Proposal: Right-side “Discovery” panel + smarter recommendations in Emby clients

[NamdaM 0]

Hi Emby team,

 

Could Emby consider a UI option that shifts key controls to the right side and adds a persistent Discovery panel—similar to Netflix’s “Because you watched…” rails—so we can surface more options and recommendations without burying them in menus?

 

Why this helps

• Keeps “play” front-and-center while continuously showing relevant alternatives on the right.

• Boosts engagement with Because you watched X, Similar by genre/actor/director, and People who watched X also watched.

• Makes it easy to discover content the user hasn’t watched yet, aligned with their usual genres.

 

Suggested UX

• Right-hand, collapsible panel with scrollable rails:

  Because you watched {Title}

  More like this (genre/tags/cast/crew)

  Unwatched in your library (filterable)

  New this week / Recently added

  Top picks for you (personalized mix)

  Continue watching (always visible)

• Per-user toggles to pin/hide rails, reorder sections, and set limits (e.g., “show only unwatched”, “minimum rating”, “exclude kids”, etc.).

• Remote-friendly navigation: Left = main grid/details; Right = Discovery panel (up/down to move rails, left/right to browse items).

 

Recommendation logic (on-server, privacy-friendly)

• Content-based (genres, studios, actors, directors, runtime, language).

• Behavior-based (watch history, completion rate, dwell time).

• Optional lightweight collaborative signals across users on the same server.

• Always exclude already watched items by default, with a toggle to include.

 

Admin & performance

• Server setting to enable/disable the panel, choose rails, set item counts, and schedule background indexing.

• Cache recommendation lists per user and refresh periodically to keep UI snappy.

 

Success metrics (optional)

• Click-through to playback from recommendations, time-to-first-play, and diversity of titles started.

 

This would bring Emby’s discovery experience much closer to leading streaming UIs, while keeping everything local and configurable. Thanks for considering!

[Luke 42077]

Hi, what makes you think that our suggestions are currently buried in menus?