Plugin: Home Screen Companion

[shinedou 7]

On 3/20/2026 at 8:14 AM, soderlund said:

• When selecting Media Type = Episode, there is now an option to also check towards the parent series (tree crawl) if the series match.

Added ability to enter multiple options in text fields, separated by comma. For example

Actor=Tom Hanks, Idris Elba, Edward Norton
Studio=Netflix, HBO, etc
Overview=Christmas, halloween

 

• Added function for better control of tags and collections: Remade tag/collection logic for Media Type=Episode (introduced in v3.1.2.0). In previous release this was made so episodes where tagged or added to collections. This logic is now moved into the Tag and Collection tabs. See below for more info.
  If you where using this to tag episodes, make sure to update according to the new way to set tags to episodes!

 

Fixes

• UI: Some smaller UI fixes
• Bug fix: Fixed an issue where external list from MDBList only fetched up to 1000 items. This is now unlimited.

 

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________

New way to select Tag and Collection level

You can now control at which level tags and collections are applied when using the MediaInfo (smart filter) source — independently for tags and collections.
Tag tab — a new "For TV shows, tag at level" section lets you choose one or more of: Series, Season, Episode.
Collection tab — a new "For TV shows, add to collection at level" section with the same options.

These two settings are fully independent. For example, you can tag individual episodes while adding the parent series to a collection — all from the same filter.

How scan scope and output level work:
The filter determines what gets scanned. By default, the scanner processes movies and series. Adding a Media Type = Episode filter rule switches the scanner to episode-level, giving you access to episode-specific metadata.

The tab checkboxes determine where the result goes, regardless of what was scanned:

Filters/Scanning	Tagging/Collection	Result
Scanning series	Seasons	all seasons of matched series
Scanning series	Episode	all episodes of matched series
Scanning episodes	Series	the parent series is tagged/collected
Scanning episodes	Season	the parent season is tagged/collected

 

 

 

I have run some tests of your latest update and it is working very well so far. The changes you made for using "tree crawl" searches is exactly what I needed and it works perfectly. Also the comma separated values great. So much cleaner.  I haven't delved into the scheduling yet but I will. As far as the AI I am not sure how much I would use that but it is an interesting idea. 

Great work!! I appreciate you being interested in adding features so willingly.

Unfortunately for some reason I cannot get the beta versions of the android app to load on my nvidia shield or my phone so its no fun not being able to use the new Home features on there. It says I am a member of beta and it even says (beta) but the app version is standard.

Edited March 21 by shinedou
fixed spelling

[seanbuff 1354]

6 hours ago, shinedou said:

Unfortunately for some reason I cannot get the beta versions of the android app to load on my nvidia shield or my phone

You'll just have to side load them for now: https://github.com/MediaBrowser/Emby.Releases/tree/master/android

 

[shinedou 7]

17 hours ago, seanbuff said:

You'll just have to side load them for now: https://github.com/MediaBrowser/Emby.Releases/tree/master/android

 

That worked. Thanks.

[crusher11 1138]

@soderlundis combining multiple source types still in the works?

Can't update to the latest version as yet; I'm waiting for the bugs in .6 to be dealt with before I update my server.

[LongMan 116]

I updated my production server and I am loving this plugin. Sweet.

A potential feature
Best Movies/Best Series/Most Popular based on the if more than a specific number of users have watched it. Here I am not speaking of play count because if a user is interrupted many times while watching a movie, it may have a high play count because of the stop/start. Also, if a movie is draining, it could be watched over multiple sessions, again giving a high play count.
What I a looking for is the movies that more than x users have watched. Something like User Watch Count.

What are your thoughts? Is it feasible?

[soderlund 105]

5 hours ago, crusher11 said:

@soderlundis combining multiple source types still in the works?

Just create a group of each source, and set the same "Tag name" and/or "Collection name" to the same and they will merge. 
If you want them as a home screen section then only enable that option for one of the groups (else you will have multiple rows with the same tag/collection)
 

2 hours ago, LongMan said:

I updated my production server and I am loving this plugin. Sweet.

A potential feature
Best Movies/Best Series/Most Popular based on the if more than a specific number of users have watched it. Here I am not speaking of play count because if a user is interrupted many times while watching a movie, it may have a high play count because of the stop/start. Also, if a movie is draining, it could be watched over multiple sessions, again giving a high play count.
What I a looking for is the movies that more than x users have watched. Something like User Watch Count.

What are your thoughts? Is it feasible?

Like the idea! I'll se what I can do!

Currently working on implementing filters for music and music videos, and this goes in line whit adding more filters  

Edited Sunday at 08:38 PM by soderlund

[LongMan 116]

3 hours ago, soderlund said:

Currently working on implementing filters for music and music videos, and this goes in line whit adding more filters  

Sweet

[crusher11 1138]

7 hours ago, soderlund said:

Just create a group of each source, and set the same "Tag name" and/or "Collection name" to the same and they will merge. 

