Looking after a library

All of this lives in Settings → Libraries, then the ⚙ next to a library. The dialog has three tabs: General, Folders, and Media.

Everything here needs owner rights, or being on the same network as the server. Someone you shared your server with cannot rename or delete anything.

Rename a library

General → name → Save. Nothing else changes. The shelf renames itself everywhere, including on people’s TVs.

The General tab is also where Rescan lives, and where you set this library’s sort.

Add or remove a folder

Folders → Add folder browses the server’s own disks, so you are picking a real directory rather than typing a path and hoping. It validates that the folder exists and can be read, then scans just that folder.

Remove takes a folder back out. This prunes everything under it from the library, and the confirmation tells you how many items that is before you agree. The files themselves are untouched; they are just no longer part of the library.

Move a library to another drive

The one that matters, and the one that goes badly everywhere else.

Moving the files yourself and rescanning looks like it works, and then you notice that everything is marked unwatched, your resume points are gone, and every collection is empty. That is because a rescan sees the old files as deleted and the new ones as brand new.

Folders → Move library does it properly:

1. Pick the new folder.
2. The server checks there is room, refuses if the new location is inside the old one or the other way around, and refuses if anything in that library is being watched or recorded right now.
3. Same drive: it renames the files, which is instant.
4. Different drive: it copies everything, verifies each file arrived intact, updates the database in one go, and only then deletes the originals.
5. Your items keep their identity throughout, so watch history, resume points, favourites, collections, and skip markers all survive.

You get a progress bar. If anything fails partway through a cross-drive move, it removes what it copied and leaves the library serving from the old location, untouched.

Worth knowing. Thumbnail previews and extracted subtitles are named after file paths, so they are rebuilt after a move. The first time you scrub through a moved film it may take a moment to draw its preview strip. Artwork is unaffected.

Deleting items and files

Media lists everything in the library with its file path and size, with checkboxes. This is the tab you want when a recordings library has quietly filled a drive.

Two different actions, and the difference matters:

Action	What happens to the file
Remove from library	Nothing. The entry goes; the file stays on disk. The next scan finds it again and re-adds it
Delete file	The file goes to the recycle bin

Use Remove from library for something filed in the wrong place. Use Delete file to actually free space.

Deleted files go to the platform’s real recycle bin (the Windows Recycle Bin, the Linux desktop trash), so a mistake is recoverable in the usual way. Where there is no such bin, the server tells you it will be a permanent delete before you confirm.

Both actions work on a selection as well as one row at a time, and both refuse on a file that is being played or recorded at that moment.

Deleting a recording also clears its recording entry, so it does not come back as a ghost in your DVR list.

Where recordings and downloads live

Two separate folders, both set in Settings → File management:

• Recordings folder. Where live TV recordings are written. Point this at the drive with room on it, not your system drive.
• Downloads folder. Where the server keeps the prepared files it makes for phones and tablets. These are temporary and cleaned up automatically a week after they are collected.

Changing either takes effect for new work. Existing files stay where they are and keep playing.

Moving the server’s own data folder

Different from moving a library. The data folder holds your database, artwork, and thumbnails, not your media.

On a Windows install, Settings → Advanced → Move data directory picks a new location, checks there is room, and stages the move for the next restart. The old folder is copied rather than moved, and is left in place until you explicitly click the button to remove it, so you can prove the new one works before anything is thrown away.

On Linux and Docker this is a manual job: stop the service, move the folder, point the service file or compose volume at the new path, start it again.