Configuration

There are several entry points available for administrators to manage the configuration of their server. This section aims to outline all those configuration methods, explain what options are available, and what each option does.

note

The configuration options here are distinct from the runtime settings available from the Administrator Dashboard in the web client. The configuration options here are generally meant to be static and set before starting the server.

Command Line Options

Documentation for the available command line options can be obtained by adding the --help flag when running the Jellyfin executable.

Server Paths

The file paths used by the server are determined according to the rules outlined below. In general, the XDG specification is followed by default for non-Windows systems.

Data Directory

This is the directory that will hold all Jellyfin data and is also used as a default base directory for some other paths below. It is set from the following sources in order of decreasing precedence.

1. Command line option --datadir, if specified
2. Environment variable JELLYFIN_DATA_DIR, if specified
3. <%APPDATA%>/jellyfin, if running on Windows
4. $XDG_DATA_HOME/jellyfin, if $XDG_DATA_HOME exists
5. $HOME/.local/share/jellyfin

Configuration Directory

This is the directory containing the server configuration files. It is set from the following sources in order of decreasing precedence.

1. Command line option --configdir, if specified
2. Environment variable JELLYFIN_CONFIG_DIR, if specified
3. <Data Directory>/config, if it exists or if running on Windows
4. $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/jellyfin if $XDG_CONFIG_HOME exists
5. $HOME/.config/jellyfin

Cache Directory

This is the directory containing the server cache. It is set from the following sources in order of decreasing precedence.

1. Command line option --cachedir, if specified
2. Environment variable $JELLYFIN_CACHE_DIR, if specified
3. <Data Directory>/cache, if Windows
4. $XDG_CACHE_HOME/jellyfin if $XDG_CACHE_HOME exists
5. $HOME/.cache/jellyfin

Web Directory

This is the directory containing the built files from a web client release. It is set from the following sources in order of decreasing precedence.

1. Command line option --webdir, if specified
2. Environment variable $JELLYFIN_WEB_DIR, if specified
3. <Binary Directory>/jellyfin-web, where <Binary Directory> is the directory containing the Jellyfin executable

note

This setting is only used when the server is configured to host the web client. See the hostwebclient option in the Main Configuration Options section below for additional details.

Log Directory

This is the directory where the Jellyfin logs will be stored. It is set from the following sources in order of decreasing precedence.

1. Command line option --logdir, if specified
2. Environment variable $JELLYFIN_LOG_DIR, if specified
3. <Data Directory>/log

Main Configuration

The main server configuration is built upon the ASP .NET configuration framework, which provides a tiered approach to loading configuration. The base directory to locate the configuration files is set using the configuration directory setting. The configuration sources are as follows, with later sources having higher priority and overwriting the values in earlier sources.

1. Hard-coded default values: These defaults are specified in the Jellyfin source code and cannot be changed.

2. Default logging configuration file (logging.default.json): This file should not be modified manually by users. It is reserved by the server to be overwritten with new settings on each new release.

3. System-specific logging configuration file (logging.json): This is the file you should change if you want to have a custom logging setup. Jellyfin uses the Serilog logging framework, and you can read about the configuration options available in their documentation.

   note

   This file can be changed at runtime, which will automatically reload the configuration and apply the changes immediately.

4. Environment variables: The documentation provided by Microsoft explains how to set these configuration options via environment variables. Jellyfin uses its own custom JELLYFIN_ prefix for these variables. For example, to set a value for the HttpListenerHost:DefaultRedirectPath setting, you would set a value for the JELLYFIN_HttpListenerHost__DefaultRedirectPath environment variable.

5. Command line options: Certain command line options are loaded into the configuration system and have the highest priority. The following command line options are mapped to associated configuration options.

   • --nowebclient sets the hostwebclient configuration setting to false

Main Configuration Options

This section lists all the configuration options available and explains their function.

Key	Default Value	Description
hostwebclient	True	Set to True if the server should host the web client.
FFmpeg:probesize	"1G"	Value to set for the FFmpeg probesize format option. See the FFmpg documentation for more details.
FFmpeg:analyzeduration	"200M"	The value to set for the FFmpeg analyzeduration format option. See the FFmpg documentation for more details.
PublishedServerUrl	Server Url based on primary IP address	The Server URL to publish in udp Auto Discovery response.

Fonts

Jellyfin uses fonts to render text in many places.

Server Side System Fonts

The system fonts installed on the server are used for burning in subtitles and rendering cover images. How to install them depends on the operating system or if a container is being used.

Client Side System Fonts

The system fonts installed on the client devices are used to display the text in the client interface as well as render subtitles for some clients. How to install them depends on the operating system.

Fallback Fonts

The Fallback Fonts installed on the server are loaded up by the web client to render ASS subtitles. They will be used if no other existing fonts (such as MKV attachments or client-side fonts) can be used to render certain glyphs, such as CJK characters, instead of displaying an empty "tofu" block.

This setting can be set to a folder on the server containing fonts for this purpose. These fonts are limited to a total size of 20 MB, since all of them will be always preloaded in the browser, regardless of whether they'll be needed or not. Lightweight formats optimized for web like woff2 are recommended. A tool to convert normal TrueType (.ttf) and OpenType (.otf) fonts to woff2 can be found in their repo.

Downloading Fonts

There are many fonts available online. Google Fonts is a good place to download fonts for most languages.