Compared to watching your favorite TV shows, web series, and movies on a third-party streaming platform, building a media server may seem like a hassle. But for tinkerers willing to spend some time putting together a private streaming machine like Jellyfin, you’ll gain full control over your media collection. Plus, hosting your media server frees you from the scourge of subscription fees – and you don’t have to deal with region-locked content either.

But if you’re a complete novice to the self-hosting space, it's easy to get puzzled when setting up a Jellyfin server. So, we’ve created a detailed guide to help you host a Jellyfin-powered streaming hub on your local hardware.

Setting up Jellyfin

As is the case with the majority of self-hosted services, the exact process of configuring Jellyfin depends entirely on your operating system. If you’re rocking a Linux system, you can use the official bash script to install Jellyfin without much effort.

1. Fire up the terminal app of your Linux distro.
2. If your specific distribution doesn’t include the curl package, install it from the apt repository.

   sudo apt install curl -y

3. Paste the following command into the terminal to begin the Jellyfin installation.

   curl https://repo.jellyfin.org/install-debuntu.sh | sudo bash

4. Hit Enter when the installer displays the installation details and prompts for your confirmation.
5. Copy the IP address from the terminal into the Address Bar of your favorite browser to access the Jellyfin web UI.

Home lab enthusiasts can follow the same procedure to get the Jellyfin instance up and running inside a virtual machine. Just remember to set the Network Adapter option to Bridged Adapter if you’ve deployed this VM on VirtualBox.

Meanwhile, Unraid, UmbrelOS, YunoHost, and a bunch of other home server operating systems let you set up Jellyfin containers from their app stores. Depending on your specific distro, you may need to dig deep into the settings or rely on SSH commands to configure the directories for your media files.

Configuring the Jellyfin web UI

Now that the installation process has succeeded, it’s time to access the Jellyfin web interface and build your self-hosted media collection.

1. Pick your Preferred Language on the Welcome screen and press the Next button. Be sure to hit Next after every step on the web UI initialization wizard.
2. Enter the Username and Password.
3. Feel free to skip adding the Media Library directory. Don’t worry, we’ll go over this option in a minute.
4. Pick the Language and Country/Region settings.
5. If you plan to access the Jellyfin server from another network in the future, you can leave the checkmark for the Remote Access option. But for anyone who wants maximum security for their media streaming station, you can disable it now.
6. Hit the Finish button.
7. Switch back to the system where you’ve installed the Jellyfin package in the last section, and create the directories for your Jellyfin media.
8. Click on the Dashboard option under the Administrative section.
9. Navigate to the Libraries submenu and click on the Add Media Library option.
10. Choose the Content type of your media and tap the Add button next to the Folders header.
11. Select the directory where you’ve stored your media files and tap OK twice.
12. Repeat this process for all the different media types.
13. Click on Scan All Libraries.

A media server where you're the one in control, not the other way around

Assuming you’ve followed all the steps correctly, the media files should appear within the Dashboard with their proper metadata. With that, you’re free to binge your favorite shows on the self-hosted Jellyfin server. If you’re looking to outfit your media-streaming box with additional features, you can check out some of the most useful plugins for Jellyfin.