this post was submitted on 08 Jun 2026
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[–] ripcord@lemmy.world 14 points 1 day ago (3 children)

Not something that unfortunately works as easily for me to connect my ailing mom's TV to, and do NOT want to manage the reverse proxy + cert + etc setup for a number of reasons

[–] matron1049@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 points 1 day ago (3 children)

There are a ton of reverse proxy options that manage the cert for you

[–] rumba@lemmy.zip 1 points 7 hours ago

You do then still have to expose JF to the open internet. That's not without risk. Neither is Plex but they do make it a point to secure all their endpoints before login.

[–] PhAzE@lemmy.ca 2 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

The point is that you now have another app to manage or learn about just for remote viewing, and the general public can't and won't manage something like that. People like us, no problem, its easy, but my dad would never be able to, for example. He can install plex and just log in to an app anywhere to use it though.

Also, dont forget that many households have non-static IP addresses, so now you need more management for that issue (again, easy for us).

[–] matron1049@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 7 hours ago

In this scenario, your dad just installs Jellyfin and logs in.

You've set up the reverse proxy to your server, its transparent to him.

You can update DNS records automatically so its also a fire and forget kind of thing.

But I guess, give your data to the corpos because its easier.

[–] ripcord@lemmy.world 4 points 1 day ago (1 children)

There's lots of reasons I don't want to set this up

[–] SpacePirate@feddit.nu -1 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (2 children)

If you have a machine at her place that is on most of the time you can have tailscale on that device and then make it ssh into itself with ssh portforwarding on!

Edit: You can also selfhost headscale and do the same as the comment below said

[–] skittle07crusher@sh.itjust.works 4 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

What in the goddamn fuck, sir

Step 1) Install tailscale (headscale also exists if you wanna fully self-host it)

Step 2) Done, solved

[–] SpacePirate@feddit.nu 2 points 1 day ago (2 children)

That doesn't slove the problem if your Smart TV doesn't support tailscale or something like Wireguard. Using another machine connected to a VPN like for example Tailscale/Headscale and then using ssh portforwarding allows you to access the service(jellyfin) on the device without support.

It would be like this:

Jellyfin <-- Tailscale/Headscale <--- Machine forwarding the jellyfins port <-- Smart TV

This can be done with a command like this:

ssh -L 0.0.0.0:8096:jellyfin_tailnet_ip:8096 -f -N user@machine

[–] rumba@lemmy.zip 1 points 6 hours ago

You know, there's probably a market for a hardware solution to do that. Wrap it up in a nice user interface, Family VPN bridge, expose JF servers.

[–] hereiamagain@sh.itjust.works 3 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

Most people are not gonna go that route unfortunately. I want to love JF, but the remote access is a big sticking point, especially for non tech relatives.

It bugs me when people just say tailscale like that solves it all. It's very useful and solves a lot of problems, but not all. Unfortunately.

[–] SpacePirate@feddit.nu 1 points 13 hours ago

I completely agree, Tailscale will not just solve your issues. If you want to have is as simple as possible for your users you are going to need to expose it publicly for your users. And the reason I posted the comment above is to share a solution that has worked for me to get my users "Smart"TVs to work. Honestly if someone where to make a service that provides a "plex networking" solution for jellyfin I think allot of people would consider using it and leave plex for good!

[–] CorrectAlias@piefed.blahaj.zone 2 points 1 day ago (2 children)

My mom lives 900 miles away and she can barely turn a computer on

[–] nieceandtows@programming.dev 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I set up a free dns from duckdns.org and pointed it to my jellyfin server. All my parents had to do was to use that https://randomserver.duckdns.org/ as the server url in the jellyfin app.

[–] hereiamagain@sh.itjust.works 4 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

Doesn't that mean your jellyfin server is directly exposed to the Internet? The very thing everyone constantly warns against?

I'm still on Plex, one of my biggest hangups with JF is that the remote access is kludgy

[–] nieceandtows@programming.dev 1 points 3 hours ago

It's been running on caddy + duckdns for 5 years or more now. I use a non standard jellyfin port for the port forwarding, so that probably helps. Also, there's probably an aspect of security by obscurity.

[–] SpacePirate@feddit.nu 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Yeah then this might not be a great idea for you, unless you have the possibility to fix a machine if you visit. But I want to make it clear this is not a fix all thing just trying to help :D

[–] Dultas@lemmy.world 0 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Yeah it can be more limiting. Personally I got lucky and my mom's TV runs Android so I could just install a wireguard client.

I will probably at some point bridge her network with mine since I want to install a TrueNAS box at her house for remote backup. So the VPN client will be moot at that point.

[–] rumba@lemmy.zip 1 points 6 hours ago

just syncthing it :)

[–] buffing_lecturer@leminal.space 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

How do you go about doing that?

[–] Dultas@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Which part? For the TV there was literally a wireguard app. I just had to install it on the TV and configure the connection to my wireguard server.

For the bridging I gave her my old router which I haven't tested but I believe should support VPN bridging. I already have her on a subnet that won't conflict with my network for that reason.

[–] med@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 day ago

FYI, scrcpy can be an excellent tool for remote support, but you'd better trust the network the interface is on