Jellyfin for Android TV just got updated. Here's what's new
External player options, better subtitles, and new home screen controls are all on the way for Android TV streamers.
The Jellyfin development team announced today the full release of version 0.20 of the Android TV client for Jellyfin servers. The update brings several long-awaited improvements for those who stream their private library on Google TV and Android TV devices.
Why this update matters: The client is what you use to interact with and stream from Jellyfin media servers, a free and open source alternative to Plex and other streaming services. When I first reported on this release in September, the major Jellyfin 12 update had just arrived, and expectations for clients to take advantage of new server capabilities were high.
What's new
- Overhauled settings menu: You'll find the settings in your Jellyfin client have been reworked, with some options that were hidden as developer-only settings now available to everyone. These include
ffmpegand Trickplay image settings.- Trickplay images are what you see appear as small "thumbnail" previews when you scrub through a video.
- You can also control now whether movies and shows from Jellyfin will appear in your Android TV's home screen as "recommended" media.
- External video options: You get to choose your preferred video player for the client in the settings, including external players like VLC, mpv, and more.
- Premium media tags: When you're browsing media, there are new badges highlighting HDR, surround-sound, and 3D movies and TV episodes.
What's getting better
- The home screen: You now get to choose how long a TV show can stay in the "Next Up" row before the app assumes you're not interested and removes it from the home screen. The "Recently Added" row also now correctly shows the media that most recently appeared on the server.
- Subtitle options: You can now direct-play SubStation Alpha (SSA or ASS) subtitles instead of being forced to burn them in with resource-consuming transcodes.
- Also, you now have more options when customizing the appearance of subtitles.
- Hardware detection: The Android TV client is now better at detecting what hardware it's running on, which means it won't require transcoding as often. This is good news for resource-scarce Jellyfin servers that struggle under too many transcode requests.
What's going away
- Fire TV app: As the release announcement notes, this client isn't available for certain new Fire TV devices. This is because Amazon is replacing the Fire TV operating system with its new "Vega OS," which doesn't support Android apps. The development team reassured that this support gap won't last: "A Jellyfin app for Vega OS is in development, and we hope to share more soon!"
- Support for older servers: The required server version number is now Jellyfin 10.11 or higher.
- Support for older Android devices: You won't be able to run this update on Android 5 or 5.1 (also known as Android Lollipop). The minimum supported is now Android 6, and the release announcement warned that that will shift to Android 7, too, "as platform requirements change."
Jordan Gloor
Zooming out
My take: I've been using the Roku client more than Android TV, but I'm glad to see so many quality-of-life updates coming to this client.
Diving in
The fineprint: You can read the official Jellyfin release announcement to learn more, or check the full v0.20 changelog on GitHub for technical details.
Get it now: If you already have the Jellyfin client on your Android TV or Google TV device, you can expect the automatic update to arrive soon. You can also find it on Google Play, F-Droid, or the Amazon Appstore.
Back the project: If you like the first-party Android TV client, you can support the team behind it by donating funds at the official Jellyfin Open Collective page.
