Two plugin ideas but need confirmation they are even possible with Emby

[Lyfesaver 133]

I have two idea but not sure they can be achieved and would love some confirmation before I go too far down the rabbit hole

1. A proper "Announcement" feature has been talked about and possibly even being worked on but I had an idea last night during a storm here locally. As it stands we can send pop-up messages to a user and I would like to advance on that feature a bit. I have a plugin for my Dispatcharr that creates a custom "Weather Channel" just for me and it has a nice weather radar of the area around me. A plugin that would allow me to show message box overlay for 15 seconds (or even better the ability to add a scrolling information bar like TV stations do for weather warnings) saying that a storm is nearing and that the server might go down if power outage outlasts APUs. Possible or no?

2. Channel Flagger plugin or something. Allows users to flag a channel as having an issue to be addressed without having to reach out to me

[Luke 42077]

Hi, plugins generally provide data and can’t do much to change the Emby user interface. So for #2 it could be done but only on the plugins dedicated screen

[Lyfesaver 133]

5 hours ago, Luke said:

Hi, plugins generally provide data and can’t do much to change the Emby user interface. So for #2 it could be done but only on the plugins dedicated screen

Would it be possible for a plugin to alter permissions? Specifically, allow all users (they would not be there if I did not trust them) to edit metadata? This way I could have a tag created that they can add to a channel or even a movie/episode that needs my attn.

I am just throwing ideas around, Luke... feel free to point out that they are bad ones lol

[Luke 42077]

Quote

Would it be possible for a plugin to alter permissions?

Technically it is although it probably shouldn't be.

[Lyfesaver 133]

3 minutes ago, Luke said:

Technically it is although it probably shouldn't be.

Ty, sounds like I best let this one alone tho. Even if it was somewhat easy to do, it sounds like it might be an exploit y'all will patch later anyway.

Oh well, was a fun thought experiment. Ty for indulging me

[Luke 42077]

Quote

it sounds like it might be an exploit y'all will patch later anyway

Exactly. It would not be something that could go into the plugin catalog.

[softworkz 5066]

On 10/24/2025 at 6:02 PM, Lyfesaver said:

1. A proper "Announcement" feature has been talked about and possibly even being worked on but I had an idea last night during a storm here locally. As it stands we can send pop-up messages to a user and I would like to advance on that feature a bit. I have a plugin for my Dispatcharr that creates a custom "Weather Channel" just for me and it has a nice weather radar of the area around me. A plugin that would allow me to show message box overlay for 15 seconds (or even better the ability to add a scrolling information bar like TV stations do for weather warnings) saying that a storm is nearing and that the server might go down if power outage outlasts APUs. Possible or no?

 

 

You can use the Emby SDK Reference: MessageCommand for this. You can control the display time as well as message plus header text.

It doesn't allow image display though. You could get creative with some emojis maybe:

 

 

[softworkz 5066]

On 10/24/2025 at 6:02 PM, Lyfesaver said:

2. Channel Flagger plugin or something. Allows users to flag a channel as having an issue to be addressed without having to reach out to me

On 10/25/2025 at 2:45 AM, Lyfesaver said:

Ty, sounds like I best let this one alone tho. Even if it was somewhat easy to do, it sounds like it might be an exploit y'all will patch later anyway.

Oh well, was a fun thought experiment.

 

With a littble bit more thouight...there IS a good way actually and it is perfectly compatible with Emby terrms for catalog plugins:

Use Playlists!

Your plugin could either create a shared playlist or a private playlist for each user (or both). You can name the playlist something like "Bad Channels".
Then you get a simple and straightforward procedure for users - the just need to do: "Add to playlist" >> "Bad Channels" - done!

At the server side, your plugin can do whatever you want. You can for example scan those lists on interval (or even hook to some change event) and when a new channel gets reported, you can change the description (or tag line, or add tags) to indicate that it was reported or that it's "under investigation", etc.

[Lyfesaver 133]

@softworkzLOOK AT YOU GO!!!!  Haha I love it.

1 hour ago, softworkz said:

You could get creative with some emojis maybe

I have not looked at the SDK yet so I dont know frequency refresh of a messages are or how frequent a new message could be sent but I might even play around with the idea of an ASCII radar  lol like from the late 70s early 80s when cable first came out lol

 

50 minutes ago, softworkz said:

Use Playlists!

Love this idea!

[softworkz 5066]

4 minutes ago, Lyfesaver said:

I have not looked at the SDK yet so I dont know frequency refresh of a messages are or how frequent a new message could be sent but I might even play around with the idea of an ASCII radar  lol like from the late 70s early 80s when cable first came out lol

LOL - You won't believe it - I had the same idea, but unfortunately this can only work with a monospaced font - which isn't used in case of the client toats.

For the frequency: You can show as many toasts as you want. They will stack up and eventually move off the screen when they're not getting hidden in time.

[Lyfesaver 133]

13 minutes ago, softworkz said:

LOL - You won't believe it - I had the same idea

HAHA great minds, amirite?

[Lyfesaver 133]

5 hours ago, softworkz said:

For the frequency: You can show as many toasts as you want. They will stack up and eventually move off the screen when they're not getting hidden in time.

Ahh, they stack up... too bad they dont overwrite as they come in

Having the ability to incl a SVG, GIF or even webm would be ideal but the possibility of it adding so many issues outweigh the benefits, I would imagine. The goal can be achieved with the system as is. The goal being notifying anyone watching that a storm is here, power may go out, power has gone out (APIs from maybe the APU, HA, Glances, etc) and on battery backup for X minutes, and so on. We dont need the fancy stuff but it would be nice Emjois and repetition will be enough to get peoples attention. 

Other ideas:
Reduce audio by 50% while message active
Pause playback (not a fan of this at all, lol)
Play an audio file for an alert sound (totally not doable but maybe in the future? who knows) but only on the extreme "We are in battery backup power" alerts

 

Anyway, thanks for the ideas, I am going to run with both by leveraging the message box and playlists for the other

[softworkz 5066]

On 10/26/2025 at 7:44 PM, Lyfesaver said:

Having the ability to incl a SVG, GIF or even webm would be ideal but the possibility of it adding so many issues outweigh the benefits, I would imagine

I could imagine us to allow this. The primary point here is that we cannot allow any HTML markup in the message or title texts, because this would open up the possibility for script injection into our apps, which would be a massive security issue. For allowing an image to be included, it would require extending the API for allowing to specify an image url (and possibly some additional properties like size and alignment). It would be shown in an IMG tag, so SVG would work as well (but without scripting).