What has been the major achievement in 2025 for Emby?

[Mahinepua 81]

Auto merging duplicate movies is my favourite, it had been on my list of things to do for years.

Unfortunately it defaults to on, and the coverart plug-in doesn’t support the unmerge function, cover still shows multiple versions.

[nospotify 184]

12 hours ago, ebr said:

There is room for improvement here but it will update the progress stage if you update the screen.  How is the JF implementation better?

Forget the JF comparisons. Since I started using and paying for Emby several years ago, the handling of music libraries has had a range of problems and limitations, listed at length in so many other threads here. Almost none of them have been addressed, despite @Lukebridling when another user stated that music handling just doesn't seem to be a priority for Emby devs. Why not just take a week or two and make the modest music fixes and improvements that have been requested, and then a big chunk of the repeated posts here would be done.

[IAmHugh 63]

@nospotifylike mention by myself and others this is the Luke show, and only the Luke show.

[ebr 16169]

14 hours ago, Mahinepua said:

Unfortunately it defaults to on, and the coverart plug-in doesn’t support the unmerge function, cover still shows multiple versions.

Hi.  Merging the items doesn't eliminate the fact that there are multiple versions.  In fact, that is the only way CA would see and indicate such.

[ebr 16169]

13 hours ago, nospotify said:

Forget the JF comparisons. Since I started using and paying for Emby several years ago, the handling of music libraries has had a range of problems and limitations, listed at length in so many other threads here. Almost none of them have been addressed, despite @Lukebridling when another user stated that music handling just doesn't seem to be a priority for Emby devs. Why not just take a week or two and make the modest music fixes and improvements that have been requested, and then a big chunk of the repeated posts here would be done.

Hi.  We have to have priorities and there will always be room for improvement.  However, I don't see the part where JF is better there...?  What have they added since taking our implementation that has made this better?

Thanks.

[osmanfahmy 0]

I want to release Emby for LG version 1.0.47

[nospotify 184]

35 minutes ago, ebr said:

Hi.  We have to have priorities and there will always be room for improvement.  However, I don't see the part where JF is better there...?  What have they added since taking our implementation that has made this better?

Thanks.

Sorry if I wasn't clear - I have never used JF and have no views on which is 'better' - I was saying that regardless, it would be great if music users had seen any meaningful improvements in Emby in the past year.

[nospotify 184]

6 hours ago, ebr said:

Hi.  We have to have priorities and there will always be room for improvement.  However, I don't see the part where JF is better there...?  What have they added since taking our implementation that has made this better?

Thanks.

@ebryou've always been thoughtful and clear and communicating here in good faith, so please take these comments in the same spirit. I have seen lots of changes and improvements in Emby over the past few years that are much less basic - and I suspect require more coding effort - than a couple of the oft-requested issues re: music libraries that have been reported here repeatedly:

1. Lack of a persistent play queue and play state, which is maddening when one's listening session and/or one's location in a play queue just... disappears.

2.  No way to queue and play a single disc in a multi-disc album - start at track 1 of disc 2, for example, and Emby won't stop playing the whole darned box set until the end, nor can users add a single disc when building a playlist to save.

3. Clicking 'shuffle' on a playlist generates and starts a play queue fine, but it starts somewhere in the middle, not at the beginning.

These are fundamental usability issues, and they just can't be that hard to address. 

More challenging - and/or less important - but requested for literally years and years:

- Replay gain/volume leveling 

- Thumbs down or 'exclude' option for songs/albums, to help build smart playlists

- Generating new 'cover' image for a playlist that isn't four identical tiles of a single album cover.

I only numbered the first items because they are so utterly basic to usability. When you're prioritizing, please please please why not just sit down, prove all the doubters wrong, and fix them. Then there wouldn't be such widespread feeling here that music functionality isn't a priority for Emby devs.

[Tigga5 39]

Major achievements? Honestly, I’m struggling to find any. From a user perspective, 2025 has mostly felt like a year of dodging critical bugs while the features nobody asked for continued to underwhelm.

What I’d like to see for 2026 is for the dev team to actually enroll in a Security 101 course. It’s becoming a bit pathetic how often fundamental security best practices are ignored or treated as "low priority" while the community is left to find and document the holes ourselves.

For instance, we’re still dealing with:

• Unauthenticated Access to Private Data: We are literally on page 6 of a thread where anyone can access library images just by knowing an ID. No token, no login, no problem. The response time on fixing basic privacy leaks is glacial.

  Unauthenticated access to images by itemid

• Permissions Bypasses: Having "Critical Security Vulnerability" in a thread title regarding Live TV permission bypasses should usually warrant an immediate emergency patch, but here we are.

  Critical Security Vulnerability: Live TV Permission Bypass

• PIN Bypasses: The fact that a simple "Home" button press can bypass security PINs is a masterclass in "Security by Wishful Thinking."

