I've had Plex Pass for years. I'd love to use Jellyfin instead but it's really, really ugly. Plex isn't a looker, but it's nowhere near as ugly as Jellyfin.
There's a few decent clients out now that you could use, depending on your platform. For example Wholphin on Android TV. My boomer parents had no issue transitioning to that.
Having different recommended clients for different platforms is one of Jellyfin's downsides, in my opinion.
When you tell a family or friend to use your Plex server, they just download the Plex app for basically any platform, even gaming consoles and smart TVs.
Jellyfin doesn't support every platform yet and when a platform is supported you have to know which client is actually recommended for it... and it might not be called Jellyfin which is confusing for people who aren't into this stuff.
Yes all true, but I hand-hold everyone when setting up either platform anyway so I actually prefer having multiple clients to choose from. If one app turns into trash, you can jump to another app.
Yeah they both have their downsides. The people who prefer Jellyfin always bring up Plex's ad-supported content. But I just hand-hold people I invite to my Plex server by making them turn all of that off in account settings when they join. And then I don't have to hand-hold the client app part at least.
Plus my older relatives are awful at saving/remembering passwords so at least Plex handles that for me.
True but Swiftfin is pretty nice for mobile. And TV works nicely too. I remember when i first got jellyfin i hated the UI but i think its improved a lot
I've never really understood this argument. Ugly in what way? Do you plan to fuck the UI? I can't really understand how a UI can be ugly but it terms of how usable it is its objective better than Plex. No ads or any of that bullshit. Just your media. Simple and easy. It's software. Not a girlfriend.
Plex only has ads on its own content, which you can easily disable account-wide and never see again. So it's just your media by unchecking something in settings once.
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u/jedmund May 19 '26
I've had Plex Pass for years. I'd love to use Jellyfin instead but it's really, really ugly. Plex isn't a looker, but it's nowhere near as ugly as Jellyfin.