Music

Albums are organized in folders, with one folder containing one and only one album. Jellyfin does not care how you organize albums together, as long as each album is contained within one folder. Filenames generally do not matter since the info will be scraped from the embedded metadata of the tracks. If no other metadata was found, Jellyfin uses the file names as track titles.

Music
├── Some Artist
│   ├── Album A
│   │   ├── Song 1.flac
│   │   ├── Song 2.flac
│   │   └── Song 3.flac
│   └── Album B
│       ├── Track 1.m4a
│       ├── Track 2.m4a
│       └── Track 3.m4a
└── Album X
    ├── Whatever You.mp3
    ├── Like To.mp3
    ├── Name Your.mp3
    └── Music Files.mp3

While Jellyfin generally doesn't use the file names for identification, file names containing special characters can still cause problems. The following characters are known to cause issues: <, >, :, ", /, \, |, ?, *

Discs

Albums with several discs are identified by the metadata tags with the disc number and total discs fields. Place the tracks for all discs in one folder. They can optionally be separated into disc folders, but embedded metadata takes priority.

Music
├── Album 1
│   ├── Disc 1 Track 1.ogg
│   ├── Disc 1 Track 2.ogg
│   ├── Disc 2 Track 1.ogg
│   ├── Disc 3 Track 1.ogg
│   ├── Disc 3 Track 2.ogg
│   └── Disc 3 Track 3.ogg
└── Album 2
    ├── Disc 1
    │   ├── Disc 1 Track 1.aiff
    │   └── Disc 1 Track 2.aiff
    ├── Disc 2
    │   ├── Disc 2 Track 1.aiff
    │   ├── Disc 2 Track 2.aiff
    │   └── Disc 2 Track 3.aiff
    └── Disc 3
        └── Disc 3 Track 1.aiff

Lyrics

Lyrics must be contained in the same folder and match the filename for their corresponding item. For example: The lyric file for 01 Death Eternal.mp3 must be 01 Death Eternal.lrc, 01 Death Eternal.elrc or 01 Death Eternal.txt.

Music
└── Some Artist
    └── Album A
        ├── Song 1.flac
        ├── Song 1.lrc
        ├── Song 2.flac
        ├── Song 2.lrc
        ├── Song 3.flac
        └── Song 3.lrc

Lyrics can be jumped to within Jellyfin's UI, meaning it's possible for a user to click on any line and jump straight to the corresponding timestamp where the line appears in the song. The lyrics file can be synchronised or unsynchronised. It can have some extra metadata, but won't be shown in the Jellyfin client.

• Synchronized lyrics are interactive, enabling users to click on any line to jump directly to the corresponding timestamp in the song. You have the option to either manually synchronize the text, which can be time-consuming and may lack accuracy, or utilize lyrics synchronization software such as MiniLyrics. A synchronised lyrics file would likely look something like the following:

[ar: Some Artist]
[ti: Song 1]
[al: Album 1]
[by: Author]
[length: 2:57]
[00:10.89]Line 1
[00:14.58]Line 2
[00:16.78]Line 3
[00:21.03]Line 4
[00:24.86]Line 5
(...)

• Unsynchronized lyrics are easier to implement, but will be harder for users to sing along. Such a file would look something like this:

Line 1
Line 2
Line 3
Line 4
Line 5
(...)

Metadata Images

Images can either be provided as external files within the media folders, or embedded in the media files themselves. When external imaged are provided, they should be placed alongside the media files. When they are provided, they will take precedence over other sources.

Music

Album
├── cover.jpg
├── backdrop.webp
├── logo.png
├── Track 1.m4a
└── Track 2.m4a

When no images are provided for music, Jellyfin will take the cover image from the first track that has an embedded cover image.

Movies

Movie (2035)
├── cover.jpg
├── backdrop.webp
├── logo.png
└── Movie (2035).mp4

Shows

Series Name B (2018)
├── cover.jpg
├── thumbnail.jpg
└── Season 01
    ├── backdrop.webp
    ├── cover.jpg
    ├── logo.png
    ├── Series Name B S01E01.mkv
    ├── Series Name B S01E01-thumb.jpg
    ├── Series Name B S01E02.mkv
    └── Series Name B S01E02-thumb.jpg

Image types:

Type	Description
Primary	The primary cover image
Backdrop	Background image in media page 1
Banner	Displayed when browsing library in banner mode. Video only. 2
Logo	Logo displayed on the top of a media item.
Thumb	Thumbnail for homepage and for browsing library in thumb mode. Video only. 2

¹Multiple backdrop images can be used to cycle through several over time. Simply append a number to the end of the filename directly after or after a hyphen, e.g. backdrop-1.jpg, backdrop2.jpg.

²These can be added to both video and audio content, but are not used by any client for audio conent.

Filenames, their respective types and supported media types

Unless otherwise noted, all filenames can be used either standalone (e.g. logo.png) or as a suffix (e.g. movie-logo.png)

Filename	Type	Movies	Series	Season	Episode	Music
poster	Primary	✅ 2	✅	✅		✅
folder	Primary	✅ 2	✅	✅		✅
cover	Primary	✅ 2	✅	✅		✅
default	Primary	✅ 2	✅	✅		✅
movie	Primary	✅ 2
show	Primary		✅
jacket	Primary					✅
thumb (suffix) 1	Primary				✅
backdrop	Backdrop	✅ 2	✅	✅		✅
fanart	Backdrop	✅ 2	✅	✅		✅
background	Backdrop	✅ 2	✅	✅		✅
art	Backdrop	✅ 2	✅	✅		✅
extrafanart (folder)	Backdrop	✅ 2	✅	✅		✅
banner	Banner	✅	✅	✅		✅
logo	Logo	✅ 2	✅	✅		✅
clearlogo	Logo	✅ 2	✅	✅		✅
landscape	Thumb	✅	✅	✅		✅
thumb	Thumb	✅	✅	✅		✅

¹ For example: S01E01 Some Episode-thumb.jpg
² These file names can also be embedded in supported media containers (e.g. mkv) and will be used when the Embedded Image Extractor source is enabled for movies.

Below is a screenshot showing the 3 main types of images in Jellyfin

Unused types are listed below. While they are unused by official clients, they may be used by 3rd party clients.

Type	Description
Art	Unused
Disc	Unused
Box	Unused
Menu	Unused
Chapter	Unused
BoxRear	Unused
Profile	Unused
Screenshot	Unused, Deprecated

Filename	Type	Movies	Series	Season	Episode	Music
disc	Disc	✅				✅
cdart	Disc	✅				✅
discart	Disc	✅
clearart	Art	✅	✅	✅		✅

File Extensions / Containers

Jellyfin supports most common music formats, with some exceptions:

• MP4 with only audio: .mp4 files won't be recognized as music. Please rename them to .m4a.
• MKV / WebM with only audio: .mkv and .webm files won't be recognized as music. Please rename them to .mka.
• WebA: .weba files aren't supported. Please rename them to .mka
• .flac files with embedded WebP images or ID3 tags may fail to play in Chromium based browsers (Chrome, Edge, Opera, Brave etc.) or Firefox. Please enable Always remux FLAC audio files in the client settings if you encounter this issue.
• Files with ID3v1 tags have a length limit of 30 bytes for most fields. Anything longer will be truncated. Please upgrade to ID3v2.4.

Alternate containers

Problematic files can be remuxed to .mka containers with ffmpeg with this command:

ffmpeg -i <Input File> -c:a copy <Output File>.mka

Do note that the metadata may be messed up and images might not carry over, so the metadata will have to be restored either manually or using another program.