  Security Issue: Using home button makes PIN bypass possible

And then there is the "Universal" Android app. It’s truly a "major achievement" to spend years trying to replace the perfectly functional Android TV app with a bloated, stuttering "one size fits none" mobile port. It fails miserably at providing a smooth 10-foot experience, yet the devs seem hell-bent on sunsetting the one version that actually works for TV users.

If the goal for 2025 was to prove that a paid product can have slower security responses and worse UI regressions than its free competitors, then mission accomplished. Ultimately, for 2026, the devs need to start concentrating on legitimate bugs and community concerns instead of @Luketreating this like his own personal pet project. This is a paid product with a community of users, not a private sandbox where critical security and usability issues can be hand-waved away just because they don't fit a specific internal vision. Fix the foundation before adding more "achievements" to the pile.

Edited January 3 by Tigga5

[IAmHugh 63]

10 hours ago, Tigga5 said:

Major achievements? Honestly, I’m struggling to find any. From a user perspective, 2025 has mostly felt like a year of dodging critical bugs while the features nobody asked for continued to underwhelm.

 

10 hours ago, Tigga5 said:

f the goal for 2025 was to prove that a paid product can have slower security responses and worse UI regressions than its free competitors, then mission accomplished. Ultimately, for 2026, the devs need to start concentrating on legitimate bugs and community concerns instead of @Luketreating this like his own personal pet project. This is a paid product with a community of users, not a private sandbox where critical security and usability issues can be hand-waved away just because they don't fit a specific internal vision. Fix the foundation before adding more "achievements" to the pile.

DING DING DING exactly

[DarKni8 41]

I stopped paying monthly for Emby for the exact same reason: it was the same shit storm, either Luke saying the said feature will be coming for years and it not coming. I already have Plex Pass but was keeping Emby too, but now the Jellyfin team has reworked some database optimisation and the performance has improved significantly. The power of open source clients and plugins has really been getting better lately. Why would one pay for a platform where things are not delivered even when they have a community which pays them? Also, I feel it’s better that the Jellyfin team rather doesn’t comment on anything and their progress is slow but transparent. Doesn’t hurt because the product is free. Feels like Luke is selling ETA more than features here, and if Luke is the only dev, then it clearly shows Emby shouldn’t ideally be an organisation and shouldn’t have that costly licence price. It’s sad to see emby , looking at the current progress of Jellyfin one day they are going to go far ahead as they gain a steady pace. I will keep trying Emby in between. 

 

Not being able to deliver a feature like Smart Playlist (an open source plugin can do this on Jellyfin) is an utter failure of Emby in 2025. Feel bad for people who are active subscribers of Emby.

[kikinjo 281]

On 12/28/2025 at 3:08 PM, CBers said:

Or the least achievement. 

And what do you want for 2026?

Discuss. 

 

Major achievements? Hahaha , good one.

[IAmHugh 63]

44 minutes ago, kikinjo said:

Major achievements? Hahaha , good one.

What I want to discuss? Easy why when I launch the Jellyfin app it launches instantaneously. When I choose a file to watch on the TV through Jelly fin it load easily in under a 10th of the time it does on Emby. While the Jellyfin app isn't all that pretty it just works.

[rbjtech 5284]

I believe Release 4.9.1.80 was the major (non-Beta) release of 2025 - and being honest, I too was disappointed that Smart Playlists did not even make Beta.

Of the release details below - only one functional enhancement I would call major and that was adding ebook support - but even that sadly is barebones.

To be fair - there are a lot of fixes and a lot of minor enhancements - some technical behind the scenes, others for end users.

Is it enough for Emby to keep their current paying userbase and encourage users disgruntled with Plex to move to Emby as opposed to JF ?

imo - no,  as while JF certainly has it's pain points, it also has features plus core AND client development innovation/excitement that is lacking in Emby.     

As has been said above, for me, the only exciting things to happen in Emby were plugins written by 3rd parties - attempting to fill the large functional gaps in the core product.

https://github.com/MediaBrowser/Emby.Releases/releases/tag/4.9.1.80

I don't know what Emby have planned for 2026 - but I think they need to focus on releasing Smart Views to keep 'Users' interested and complete the security patches & necessary security enhancements to keep the techs happy (and then maintain the security stable platform).

Edited January 5 by rbjtech

[IAmHugh 63]

1 hour ago, rbjtech said:

Of the release details below - only one functional enhancement I would call major and that was adding ebook support - but even that sadly is barebones.

And as far as I'm concerned Emby should of stayed just video and music. PLENTY of great E-book readers / organizers.  Should also add backup on Jellyfin works straight out of the gate. No having the permissions issues one can with Emby.

