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Test unstable builds on macOS

Testing unstable builds requires you to not be afraid of using the command line.

Before running the unstable builds, make sure to backup your current data from the following folders:

~/.config/jellyfin/
~/.local/share/jellyfin/
~/Library/Application Support/Jellyfin/

Get Unstable Server​

Unlike the stable releases, the unstable builds for macOS do not come with a packaged installer or application. Instead, they have to be ran from the command line.

The latest unstable builds for packaged jellyfin can be obtained here.

Intel Macs should download the AMD64 binaries.

Apple Silicon Macs should download the ARM64 binaries.

There is no difference in content between the tar.gz and the tar.xz archives. They are only compressed in different formats and either one will work.

Get Jellyfin FFmpeg​

The unstable builds don't come with FFmpeg bundled. Instead, the binaries have to be downloaded separately.

Jellyfin's custom FFmpeg is available here.

Select the version corresponding to the unstable version of the server.

Prepare The Unstable Server and FFmpeg​

After downloading both the server and FFmpeg, extract them to a folder you like. Before running, the quarantine flag needs to be removed and an ad-hoc signature needs to be created for the binaries.

Open a command line interface. You can use the Terminal.app come with macOS, then run following commands:

cd /path/to/jellyfin
xattr -rd com.apple.quarantine .
codesign -fs - --deep jellyfin

Similarly, the quarantine flag needs to be removed from ffmpeg and ffprobe as well. We don't need to sign them manually, as the ad-hoc signature will be created automatically on first run:

cd /path/to/jellyfin-ffmpeg
xattr -rd com.apple.quarantine .

Run The Unstable Server​

At this point, the binaries should be ready for testing. Run the following command in a terminal to start Jellyfin:

/path/to/jellyfin-folder/jellyfin --ffmpeg /path/to/ffmpeg-folder/ffmpeg

After running the command, Jellyfin should startup in the terminal window.

To stop Jellyfin, press CONTROL+C in the terminal window, and Jellyfin will shutdown gracefully. Closing the terminal window will also stop Jellyfin.