Feature Request: Named Library Shelves for Home Screen Organization - Revision 1 #165
flynnbe-svg
started this conversation in
Ideas
Replies: 0 comments
Sign up for free
to join this conversation on GitHub.
Already have an account?
Sign in to comment
Uh oh!
There was an error while loading. Please reload this page.
-
Feature Request: Named Library Shelves for Home Screen Organization - Revision 1
Revised Request #159 into a new topic to provide a clear request based on moonfin features I was not aware of at the time of submission. Apologies if that (closing old-active topic, creating new) is not proper message forum etiquette.Summary
Add support for admin-defined Library Shelves — named home screen rows that group existing Jellyfin libraries together.
A Library Shelf would be a home screen row whose tiles are libraries, not individual media items, genres, or collections.
Problem
Jellyfin servers with many libraries can become difficult to navigate on a TV interface, especially with a remote.
Today, libraries are typically shown together under My Media. This works for smaller setups, but it becomes crowded when a server has many separate libraries, such as:
Moonfin already supports useful home screen organization through Collections and Genres, but those solve a different problem.
Clarifying the Difference
I want to clarify the distinction between Shelves, Genres, Collections, and Media Items.
Library Shelves
A Shelf would be a named row made up of existing Jellyfin libraries.
Example:
Movies
Classic Movies
Documentaries
TV Shows
Animation
Home Videos
In this model, each tile is still an existing Jellyfin library.
Genres
A Genre row groups content based on genre metadata.
Example:
Genres
Opening or displaying a genre then shows individual media items that match that genre.
Collections
A Collection row groups curated sets of media items.
Example:
Collections
Collections are useful, but they are still media-level groupings, not library-level organization.
Media Items
Media items are the actual movies, shows, episodes, or videos.
Example:
Action / Adventure
Proposed Solution
Allow admins to create named Library Shelves and assign existing Jellyfin libraries to them.
Each shelf would appear as a separate labeled row on the Moonfin home screen.
Example configuration:
Shelf Name | Libraries -- | -- Movies | Action / Adventure, Sci-Fi / Fantasy, Drama, Comedy, Romance, Horror / Thriller Classic Movies | Westerns, Musicals, Cult Classics, Golden Era, Black & White Documentaries | Nature / Science, Sports, True Crime, History / War, Music TV Shows | Drama, Comedy, Sci-Fi / Fantasy, Action / Adventure, Reality Animation | Anime, Cartoons, Feature Films Home Videos | Birthdays, Vacations, Special Events, Sports, Family ClipsDesired Home Screen Behavior
Instead of all libraries appearing together in one large My Media row, the home screen could show:
Movies
Action / Adventure, Sci-Fi / Fantasy, Drama, Comedy, Romance, Horror / Thriller
Classic Movies
Westerns, Musicals, Cult Classics, Golden Era, Black & White
Documentaries
Nature / Science, Sports, True Crime, History / War, Music
TV Shows
Drama, Comedy, Sci-Fi / Fantasy, Action / Adventure, Reality
Animation
Anime, Cartoons, Feature Films
Home Videos
Birthdays, Vacations, Special Events, Sports, Family Clips
Each tile would open the existing Jellyfin library exactly as it does today.
Why Genres and Collections Are Not the Same Thing
Moonfin’s existing Genre and Collection rows are useful and may help approximate this behavior in some cases.
However, they are not the same as Library Shelves:
The key difference is the level of organization:
Genres and Collections = media-level grouping
Shelves = library-level grouping
Why Library Shelves Would Be Easier to Maintain
Another reason I’m interested in Library Shelves is that they would make curation much simpler, at least for my use case.
Collections are powerful, but they generally require manual curation. Each collection has to be created and maintained by hand.
Genres can also work, but they depend on metadata being accurate and consistent. That can mean editing metadata, correcting spelling, standardizing genre names, and making judgment calls about overlapping categories.
For example, Comedy can mean very different things depending on context:
Using genres for home screen organization can require cleanup and ongoing metadata maintenance to keep those distinctions clear.
Library Shelves would be simpler because the organization is based on the existing Jellyfin library structure. If the files are already stored in the right folders and the libraries are already built correctly, then the shelf organization naturally follows that structure.
For example:
So the curation model becomes folder/library-based instead of metadata-based or collection-based.
That would make it much easier for admins who already organize their media by folders and libraries.
Design Principles
Why This Would Be Useful
This would be especially useful for servers that intentionally use many separate libraries for organization.
For example, instead of one huge Movies library with many genres, an admin may prefer separate libraries for Action, Classic Movies, Documentaries, Anime, Home Videos, and so on.
A Library Shelf feature would allow those libraries to stay separate while still presenting them in clean, Netflix-style rows on the Moonfin home screen.
It would also reduce the need to use genres or collections as a workaround for library organization.
Revised Request
Please consider adding Named Library Shelves: admin-defined home screen rows that group existing Jellyfin libraries together.
This would complement the existing My Media, Collections, and Genre rows, while solving a different organization problem: grouping libraries themselves into meaningful, TV-friendly rows.
In short:
Genres group media by metadata.
Collections group media by curation.
Shelves would group libraries by admin-defined home screen organization.
Beta Was this translation helpful? Give feedback.
All reactions