Edited January 5 by IAmHugh

[As777 27]

Emby has been very stable for me for a long time now and I am happy with it as it is. I run the beta version and enjoy the incremental updates that come on a regular basis.

Every time I checkout Jellyfin to see where it's at , it never works properly and I just give up.

I have a lifetime key for Emby so I am not motivated by the cost but have no issue paying for working software that gives me what Emby does.

The Android app is also working extremely well across all my platforms.

[AJV_20 57]

12 hours ago, IAmHugh said:

And as far as I'm concerned Emby should have stayed just video and music. PLENTY of great E-book readers / organizers.  Should also add backup on Jellyfin works straight out of the gate. No having the permissions issues one can with Emby.

I’ve been saying this for years. Is a media server not a book library or even a photo library. They’re clearly spread too thin to be adding all these features that will be forgotten. Why would anyone use Emby for photos when immich and other alternatives exist? They need to refocus on Movies, Shows and Music, some client apps don’t even work properly when playing media

Edited January 6 by AJV_20

[nospotify 184]

9 minutes ago, AJV_20 said:

I’ve been saying this for years. Is a media server not a book library or even a photo library. They’re clearly spread too thin to be adding all these features that will be forgotten. Why would anyone use Emby for photos when immich and other alternatives exist? They need to refocus on Movies, Shows and Music, some client apps don’t even work properly when playing media

This x 1,000!

@ebryour point about prioritization of resources is of course correct, but there are very few users here who understand why Emby dev team isn't prioritizing basic usability issues in video and music, before spending time on nice-but-tangential functionality. A rock-solid, secure, smoothly-functioning platform is going to attract a lot more new, paying users than adding and polishing quirky, non-critical functions like photo galleries and ebook reading.

[arrbee99 1815]

There's plenty of people who don't regard photo galleries and ebook reading as quirky. I don't care about them, others do. Also, when it comes to the competition, there's a fair few out there who'll say Emby hasn't got it, the other two have, so Embys instantly out of the running. Also applies to appearance. Of course functionality is important, as is ease of use, but just having a professional appearance points to professionalism elsewhere - if they can't be bothered even to line up paragraphs (or whatever) properly, what else is there thats shoddy...

[iiiJoe 62]

For me, recording live tv has been problematic since I started using Emby 4 yrs ago. If the m3u stream wasn’t perfect, and I do mean perfect, the recording would crash, stop prematurely and not restart. Emby would count it as completed, leaving me with a partial recording about 30% of the time. I rarely depend on or watch live tv so recording is critical for me. This is/was extremely frustrating, as I’ve tried to address this numerous times with no success. About 2 months ago this changed. In 2 months I’ve only experienced 5 failed recordings which was a PC issue on my end and IPTV channel issues which had nothing to do with Emby. Not sure what’s been changed, I looked through the notes on the new release and couldn’t find anything that I thought might be related so whether this was an intentional fix or a by-product of a tweak for another issue I just wanted to say HATS OFF TO THE EMBY TEAM!!! Hope so badly these very dependable recordings continue. @Lukeand Team, THANK YOU!!

[IAmHugh 63]

8 hours ago, arrbee99 said:

There's plenty of people who don't regard photo galleries and ebook reading as quirky. I don't care about them, others do

Most don't. 

[AJV_20 57]

1 hour ago, IAmHugh said:

Most don't. 

Then I believe those people should look for alternatives and not a media app. Plex is the perfect example, when they focused on music and movies they were great, Plexamp is a great app. But then they did plex photos and they messed up again (also the greed but that’s beside the point)

[Kyouma 7]

On 12/28/2025 at 3:08 PM, CBers said:

Or the least achievement. 

And what do you want for 2026?

Discuss. 

 

I am generally very satisfied with my emby experience, but there are 2 things I wish would be implemented sooner than later. 

Additional TVDB Orders

An updated Apple TV app

Compared to the fire tv app, the Apple TV app still lacks some features. 

[IAmHugh 63]

51 minutes ago, AJV_20 said:

Then I believe those people should look for alternatives and not a media app. Plex is the perfect example, when they focused on music and movies they were great, Plexamp is a great app. But then they did plex photos and they messed up again (also the greed but that’s beside the point)

Try again. Most want Enby to be simply a video and audio app and stick only to that. Telling the majority to find an alternative is not fixing the issues nor a great selling point for Emby.

Edited January 6 by IAmHugh

[IAmHugh 63]

39 minutes ago, Kyouma said:

I am generally very satisfied with my emby experience, but there are 2 things I wish would be implemented sooner than later. 

Additional TVDB Orders

An updated Apple TV app

Compared to the fire tv app, the Apple TV app still lacks some features. 

They need to get down to one app per platform to simplify things. They are on the right track as I saw in one thread they are slowly making the apps the same across all platforms.