Jellyfin 12.0: a new version-numbering scheme, a faster library and full support for books

The Jellyfin team has released the stable version 12.0 — the latest major release of the popular open-source media server. The update continues the line begun with 10.11: the developers are building out what was laid down during the move to a new database, turning that foundation into a real performance gain and adding support for e-books and comics.

Why jump straight to 12.0

The most conspicuous change is right there in the name. The project has dropped the leading “ten”: what would previously have been called 10.12.0 is now simply 12.0. As the developers explain it, the “10.” prefix never changed and told users nothing, yet it pushed the genuinely meaningful digit into the middle of the number. Because of that, the 10.11.0 release — which effectively rewrote the library database — looked like a minor update, and people installed it with expectations to match. Now the first digit changes when a release really is a major one. Anyone who parses version strings in clients, scripts or container tags should take note of this in advance.

Faster and more convenient

The storage of playlists and collections has been reworked. Previously a playlist's contents were held as a single list, and any action — counting items, showing a single page, adding or removing a track — required loading the entire list at once. Now each item is a separate row in the database, so on large playlists the interface should stop “hanging.” The “Continue Watching,” “Next Up” and similar-artist recommendation sections have been sped up as well.

Alternate versions, previously available only for films, now work for episodes too: the extended and broadcast versions of a single episode, or 1080p and 4K copies, can now be grouped.

Books and comics in earnest

Most of the features of the Bookshelf plugin have been moved into the server itself: reading metadata from OPF, ComicInfo and ComicBookInfo, generating covers for EPUB files and comic archives, extracting page and chapter counts. The web client has gained a modern book-library layout, and the reading interface has been reworked. The recommendation source can now be configured for each library separately, and ListenBrainz is bundled for music.

The “modern” layout has become the default on desktop and mobile; the old one has been renamed Legacy.

What to keep in mind when upgrading

The release changes the database schema and rewrites the data on first launch, so stopping the server and making a full backup are mandatory before installing. A prior version of 10.10.7 or any 10.11.x is required. Usernames have become case-insensitive — accounts that differ only in case will cause the migration to fail. After the upgrade a full library scan is required, and the first one will take noticeably longer.

Third-party plugins and very old clients will not work: support for the legacy /emby/ and /mediabrowser/ paths has been removed. The update also closes a number of vulnerabilities, including directory traversal and XSS in the web client — the developers recommend moving to the new version.

Source: Hacker News