but then I get this view when entering the collection:

Not having the ability to have a nested subcollection makes this view a lot messier.  And it certainly doesn't replace Folder View.

 

While I appreciate your point you made in a more recent post that there are multiple ways to accomplish the same result, I don't yet see a path forward for nested subcollections that Folder View provides.  

I realize there are ways to get there, or at least close.  For a property that is primarily a TV show but also has a feature film or two associated with it, you can use the TV structure with specials.  But there are numerous examples of franchises with movie/tv/short crossovers from Marvel to Wallace & Gromit where a compulsive person might want to curate it differently than the standard options available in the online databases, to be able to jump right to a movie without scrolling through tv episodes, and so on.  For me, the content largely dictates how it should be displayed.  "Peanuts" mixes movie and TV together throughout it's run with no real required watch-order chronology, so it lends to simply displaying a flat list of titles.  "Star Trek" is a behemoth with eras, so it's better to group it into subfolders for TOS, TOS-Movies, TNG, TNG-Movies, etc.  But I'd rather not create a Collection just to group together every distinct flavor of Star Trek; it should all be able to exist in one collection.

And I don't really want to have to create a Collection for my concert footage just to get it off of the Movies list.  That would just complicate the Collections list with something that I would primarily only want to find in Folder View.  Or if I eventually wind up capturing a bunch of concerts, I'll probably want it to have a two- or three-tier nested structure so I can stack it up neatly.  In any case it's certainly not a movie, so it doesn't belong in the "Movies" list whether it's in a collection or otherwise.  I will concede that concert footage is a different enough type of media that it could (and you would suggest should) be spun off into a different library, but it's not worth it to me to add a top-level navigation option that won't be used much.  It's better to nestle it inside my main library alongside a dozen other Folders where it's easy to find but won't stand out unnecessarily.

 

At any rate, I appreciate your comment that you'd like to see this functionality restored for us.  And maybe you will have a further helpful suggestion to replace the nested subfolder structure that I currently really like to use. 

Ultimately, though, I'd like to be done posting about this issue but am still waiting for a dev to tell us what is going to happen.

 

 

[GrimReaper 4739]

51 minutes ago, mrmixed said:

I don't yet see a path forward for nested subcollections that Folder View provides.  

suggestion to replace the nested subfolder structure that I currently really like to use. 

There's a long standing Feature Request that'd likely solve majority - if not all - of your issues (and not only yours, I suppose entire userbase would benefit from it), you can certainly lend your support there:

That said, I understand your organization and how do you like/want/prefer your content to be presented - it certainly has its advantages and not everything is currently feasible within Emby. Meaning: is Emby perfect? It certainly isn't. Neither is Folder view, my biggest gripes with it: it's very rigid and heavily/extremely dependent on single user preferences in a multi user-environment - and I reckon no two persons see all the things in exactly the same way. Nor would expect to find them in exactly the same place. Hence fluidity that Emby provides carries a lot of weight in how I see it. And once one's media library grows as it tends to (you don't want to know size of my library), I can only imagine managing that through filesystem would become even greater nightmare than doing it front-end. 

But currently there's no equivalent to multi-layered folder structure, there's no doubt about it, as said several times: I do hope you get your old Folder view back, even at the expense of those users that wanted it more closely representing their actual structure. That doesn't make me impartial as I should be, eh? 

Keeping this short as I reckon everything has already been said on the topic, ball is in Dev's court, I'm positive they'll consider all the feedback received and will act accordingly. 

Regards 

 

Edited October 31, 2025 by GrimReaper

[cbingor 11]

6 hours ago, GrimReaper said:

You can edit items in bulk with Bulky plugin or you can use some external metadata manager, which would offer expanded feature set. 

You are partially correct there, there is difference in efficiency - not by order of magnitude but considerable, yes. It was pointed out above. 

As above: Bulky or TMM, you don't need to do it individually. 

You can easily sort that with previously mentioned Genre Cleaner plugin. 

As can custom collections, principle is basically/practically/exactly the same - with the added bonus that you can have multiples of them, same item can "fit" into however many collections/categories you'd like - and all of those would be presented practically at the top-level, not in a single folder 3-4 levels deep in your folder structure. 

Again, noone is disputing your request to get old Folders tab back - nor its validity. But for every argument you make there exists a counter-argument. Do some of those methods take more time? They do. Do they offer more flexibility in return, as opposed to very rigid folder structure/view? They also do. It's up to each user to weigh their pros and cons, I reckon it ultimately boils down to basically that. 

I carefully reviewed your response and appreciate the time you took to reply. However, I noticed an issue: while a folder option could previously resolve a series of complex problems, the update to version 4.9.1.80 altered its original functionality, rendering it unusable. Now, multiple external tools must be combined to address these issues. Does this situation represent a decline in system efficiency? Can the loss of powerful functionality, necessitating external tools to compensate, be considered a significant regression in this version?

Thank you again for your response.

[Zelig 48]

20 hours ago, Teddy said:

Hi, in my case I usually create images of my C drive using Acronis Backup.

With this, I can restore the entire disk or individual files. What I've done is restore the entire disk, including version 4.8 with all the metadata, NFO files, etc.

If you don't have this type of image backup, I think that if you replace the binaries in C:\Users\xxxxxx\AppData\Roaming\Emby-Server with those in C:\Users\xxxxxxx\AppData\Roaming\Emby-Server\system.old, after performing a Scan Media Library, everything should be exactly as it was when it was running version 4.8.

I've never done it this way, but I think it should work for you.

Ok. I'll try and let you know.

By the way, also from Madrid