Rename the app

[andrewrabert]

This is no longer an official Jellyfin organization project. It needs a new name & branding.

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To sum up why it was moved: burnout working within the Jellyfin organization.

I was the developer who started the rewrite of the desktop client in December 2025 as a way to address long-standing problems in the previous desktop app (ie. HDR support, maintenance issues with Qt). There were only a handful of organization members in support of how I was developing this - including part of the leadership team. However, the general attitude was very negative and increasingly burdensome and restrictive. An early sign of this was #109.

It eventually reached a point where I lost almost all motivation to dedicate my time to this. That's a huge problem since:

1. This was my passion - my default hobby to relax. I'm a developer who thoroughly enjoys building and working constructively with others. To all those who've contributed, opened PRs, or filed issues - thank you so, so much.
2. I'm a user who depends upon this desktop client for consuming Jellyfin on my HTPC's, desktops, and laptops.

Thus - I made the decision to leave the Jellyfin organization entirely on 2026-07-17 and continue development externally. It sucks that this means losing the officiality and "Jellyfin" branding, but the alternative meant losing a large chunk of my volunteered time. There's still so, so much than I want to improve and enhance.

[zjeffer]

How come it's no longer official?

[andrewrabert]

I'll provide details in the next day or so.

[dandetkowski1962-maker]

Please keep up the good work on this Andrew!

[BenCos17]

cheers
thanks for continuing to develop it

[Pentaphon]

As a user, I hope this still becomes the official desktop player as it looks promising so far and we have enough 3rd party desktop clients out there.

[xdlolrgb]

As a user, I hope this still becomes the official desktop player as it looks promising so far and we have enough 3rd party desktop clients out there.

Probably doesn't need to be, Jellyfin can just refer to this client on their website when it's finished, like they do with Infuse.

[andrewrabert]

To sum up why it was moved: burnout working within the Jellyfin organization.

I was the developer who started the rewrite of the desktop client in December 2025 as a way to address long-standing problems in the previous desktop app (ie. HDR support, maintenance issues with Qt). There were only a handful of organization members in support of how I was developing this - including part of the leadership team. However, the general attitude was very negative and increasingly burdensome and restrictive. An early sign of this was #109.

It eventually reached a point where I lost almost all motivation to dedicate my time to this. That's a huge problem since:

1. This was my passion - my default hobby to relax. I'm a developer who thoroughly enjoys building and working constructively with others. To all those who've contributed, opened PRs, or filed issues - thank you so, so much.
2. I'm a user who depends upon this desktop client for consuming Jellyfin on my HTPC's, desktops, and laptops.

Thus - I made the decision to leave the Jellyfin organization entirely on 2026-07-17 and continue development externally. It sucks that this means losing the officiality and "Jellyfin" branding, but the alternative meant losing a large chunk of my volunteered time. There's still so, so much than I want to improve and enhance.

[jessielw]

Appreciate you letting us know, and thanks for being honest about it.

There's a big difference between well written code and slop, regardless of whether it was written by a person or an LLM. Both humans and AI are capable of producing excellent code - or terrible code. What really matters is the developer behind it.

Personally, I use LLMs as little as possible in my own work, but they're incredibly useful for solving straightforward problems, debugging, and speeding up repetitive tasks. They're improving every day, and I think writing every line of code manually is gradually going to become less common.

The real issue is when someone with little or no programming experience relies entirely on an LLM to "build" software without understanding what it's generating. That leads to poor quality projects, erodes trust, and ultimately gives AI assisted development a bad reputation.

That said, I can understand both perspectives. Jellyfin wants to maintain a strong codebase and project reputation, which naturally means being cautious about AI-generated code. On the other hand, you've been very open about using LLMs as a development tool. Those are different philosophies, so it's not surprising that there's some friction between them.

I think the real question is how you're using it.

Do you, as the developer, understand Rust and the patterns the LLM is helping you generate? Are you reviewing, validating, and modifying the code it produces? Or is the project being developed almost entirely through prompts with little understanding of what's being generated?

To me, that's the distinction that really matters. Using an LLM as a tool to accelerate development is very different from using it as a substitute for understanding the code you're shipping.

[Pentaphon]

There were only a handful of organization members in support of how I was developing this - including part of the leadership team. However, the general attitude was very negative and increasingly burdensome and restrictive. An early sign of this was #

Not surprising but that is sad. As long as somebody who understands the code is behind a project, I don't really care if something like Claude Code is used to save time on certain tasks. Every major and upcoming company is either using AI right now or trying to find a way to do tasks more efficiently and they make millions doing it while charging people for software or harvesting their data for profit.

If anybody deserves to be able to benefit from AI, it's open source projects like this one that go largely unfunded and are used by millions of people worldwide for free. It's one thing to boycott vibe coders who produce slop, but it's another thing to go after legitimate coders who use AI to save them countless unpaid hours. I would rather have a legitimate coder who uses AI than nobody keeping this valuable project moving forward. I don't see any other open-source Windows/Mac/Linux desktop project that can fully replace this one or the old Qt client.

That being said, I really hope if you are a legitimate coder that you ignore the detractors, keep doing what you are doing in this repo, and hopefully this project becomes official again by whatever means possible.

[SLIMJIMMONSTER]

Regardless, thank you for the client (a person who suffered from those memory leaks)

[johnpc]

This is sad to hear. I would rather you remain within Jellyfin official and softly influence the AI usage standards from within.

I think you hit the nail on the head about being accountable for the outputs regardless of the tools used to create them. And also about the reason for the policy being the review burden on maintainers.

AI is still totally new, and radically transforming our industry. In this process, all organizations are trying to figure out what relationship to have with it, as the capabilities themselves continues to change underneath the policies. It’s a moving target.

Meanwhile the personalities are hard to manage. One faction of the industry is overly euphoric, shipping software quickly (sometimes too quickly without completely understanding it) and feeling productive as ever. Another faction is feeling a deep sense of anger and loss, as the practice of coding and software development that they love is eroded unrecognizably (not to mention pessimism about the future of the tech and the companies that influence it).

I think we need empathy on both sides as organizations shake this out. I do worry Jellyfin team in general is overweight in the latter group and could use more voices sympathetic to the first group. It’s not something with an easy answer or industry standard.

[thracyturnix]

I dont know much about working in a development team but I can see a lot of potential for a talented experienced person like you being able to work without the encumbrance of external politics. Appreciate your contributions to what is one of my favorite pieces of software and wish you much happiness and fulfilment with your new direction.