Features
What Playarr Server does today
Everything on this page exists in the repository now. What does not exist is listed at the bottom, in the same detail.
Library and catalogue
One catalogue across every kind of media you keep.
- Films, series, music and books
- A single catalogue spanning video, audio and publishing, each with the structure that suits it, seasons and episodes, artists and albums, authors and books.
- Matched against real identifiers
- Titles are reconciled using the identifiers your library tools already resolved, rather than guessed from file names alone.
- Views and filters
- Browse by kind, filter down, and sort within a library without waiting on a full re-scan.
- Search across your library
- One search over everything catalogued, returning works, people and collections.
- Semantic “more like this”
- A small sentence-embedding model runs on your own CPU to suggest related titles. No cloud service is involved and it works offline once the model is fetched.
Playback
Direct play where it fits, transcode where it does not.
- Direct play with real seeking
- When the file already suits the client, it is served as-is with proper range requests, so scrubbing behaves.
- On-demand transcoding
- A quality ladder for the cases where the client cannot take the original. Encoding happens on the server; clients receive HLS.
- Background re-encoding via Tdarr
- Library-wide encode work is dispatched to a Tdarr worker pool as a completely separate, lower-priority system that yields while people are watching.
- Subtitles, audio tracks and chapters
- Subtitle selection with a timing offset, multiple audio tracks with a preferred language, and chapter markers.
- Continue watching
- Playback position follows you between devices, with explicit watched and unwatched state.
- Playlists
- Including nested playlists and ones that mix video and audio.
- Offline playback on device
- Originals can be kept on a device for playing without a connection. Transcoded copies for offline use are not built yet.
People and permissions
A model that suits a household, not just an owner.
- Profile picker with PINs and avatars
- The “who is watching” screen, with a PIN where you want one.
- Deny-by-default library grants
- Nobody reaches a library until they are granted it, an empty grant list gives access to nothing.
- Streaming is a separate grant
- Being an administrator does not silently grant the ability to watch. An admin account still needs the streaming grant, deliberately.
- Keeping files off-device is the default
- Permission to retain a copy on a device is off unless it is granted.
- Invitations
- Bring someone in with a one-use, time-limited invitation rather than by handing over credentials.
- Accounts that persist
- Real accounts with password hashing, and tokens that rotate rather than one long-lived credential.
Access and identity
Choose the posture that matches where the server lives.
- Two authentication postures
- Full accounts with hashed passwords by default, or zero-credential auto-login for a trusted LAN if the operator explicitly opts in.
- Private ranges by default
- The trusted-network opt-in is limited to private and loopback address ranges, so a mistaken port forward does not hand out an admin session.
- Sign in on a television by code
- Standards-based device-code pairing, so nobody types a password with a remote control.
- Hosted first-contact linking
- The hosted Playarr service can broker the first handshake between an app and your server. The short-lived record carries device and server details only, never a password or a browser token.
- Tokens that rotate
- Access tokens with refresh rotation rather than one long-lived credential.
Running it
One binary, three deployment shapes, one embedded database.
- Single binary, role-gated
- The same executable runs as the API, as a worker, or as both in one process. Choosing a role is a configuration change.
- Embedded SQLite
- One database file per server, no database service to run. Extra servers join through peer sync.
- Three deployment shapes
- A systemd unit, a Docker Compose stack, or Kubernetes with a Helm chart and overlays, all shipped in the repository.
- HTTPS without a reverse proxy
- Built-in ACME with an HTTP-01 listener, for home servers that would rather not run another moving part in front.
- Admin console
- Live sessions and playback history, with the ability to stop a session.
- A published API contract
- The OpenAPI description is generated from the handlers, drift-tested in CI and served by the running server. The TypeScript client is generated from it.
Beyond one server
Unusual, and entirely optional.
- Peer groups
- Independently owned, independently databased servers can share accounts, permissions, invitations and catalogue metadata over a signed protocol, and route playback between each other by redirect or proxy.
- Inert when unused
- Run a single server and none of this does anything. It is not a background service you have to reason about.
Straight answers
Not built yet
Listing this is cheaper for everyone than having you discover it after an evening of setup.
| Capability | Status | Detail |
|---|---|---|
| Hardware-accelerated transcoding | Not built yet | Software encoding only. This is the biggest practical gap on low-power hardware. |
| Chromecast and AirPlay | Not built yet | No casting of any kind. |
| Live TV, DVR and programme guides | Not built yet | No tuner support at all. |
| Protected-content playback | Not built yet | No support for playing back protected content. |
| Photos | Not built yet | There is no photo library concept. |
| Intro and credits detection | Not built yet | Nothing skips a title sequence for you. |
| Trailers, extras and theme music | Not built yet | Not present. |
| Watch-together | Not built yet | No synchronised playback between viewers. |
| Plugins | Not built yet | There is no plugin system. |
| App-store distribution | Not built yet | Nothing is published to any app store on any platform. |
| Readable books | Not built yet | Books are catalogued, but no client reads them yet. |
| Transcoded offline copies | Not built yet | Offline playback keeps originals only. |
| Fine-grained access rules | Not built yet | Rating ceilings, tag rules, session caps and time windows are modelled but not yet enforced. |
There is no 1.0 release, and the deployment manifests have not yet been proven end to end on every deployment shape. Progress is tracked in the open in therepository.