First-time setup

The first time you open a brand new server in a browser, it takes you straight into setup instead of an empty home screen. Four short steps, and every one of them can be skipped. Nothing here is a decision you are stuck with.

Setup runs in a web browser only. There is no wizard on the Apple TV or Android TV apps, because pointing at folders with a remote control is nobody’s idea of a good evening. If you open a TV app against a server that has not been set up yet, it tells you the address to finish at.

Before you start

Have your media roughly sorted into folders, one folder tree for films and one for TV. It does not have to be perfect and it does not have to be renamed. See Add your libraries for what the scanner is good at.

Step 1: Name your server

The name is what people see when they pick your server in an app, so “Living Room” or “Kelly’s Server” is better than the machine’s hostname. It is pre-filled with the hostname and you can change it later.

Underneath, the wizard shows you where server data will live and how much room is free there:

Server data: C:\Users\you\AppData\Roaming\multipass · 214 GB free   Change…

That folder holds your library database, downloaded artwork, thumbnails, and, unless you point them elsewhere, your recordings. It does not hold your media. You never need to move or copy a single film.

Most people should leave it alone. If your system drive is small and you plan to record live TV, click Change and put it somewhere roomier. On Windows the move happens the next time the server restarts, and your old data is copied rather than moved, so a failure leaves you exactly where you were. On Linux and Docker the path is shown but not editable here, because it is set by the service file or your compose volume.

Step 2: Connect your account

This is the step worth doing, and it is the one people skip and regret.

Click the button and your browser goes to multipass.theater, where you sign in or create an account, see a confirmation screen naming this server, and come back. Your server is now linked.

You never type an account password into your server. It collects its own identity directly. There is a full explanation in Connect your server to your account, including what to do if it does not work.

Linking before you add media matters because artwork and descriptions arrive through your account. Link first, and the posters fill in during your very first scan. Skip it, and you get a wall of grey boxes until you come back and link.

You can skip anyway. Everything on your own network works forever without an account, and the wizard says so plainly rather than nagging. If you skip, the server tells you what you are missing instead of silently doing nothing.

Worth knowing. Under Advanced on this step you can paste your own TMDB API token instead of using your account. That is the option for people who want a server that never contacts us at all. Everything still works, you just supply the metadata key.

Step 3: Coming from Plex

If a Plex install is detected, or if you say you have one, this step hands you to the importer. It reads a copy of Plex’s database and brings across your libraries, everyone’s watch history and resume points, ratings, playlists, collections, and any custom posters you set.

It never touches your Plex install and never moves a media file, so you can run both side by side and re-import at the end. Full detail in Move over from Plex.

Starting fresh instead just carries on to the next step.

Step 4: Add your media

For each library, pick a type (Movies or TV Shows), give it a name, and pick the folder with the Browse button. Add as many as you like. Each one starts scanning the moment you add it, so by the time you reach the end of the wizard there is usually something to look at.

Keep films and TV in separate libraries. The scanner treats them differently, and one mixed folder is the single most common cause of “why is my film showing up as a TV show”.

Step 5: Done

You land on your actual home screen, live, with the scan running and its progress on the page. There is no waiting screen.

A Finish setting up card sits at the top with whatever you skipped, plus the optional jobs worth doing at some point:

• Invite the rest of the household
• Set an admin PIN for the server settings
• Add live TV channels
• Pick a theme

Dismiss it when you are done with it. It does not come back.

If you left partway through

Setup saves where you got to on the server, not in the browser. Close the tab, come back tomorrow, open the server, and it resumes on the step you were on. On Windows, the tray menu keeps a Finish setup entry until it is done.

Servers that already existed

Upgrading an existing server never shows you the wizard. It only appears on a genuinely fresh data folder: no libraries, no name, and not linked to any account. And once a server has finished setup, deleting every library later does not put it back into onboarding.