If I have a group for “movies in the James Bond collection” and a group for “movies starring Daniel Craig,” the resulting section will contain Die Another Day and Logan Lucky. There's no way to filter only movies that fit both criteria.

Similarly, for some users I have a manually-maintained playlist to use as their Spotlight. If I create a group tagging everything on that playlist, and a group tagging everything they haven't watched in the past 90 days, it will tag almost every movie on the server and render the playlist useless. What I want to do is tag everything on that list that the user has not watched in the past 90 days.

[soderlund 105]

On 3/23/2026 at 5:15 AM, crusher11 said:

If I have a group for “movies in the James Bond collection” and a group for “movies starring Daniel Craig,” the resulting section will contain Die Another Day and Logan Lucky. There's no way to filter only movies that fit both criteria.

Similarly, for some users I have a manually-maintained playlist to use as their Spotlight. If I create a group tagging everything on that playlist, and a group tagging everything they haven't watched in the past 90 days, it will tag almost every movie on the server and render the playlist useless. What I want to do is tag everything on that list that the user has not watched in the past 90 days.

If i move the main source selection of collection and playlist, into the "smart playlist" filters, would that do it? 

[crusher11 1138]

21 hours ago, soderlund said:

If i move the main source selection of collection and playlist, into the "smart playlist" filters, would that do it? 

I'm not sure what you mean.

[soderlund 105]

14 hours ago, crusher11 said:

I'm not sure what you mean.

If we add a filter in the smart playlist, then we can combine collections and use a filter that look likes this:
Collection = James Bond
AND
Collection = Daniel Craig

I'm gonna go ahead and do this, it makes sense to me to have this option in the local media info filters. I'm gonna keep collection and local playlist as soure types (for simplicity and backwards combability) and add the options in the filters for the smart playlist.  

[soderlund 105]

New stable release -  Version 3.2.1.0
Download .dll and full release notes: https://github.com/soderlund91/HomeScreenCompanion/releases/tag/v3.2.1.0

This updates bring mostly some user requested improvements to the Smart playlist filters, with support for music and music videos among other new filters. 
Also adding the filter function to all source-types, so now you can filter and match the list from ex MDBList to only tag movies that are in 4K. 

IMPORTANT! 
Minimum required Emby server v4.10.0.6

Note
Make sure to back up your settings before updating, just in case. Both the plugin and Emby (user data)

Note
Included a .NET V6 release, this is for MacOS or legacy support. This version is NOT tested.

 

New features

• Added filters for all source types. 

Updates & Improvements

• Added support for music and music videos in Smart Playlist function
• Added a WatchedByCount (how many users have watched this movie) in Smart Playlist filters
• Added collection and playlist as options in the smart playlist filters. 
• When using local playlist as source or in the smart playlist filter, now every users playlists is shown. 
• Improved sync with Emby native home screen section settings, and added more options when creating a home screen section from the plugin. 

Fixes

• Fixed an issue where home screen sections was created multiple times if they where reordered from the plugin tool.

 

HomeScreenCompanion.dll HomeScreenCompanion_NET6_MacOS.dll

Edited 1 hour ago by soderlund
Updated .dll due to false-positive virus detection.

[Aleas 32]

M$ Defender keeps flagging the latest version as a virus..

[soderlund 105]

39 minutes ago, Aleas said:

M$ Defender keeps flagging the latest version as a virus..

wtf?? Does it say anything else like why? Using Windows defender myself but its not flagging for me

EDIT: And it's only for the latest version?

EDIT 2: Most likely it's because it's an unsigned dll without certificate. But then you should have gotten it for all other versions as well. 

Edited 2 hours ago by soderlund

[Aleas 32]

48 minutes ago, soderlund said:

wtf?? Does it say anything else like why? Using Windows defender myself but its not flagging for me

EDIT: And it's only for the latest version?

EDIT 2: Most likely it's because it's an unsigned dll without certificate. But then you should have gotten it for all other versions as well. 

That's odd, it was flagging as a trojan, but now it's working.  so that's good...

[soderlund 105]

1 hour ago, Aleas said:

M$ Defender keeps flagging the latest version as a virus..

 

1 minute ago, Aleas said:

That's odd, it was flagging as a trojan, but now it's working.  so that's good...

Haha, yeah thats a bit odd.. 

But I did use Claude Code to find what it could have been. And I build a function in the last version to make a call within Emby that is not exposed as an API, and this is similar to the same way malware works, and that's probably why the false-positive detection. 

I remade the function in the plugin to use another method that seems to be working. 

I have updated the .dll with a fix for this. (Didn't bother to update the version number)