Hi. What's the best way to access my content from a remote location? I've got tailscale set up but I'd prefer to cast the content to a TV instead of watching on my phone.

Is there an easy way to accomplish this? If so, how? I've tried searching but nothing obvious/easy comes up.

top 5 comments

sorted by: hot top controversial new old

[–] brickfrog@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Hi. What’s the best way to access my content from a remote location? I’ve got tailscale set up

Are you already able to access your JF content remotely? Wasn't sure what you meant by saying that you set up tailscale but still asking about accessing content remotely.

If your JF app can already stream your content remotely on your phone, say when you're out traveling outside your own home, then you already have the ability to cast. Just be sure to have your phone connect to the same network connection that the Google Chromecast is connected to (e.g. that home's wifi network) then tap the cast icon at the top of the JF app. The Google Chromecast will appear there and you can tap it to start casting whatever you are playing on the JF app to the TV the Chromecast is connected to.

That's how I do it when traveling to other locations that have a Google Chromecast set up on their TV.

[–] CAVOK@lemmy.world 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Yeah, I can access JF on my phone, but didn't manage to cast it to the TV where I was. You're saying it should work "out of the box"?

[–] brickfrog@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Yes pretty much, there isn't really anything extra to configure for casting. I think to get it working

Both the Google Chromecast and your phone must be connected to the same home network (in other words the same home wifi)
The TV itself should be on and set to HDMI-1 or whatever port the Chromecast is plugged into
The Chromecast itself should already be set up, connected to the network, etc. (I've never needed to do this but I suspect there's a few basic steps to get it set up and connected to wifi, etc.)

Do you know if the Chromecast there was accepting other casts from other apps / phones? I wonder if there's just something configured oddly at that network, or their Chromecast just wasn't working correctly like maybe it was offline. My Pixel 7 also has a feature to cast the phone screen itself so if your phone can do that it's something you can test next time you're able to. (that might just be for Google Pixel phones, other phones might not do screen casting in that way).

I don't own a Chromecast myself so can't really think of other things to try, they usually just work if they're on and online.

[–] Lem453@lemmy.ca 1 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

I don't use tailscale but this doesn't make sense.

If the only remote access is via tailscale then chromecast also has to be on tailscale, which isn't easy to do.

To cast from your jellyfin to another tv, you need to setup a reverse proxy om your server to allow external access to jellyfin.

A lot of threads on jellyfin keep recommending tailscale which is easier to setup but more limiting.

I would recommend searching for tutorials about setting up a reverse proxy like caddy to NPM and then accessing jellyfin though a URL. That way you can give access to other people and also cast to a friends TV.

Same situation for things like immich if you ever want to share an album with a friend.

[–] brickfrog@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

That's fair, I don't use Tailscale either but was thinking that would affect the WAN side of things rather than the LAN that the phone and Chromecast are on. Looking into it a bit more it sort of seems like OP would need to configure Subnet routing on their Tailscale configuration to enable their Tailscale to forward traffic to devices on the local LAN?

https://tailscale.com/kb/1019/subnets

That was just from some quick searching around but since I don't use Tailscale I can't say for sure if that's a solution (or even if Tailscale is the culprit here).

And yes for sure if OP doesn't specifically need/want Tailscale then maybe a different remote solution would be something to try like reverse proxy or whatever they decide on.