Do you ever wish you could easily let everyone who uses your Jellyfin server know what shows and movies you just added? I did, and I found out it’s pretty simple to set up an automated email newsletter thanks to a third-party Jellyfin plugin.
Jellyfin is a self-hosted media server that’s similar to Plex, but it’s completely free and open source. While Plex server managers have Tautilli for sending out newsletters, folks running Jellyfin have to look elsewhere for automated newsletters. Luckily, I found a plugin that does just that.
A few things you’ll need
To be able to send newsletters that effectively show people what’s on your server, you’ll need to be ready with a few things.
- Well-organized media: Make sure you’re following Jellyfin’s official folder organization guidance because the plugin needs to be able to easily identify media to put in your newsletter. Otherwise, your newsletters may leave out media or show bad info.
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An externally-accessible Jellyfin server: The plugin needs to be able to remotely pull poster images from your server via its URL and port number, if applicable.
- If your Jellyfin server is private to your local network, you can instead provide an Imgur API key, which will let the newsletter pull posters from Imgur instead of your server.
- An SMTP-capable email account and password: The plugin relies on SMTP to deliver newsletters. Your email provider probably allows this, but you need to look up your provider’s documentation to find the SMTP server address, port number, and password.
With all of that in hand, let’s get started.
First, add this repository to your server
Jellyfin Newsletter Plugin is a third-party plugin, meaning it’s not one developed or endorsed officially by the Jellyfin team. You can still install it if you add the repository. You can do that by logging into your administrator dashboard and going to the Plugins tab in the left-hand menu.
Click “Manage Repositories” in the upper right-hand corner of the interface.
Then click “New Repository.”
Here, you need to enter a name and a repository URL. The name can be anything you want it to be, but I named mine Newsletters for simplicity. The URL you should enter is as follows:
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Cloud9Developer/Jellyfin-Newsletter-Plugin/master/manifest.json
Click the “Add” button, and you’ll see your new repository listed.
Install the Newsletters plugin
Going back to your plugin manager, you should see the plugin listed in your available plugins. Click it.
Underneath the Newsletters image, click the big blue “Install” button.
You’ll get a warning about installing third-party plugins. Since we trust this developer, click “Install.” Then wait until you see the install button has turned into an uninstall button.
Restart Jellyfin
Now that the installation is complete, you need to restart your Jellyfin server before the Newsletter plugin will be usable. Head back to the Jellyfin dashboard and, after making sure you’re not interrupting anyone’s media stream, click the “Restart” button below your server info.
It’ll ask for confirmation you want to restart, then you’ll have to wait a minute until the server is back online.
Configure your newsletter
Once your server has finished restarting, it’s time to configure your newsletter settings. Head back to the Newsletters plugin management page and find the Settings button.
At the top of the settings page, you can manage the basics of your newsletter:
- “To” address: The email addresses of all the recipients you want to receive your newsletter. Don’t forget to ask those people if they want one before you start spamming them! If you have more than one, separate them by commas.
- “From” address: This can be anything you want and will be visible to all your recipients. Make it your personal address if you want readers to know how to email you back.
- Subject: The subject line you want to appear on your email. This is your opportunity to get creative and grab your readers’ attention! You can even put emoji here.
You also have the option to disable the inclusion of either movies or TV shows.
Next, you can expand the “Newsletter HTML Format” box if you want to edit the appearance of your newsletter. You should do this only if you know what you want and know how to edit HTML. Otherwise, the plugin uses a default appearance that matches Jellyfin’s default color scheme.
Then, open the “Scraper Config” box and either enter your Imgur API key or, as I did, change the dropdown menu to Local JF Hosting and place your server address with, if necessary, its access port number. This tells the plugin where to retrieve poster images for the movies and TV shows in your newsletter.
Finally, set up the SMTP configuration. The simplest route is to use a Gmail address, as the plugin provides the server address and port number for you. You’ll need to enter your Google account handle and its “app password.” As I explained earlier, this is a special password you need to request from Google, not your account password you normally sign in with.
To see if the newsletter delivery will work, click “Test” and wait a few minutes for a test email to arrive in your recipients’ inboxes. If it shows up, you’re good to go.
If no email appears, you should double-check your configuration—the first time I tried it turned out I had entered my Gmail handle wrong. Otherwise, check your server log files for error messages.
Start sending newsletters
With your newsletter configured, all there is to do is wait for the first newsletter to go out. By default, it runs on a scheduled task that happens every 7 days.
If you want to force the first newsletter to go out immediately, you can head to your server’s Scheduled Tasks menu and scroll until you see newsletter tasks.
I recommend doing this test run with only yourself configured as the recipient. The first newsletter that goes out will include everything in your server, which can be very long and not helpful for your readers. You can re-add those people to your recipient list after the test run.
First, run the “Filesystem Scraper” task to make sure the newsletter has your media info and images. Then, run the “Email Newsletter” task to send it out.
Within a few minutes, a newsletter email will appear in your inbox. Clicking images in the newsletter will take you to your Jellyfin instance. In the future, the newsletter will show everything you’ve added since the last newsletter went out.
There are many more ways to take your personal media server to the next level. You can customize your Jellyfin theme, for instance. I also recently learned to add a “skip intro” button to shows in Jellyfin.
