Feature: Merge libraries from multiple servers

[amanger 4]

+1 would love to have one screen with all the content from my brother's and my own servers.

[undercoverturbo 0]

+1+1+1+1+1

This and AV1 encoding please!!!

[TomyEmby 0]

Seen this and 4 years of requesting same 1 thing. 

Ye si use plex and now I switching to Emby slowly and really slowly. 

Emby is really good to by honest and works fine just this one is bug issue for me. 

Have 3 servers in 3 different locations plex easy connect under one account seen all 3 nicely one main search in all 3 servers. 

Emby this in 4 years cant handle and need search and switch manually to every server. 

That is most unbelievable why emby can't handle this. I was request this cca 6 years ago answer was " ya we not planned this feature right now" 

And looks you still don't planning this. Shame it is why plex has years but Emby not. 

[ebr 16169]

17 minutes ago, TomyEmby said:

That is most unbelievable why emby can't handle this

Hi.  This is easy for them because they control your server experience and watch everything you do.  We are not designed like that as your server is actually YOUR server and your users are too - unlike Plex.

 

[Betonhaus 18]

I can see this being complicated to pull off, but it would be a useful feature.

I guess the main parts that would have to be broken down are:

1. a system where an account sign in can access all servers in the pool and choose the best one to stream from; such as if it has the requested content available, what it's bandwidth and latency is, and what servers have necessary transcoding abilities, and if that server has a reliable internet connection. There could be a geolocation feature where clients at different places will always prioritise certain servers

2. a system that automatically distributes content between the servers. So if there's new content or someone starts watching a series which isn't on their local server, it begins copying the content over from a different server (or the primary server if a hub and spoke configuration is necessary). and content that is old and unwatched gets deleted from secondary servers to free up space.

3. probably being able to request content be copied to certain servers manually, ensuring that content remains available in the case of unreliable internet - such as a portable server you bring to a cabin or vacation property where internet access is limited

4. a way to find secondary servers, such as a registered list of ip addresses and ports for each server in the chain and possibly a way to find servers on the local network that may be running under a randomly assigned ip address. possibly some sort of Bonjour DNS Service Discovery that helps find servers running on alternate port numbers - though that problably only effects people running multiple emby servers on the same server (or running Emby alongside Jellyfin and Jellyfin got the default ports)

[embylad892746 32]

On 10/30/2024 at 11:48 PM, amanger said:

+1 would love to have one screen with all the content from my brother's and my own servers.

You can already do exactly this with the infuse app on ios/apple tv. I'm pretty sure.

Or if you and your brother have fast internet, you can simply setup remote folder shares and mount each other's locally. As far as the server is concerned, it's just a local folder. however, choosing the right share protocol e.g. NFS/samba etc...is important because some will work much better with file streaming.

[gene0915 42]

I did some testing with ZeroTier and things are looking good!

I'm running Linux on my side and installed ZT and shared out my media folders via Samba. My brother installed ZT on his PC and was able to map the folders in Windows and copy some files over at 40MB/s so the transfer speed was solid. But the test with him was just a speed test to see how fast he could pull the files from me.

I'm going to do a full blown test this weekend with a friend on the other side of the country using Emby on both machines and ZT so I'll see if he can actually serve up my media to himself via a ZT/mapped drive connection.

I'm also kicking around the idea of mapping a NFS share over the internet if using ZT doesn't pan out for the full blown test.

[raddessi 0]

On 12/29/2024 at 8:34 AM, ebr said:

Hi.  This is easy for them because they control your server experience and watch everything you do.  We are not designed like that as your server is actually YOUR server and your users are too - unlike Plex.

 

@ebr First off, thanks for your work with Emby and the community support here  I love the product but I wish I could also get rid of my plex server.. I don't see a reason Emby supporting federation would be either technically unfeasible or would require any more access than is already given to external users, can you elaborate more on this? Emby is a great platform for playing content from a single server, but the experience of streaming from multiple servers is pretty subpar (in my opinion). If you have valid and active access to multiple accounts, what is the reason Emby could not show content from them all at once? Granted the user education would have to be there, perhaps a meta "all logged-in accounts" server would appear in the app when logged in to multiple accounts, and accessing that server would then show content from all servers rather than a single one, but that is beside the original point. 

