Accounts and access

Everyone who uses your server signs in with an account of their own. Each account has a username, a password and a set of libraries it can see. The administrator decides everything else.

Administrators and everyone else

There are two kinds of account:

	Administrator	User
Libraries	Sees every library, including ones added later	Sees only the libraries it has been given
Settings	Every page under Settings → Server	Only its own Account page
People	Adds, edits and removes accounts and invites	—
Queues	Works requests, reported problems and Needs matching, and sees Activity	Files its own requests and reports

The account you created during first run is an administrator. You can make any other account an administrator later, and you can give an ordinary account extra abilities without making it one — see Roles.

Adding people

There are two ways to give somebody an account. Add it yourself if you are happy to choose their password. Send an invite link if you would rather they pick their own.

Create an account yourself

Go to Settings → Server → Users and press Add account.
Enter a Username and a Password of at least 12 characters.
Tick the libraries the account may see.
Under Roles, leave the ticked roles as they are unless you want something different. Roles marked for new accounts are ticked for you.
Press Create account.

Tell them the password. They can change it themselves from Settings once they have signed in.

Send an invite link

An invite link lets whoever opens it create an ordinary account. You never see their password.

Go to Settings → Server → Invites and press New invite.
Under How many people, choose how many accounts the link can create: One person, or 2, 5, 10 or 25 people.
Under How long it lasts, choose 1 day, 3 days, 7 days or 30 days. The link stops working then, whether it has been used or not, and cannot be extended.
Untick any libraries the new accounts should not see. Every library starts ticked.
Press Create invite link, then copy the Invite link and send it.

By default the server allows at most 25 people and 30 days per link. These limits are set in the server’s configuration, and the form only offers choices within them.

The person who opens the link sees Create your account. They choose a username and a password, press Create my account, and are signed in straight away. If they only have the link as text, they can press Redeem an invite on the sign-in page and paste it there.

An account created from an invite is always an ordinary account: never an administrator, and never with more than the libraries you ticked. It also gets every role marked for new accounts.

Managing invite links

Every invite appears on the Invites page with a status:

Active — the link works. It shows when it expires and which libraries it grants.
Used up — the link has created as many accounts as it allowed.
Expired — its time ran out.
Revoked — you stopped it.

Press Revoke to stop an active link immediately. Invites are never deleted, so the list also tells you who each link let in: the Used by section names every account created from it and when. Every administrator sees every invite, including ones another administrator made.

Choosing which libraries someone sees

Nothing is shared by default. A new account sees only the libraries you tick, and a library you add later is not given to anyone automatically. Administrators are the exception: they always see everything.

An account that sees a library sees all of it. An account that doesn’t see a library doesn’t see it at all — its titles don’t appear in browsing, search or anywhere else. An account with no libraries signs in to an empty server.

You can change access in two directions.

From the account

Open the account from Settings → Server → Users. Under Library access, tick the libraries it may see and press Save access. The change takes effect on their next page load.

From the library

This is the quickest way to hand a new library to everybody at once.

Go to Settings → Server → Libraries.
Open the library’s menu and choose Access….
Under Who can see this library, tick accounts, or press Select all.
Press Save access.

The same step appears as Access when you create a new library.

The panel also lists Invite links not yet used up. Ticking one gives this library to the accounts that link creates from now on. Accounts it has already created are listed with the other accounts and are not changed. This is the only way to change what an invite grants after you have sent it.

Roles and permissions

A role is a named set of permissions. It lets you give an account a specific ability, such as fixing mismatched titles, without making it an administrator. Administrators already have every permission, so a role adds nothing to one.

Your server starts with one role, Viewer. It lets an account browse and play, request media and report a problem, and it is given to every new account.

Create or edit a role

Go to Settings → Server → Roles and press Add role, or Edit on an existing one.
Give it a Name and, optionally, a Description.
Tick the permissions it grants.
Tick Give this role to new accounts if every account you create, and every account created from an invite, should get it.
Press Create role or Save role.

