My experience using JellyWatch on Android with Jellyfin

[haxile7561]

Hi everyone,

I wanted to share my experience using JellyWatch on Android to monitor my Jellyfin server. This isn’t a full app review, just my personal observations.

Setup: Connecting to my server was straightforward—just the usual credentials and server URL. It worked quickly and reliably.

Session monitoring: It’s useful to see who is watching what, on which device, and in what format. I could tell when content was playing via DirectPlay versus transcode.

Users and devices: I could check active users and connected devices. I didn’t need to disconnect anyone, but the feature works as expected.

Tasks and logs: Viewing scheduled tasks and logs complements the web interface nicely. It’s clear and easy to navigate.

History and stats: I explored watch history and usage stats. Simple charts give a good overview of server activity over time.

Practical points:

Smooth and modern interface.

Push notifications are handy to get alerts about sessions or device activity.

The Android widget makes it easy to glance at server activity without opening the app.


Things to keep in mind:

It doesn’t replace the web interface for advanced management.

Some actions, like restarting the server or managing tasks, require admin rights.

The app is mainly for server monitoring, not content playback.



Overall, JellyWatch gave me a quick way to keep an eye on my Jellyfin server from my phone. It’s not essential, but it’s convenient for real-time monitoring, especially with multiple users.

I’m curious if others here use it and which features they find most useful day-to-day.

PS: I'm not posting the app link because I don't know if it's allowed, but it's available on Google Play.

[thornbill]

I’ve asked this a few times and not really got an answer. What does it add over the built in Jellyfin dashboard? We’re open to ideas on how to improve the experience for all Jellyfin users.

[Kandy]

I'm not the OP of course, and the Jellywatch dev seems unspeakably sketchy to me so I've never tried his software, but I *do* think the standard mobile interface is pretty rough for monitoring. I'm not a UI guy but as an example, the Activity page on mobile is not very mobile-friendly:



There's no way to go to the second page, and a lot of horizontal scrolling to see anything useful. I'd love to have something with a bit more of a deep dive into server stats, the kind of stuff the playback reporting plugin does, but with a mobile-friendly interface. Jellywatch being closed-source and made by a dev I don't trust isn't that for me, but an open-source monitoring app (or a streamlined mobile experience on the mainline app) would be awesome.

That said, I do most of my admin stuff on a laptop so this is kind of minor for me at least.

[haxile7561]

I’ve asked this a few times and not really got an answer. What does it add over the built in Jellyfin dashboard? We’re open to ideas on how to improve the experience for all Jellyfin users.

Hi, I mainly use it for quick visualization, and especially for integrating radarr, Sonarr, Jellyseer, and Jellystat. There are quite a few people on their Discord server; if the application were suspicious, there wouldn't be so many users, in my opinion.