I’m having a very strange issue with the Jellyfin app for Android (using a Samsung Galaxy S23). Any time I have the player set to the built-in web player, the video will freeze every second or so, then pick up in a few seconds. While it’s “frozen,” tapping on the screen to bring up the scrollbar will start it playing again. So the video plays fine as long as I keep tapping on the screen every second or so; obviously this won’t work. It’s not a bandwidth issue; it happens even when I drop the bitrate to 360p.

If I open a web browser and log into Jellyfin on the same device, it plays perfectly. It’s only when I use the web player built-in to the app.

I tried using the built-in ExosPlayer, and it gives me a blank screen when I’m transcoding HDR->SDR with tone mapping. Using an external player (VLC) works, but it doesn’t transcode at all; it just direct streams everything, which is no good when I need to play Dolby Vision content or drop the bitrate to stream over my internet connection.

I can certainly just use Jellyfin through a web browser, but it would be nice to be able to get the app working.

  • PowerbombEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    I have had the exact same thing with a Samsung Galaxy Tab S8. You are right in that it’s the web player builtin to the app that’s causing you the issues.

    1. Open Jellyfin app.
    2. Select the menu Settings under the User header
    3. Chose Client Settings
    4. ChangeVideo player type to Internal player. Or use an external one, if you’d fancy that.

    I’ve come to love the internal player very much, as in mt instantly loads the subtitles I choose to activate. The web player being slow and messy about it is my one big gripe with Jellyfin.