Each role on the list shows how many accounts hold it. To give an account a role, open the account under Settings → Server → Users and tick it under Roles.

The permissions

Group	Permission	What it allows
The server	Change server settings	Edit transcoding, metadata providers, storage folders and the sign-in page, and browse the server’s disks.
The server	Read the log	Read and export the server’s log, which records every file path and media file name it touches.
The server	Manage integrations	Switch the MCP endpoint on and off, and create or revoke API keys.
The server	Run repairs	Run the one-off repairs on the Labs page.
The library	Browse and play	Browse the libraries the account has been given, search them, and play what they hold.
The library	Manage libraries	Add, rename, change and delete libraries.
The library	Scan libraries	Start a scan of any library, and set how often each one scans.
The library	Correct metadata	Fix matches, edit titles and other details, and refresh metadata.
The library	Manage what is on disk	See the files behind a title, unlink one, and remove a title from the library.
People	Manage accounts	Create and delete accounts, reset passwords, set display names, create invites and decide who sees which library.
Asking and reporting	Request media	Ask the server for a film or show it does not have.
Asking and reporting	Work the request queue	See everybody’s requests, and approve, decline or mark them available.
Asking and reporting	Report a problem	Report a film, show, episode or game that is wrong or will not play.
Asking and reporting	Work the issue queue	See every reported problem, reply, and close it.

There are two ways to stop someone seeing anything, and they are different. Taking away Browse and play stops the account browsing at all: they see You cannot browse this server. Unticking all of their libraries lets them browse, but there is nothing to browse. To keep the account but hide some content, use library access.

A person’s profile page

Every account has a page of its own. Open it by pressing its name, or Profile, under Settings → Server → Users. At the top it says whether the account is an administrator or a user, the username it signs in with, and when it joined. Below that:

Watch history and Game history — what the account has been watching and playing.
Account — its Display name. Press Save name.
Library access — which libraries it may see. This is not shown for administrators.
Roles — which roles it holds.
Password — set a New password and press Reset password. You don’t need the old one. Tell them what it is. Resetting a password also lifts a sign-in lockout (see below).
Server access — Make administrator or Remove administrator.

Display names and usernames

A username never changes. It is what the person types to sign in. A display name is what the server calls them everywhere else. Leave it empty and the username is used. A new name can take up to half an hour to show on the other person’s own screens.

Making someone an administrator

Press Make administrator under Server access and confirm. Two things happen:

The libraries you had given them are cleared, because an administrator already sees them all.
They are signed out of every device and have to sign in again.

Remove administrator works the other way. They keep their account, but they see no libraries at all until you give them some, and they are signed out everywhere too. You can’t remove your own administrator access, and you can’t remove the last administrator on the server.

Deleting an account

On Settings → Server → Users, press Delete on the account and confirm. They are signed out and lose their library access. Their requests and problem reports are deleted too. Nothing on disk is touched. You can’t delete your own account.

Invite links an administrator created keep working after that administrator is deleted. Revoke them yourself if you want them to stop.

Your own account

Everyone, administrator or not, has an Account page. Open the account menu (your initials at the bottom of the sidebar, or the Account tab on a phone), choose Settings, then Account. It shows:

Your Display name, which you can change. You still sign in with your username, which can’t be changed.
Library access: the libraries you can see, each linked. Administrators see a note that they can see everything.
Password: enter your Current password, then a New password twice, and press Change password. This signs out your other devices.
Your own watch and game history.

Signing in and out

On the sign-in page, tick Remember me on this device to stay signed in. You then stay signed in for two weeks, and that renews each time you use the server. Without it, you are signed out when you close the browser.

After five wrong passwords in a row, the account is locked for five minutes. The sign-in page still just says Incorrect username or password. Wait, or ask an administrator to reset your password, which lifts the lock.

To sign out, open the account menu and choose Sign out.

To sign in on a television without typing a password, see Android TV.