[Luke 42077]

3 minutes ago, raddessi said:

@ebr First off, thanks for your work with Emby and the community support here  I love the product but I wish I could also get rid of my plex server.. I don't see a reason Emby supporting federation would be either technically unfeasible or would require any more access than is already given to external users, can you elaborate more on this? Emby is a great platform for playing content from a single server, but the experience of streaming from multiple servers is pretty subpar (in my opinion). If you have valid and active access to multiple accounts, what is the reason Emby could not show content from them all at once? Granted the user education would have to be there, perhaps a meta "all logged-in accounts" server would appear in the app when logged in to multiple accounts, and accessing that server would then show content from all servers rather than a single one, but that is beside the original point. 

There's nothing that can't be done. There's just things that need to be figured out. Like in this one for example, each emby server manages it's own users and own authentication.

[raddessi 0]

> There's nothing that can't be done.

 100%, and effort is always in high demand

 

> each emby server manages it's own users and own authentication
Couldn't the existing ACL systems be used? If user X has access to stream from servers A and B individually, it seems it has all the access it needs to search or stream from them together? It seems like the client is already able to query both of them.. but this isn't something that really needs to be answered, that response was just a little confusing to me. 

Apologies as I'm new to the support forums, it appears the source and issue tracker have moved from github to somewhere else so I found this issue here - is this a feature on any planned roadmap right now? And is there a public issue tracker besides this forum? I've followed this thread but if there is a proper FR somewhere that would be better. Thanks again

[Luke 42077]

4 minutes ago, raddessi said:

> There's nothing that can't be done.

 100%, and effort is always in high demand

 

> each emby server manages it's own users and own authentication
Couldn't the existing ACL systems be used? If user X has access to stream from servers A and B individually, it seems it has all the access it needs to search or stream from them together? It seems like the client is already able to query both of them.. but this isn't something that really needs to be answered, that response was just a little confusing to me. 

Apologies as I'm new to the support forums, it appears the source and issue tracker have moved from github to somewhere else so I found this issue here - is this a feature on any planned roadmap right now? And is there a public issue tracker besides this forum? I've followed this thread but if there is a proper FR somewhere that would be better. Thanks again

Yes, but there is just a lot to think about because the whole user interface is built based on querying one server.  And displaying what server you're currently logged into, along with your username for that particular server.

I think getting certain areas to combine content such as the home screen and search could be done with a moderate amount of work...but a complete merging where everything blends seamlessly, for example, songs from an artist across both servers, episodes from a series, etc... you're talking a little bit of a reinvention at that point.

[raddessi 0]

Completely understand and agreed, even Plex only integrates the global search. Even that would be a big win IMO since I could start to pull clients over from Plex and have feature parity.

Is this the best place to follow this FR?

[Luke 42077]

5 minutes ago, raddessi said:

 

Is this the best place to follow this FR?

Yes it is.

[ebr 16169]

18 hours ago, raddessi said:

If you have valid and active access to multiple accounts

Hi. We're designed as a personal media server and your license is for personal use.  Therefore, the situation where a single person has access to multiple servers should be very rare and, thus, not a high-value item for us to spend resources on - especially when it is not an "easy" thing to make work properly.

[embylad892746 32]

On 5/1/2025 at 9:18 PM, raddessi said:

@ebr First off, thanks for your work with Emby and the community support here  I love the product but I wish I could also get rid of my plex server.. I don't see a reason Emby supporting federation would be either technically unfeasible or would require any more access than is already given to external users, can you elaborate more on this? Emby is a great platform for playing content from a single server, but the experience of streaming from multiple servers is pretty subpar (in my opinion). If you have valid and active access to multiple accounts, what is the reason Emby could not show content from them all at once? Granted the user education would have to be there, perhaps a meta "all logged-in accounts" server would appear in the app when logged in to multiple accounts, and accessing that server would then show content from all servers rather than a single one, but that is beside the original point. 

As aforementioned in this thread, you're asking for something that is already possible. It's called Infuse for ios/Apple TV. It will literally combine multiple emby and plex servers into one place. Emby already allows you to switch between different servers at the tough of a button, it just doesn't aggregate the contents together like infuse. It doesn't make sense for Emby to develop this feature because those that already want to do this, already do (see point 1 below).

So in summary, your options are

1. Share your libraries with friends over remote fileshares and mount locally. Which is the most sensible solution IMO.

2. Use Infuse for ios/Apple TV.

3. Simply switch between different emby servers using the emby app but without content aggregation.

Edited May 14, 2025 by embylad892746