Copying folderless MP4 to Library Root Triggers Mass Deletion?

[_Nick]

As the title says — seriously?

The copy was completely accidental, and I didn’t even notice the loose MP4 until I wondered why most items in my library had vanished. It reappeared as soon as I deleted the file, but now Jellyfin believes most items were scanned in today, completely breaking the “Recently Added” view — the first thing all my users check when logging in.  Many of them only log in to see what’s new.

Surely the software should be intelligent enough to prompt if 100+ records are about to be deleted in one go? Even blocking further scans until the recommended folder structure is restored would be more acceptable than silently wiping all metadata.

This feels slightly unprofessional.

Is it worth submitting a feature request?  Or would this be classed as low priority?

Kind Regards,
Nick

[_Nick]

The only thing I can think of as a temporary workaround/mitigation would be a script to shut down the server, take a backup, and restart, once a day, every day.  Any thoughts?  So far all my backups have been manual, i.e., before updating, etc.

[Efficient_Good_5784]

Having non-folder files in the root library folder shouldn't cause the library to get deleted.

How did you install Jellyfin?

Jellyfin also has an option in the dashboard to configure if the file creation time should be used instead of when it was added to your Jellyfin server. If you choose that, the recently added section should always be the same unless you go back and modify old files.

[_Nick]

Hi, the installation is Docker Compose (see my sig).    And sorry, slight clarification, not the library itself, but most movies inside it.

The loose media file was a single episode of a show (S01E01), accidentally copied into one of the directories used for my Movies library.

Probably not important, but I use read-only bind mounts for the directories that make up my Movie library. It consists of three separate folders (three bind mounts). My Shows library has two folders (two separate bind mounts in Docker Compose). The rogue file ended up in one of the Movie folders.