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Jellyfin Android 2.5.0

· 4 min read
Max Rumpf

It has been a long while since the last update, but after an extended beta testing period with plenty of bug reports (thanks, by the way!) and subsequent fixes, we're excited to finally announce a new major update to the Jellyfin app for Android.

Version 2.5.0 again focuses on improvements to the integrated player, and brings various new features, many bug fixes and a lot of technical maintenance and rewrites.

Read on to learn more!

Integrated Player Improvements

In this release, we finally introduce the highly requested bitrate selection so that you can transcode to lower resolutions to save your precious mobile data while on the go. The audio and subtitle track selection was reworked and improved multiple times and should be a lot more robust now. Thanks to everyone who reported bugs! The complicated nature of various playback methods, inconsistencies between the server and ExoPlayer and misconceptions about their inner workings caused countless edge cases that could only be discovered through a lot of trial and error.
The player interface itself now has a back button to close the player and a new playback option was added to pick between hardware and software decoding, if the default hardware decoder causes issues for the currently played video.

In the client settings (which you should make sure to check out) we added the option to pick the initial orientation for video playback and now allow choosing whether you want video with SSA subtitles to be transcoded (for full styling support) or not (to direct play with limited styling).
There's also a link to the operating system's subtitle customization settings, which the integrated player uses to style your subtitles. Note that the subtitle settings in the Jellyfin settings only apply to the web player due to technical reasons.
Talking subtitles, the player now supports the PGSSUB codec without transcoding.

Other Tweaks

Thanks to @susonthapa, the app now shows a splash screen with the Jellyfin logo on start, instead of the previous, boring gray screen where you didn't see whether the app was actually doing anything.
While the app is connecting, there's now a cancel button so that you can quickly jump to the connect screen to select a different server if the current one isn't available at the moment. The connect screen itself was reworked and rewritten for a slightly cleaner design and easier maintenance.
We also added a monochrome icon so that Jellyfin will look great on your home screen on supported launchers on Android 13 and above.

Full Release Notes

The complete list of changes for this release with all merged pull requests can be found on GitHub.

Contributors

Jellyfin is developed by volunteer contributors, and we couldn't do without their great skills and dedication. They don't get paid by any organizations, so consider donating if you appreciate their work.
A big shout-out to all contributors that made this release possible:

Jellyfin Team

Other contributors

We'd also like to thank everyone who reported bugs, provided feedback and participated in beta testing!

If you have some experience with Android development and are interested in contributing yourself, feel free to dive into the source code on GitHub and open pull requests.

Alternatively, you can help with translating the app into your language on our Weblate.

Download Now

Jellyfin on Google Play Jellyfin on Amazon App Store Jellyfin on F-Droid

Direct downloads are available for sideloading at repo.jellyfin.org or in the GitHub release assets. You can also join our beta program on Google Play and help test new versions before they're released to the public.