Jellyfin: Add 'Keep' Button For Seamless Jellysweep Use

Hey guys, let's chat about something that could seriously level up our Jellyfin experience, especially for those of us who rely on the awesome automation power of Jellysweep. Imagine this: you're browsing your meticulously curated media library in Jellyfin, maybe you just added a new show, or you're revisiting an old favorite that you haven't quite gotten around to watching yet. Now, what if you knew that Jellysweep, your trusty cleanup companion, might eventually flag this as unwatched and potentially remove it? Gasp! We’ve all been there, right? The current workflow often involves a quick panic, then a scramble to open a separate tab, navigate to Jellysweep, find the specific item, and manually mark it as "keep." It’s a bit of a friction point, a tiny speed bump in an otherwise smooth ride. But what if we could streamline this process dramatically? What if, right there within Jellyfin, next to your play button or episode list, there was a simple, clickable button that said, "Keep with Jellysweep" or just "Keep"? This isn't just a convenience; it's about enhancing the entire user experience and making our media management truly seamless. This proposed feature isn't just a pipe dream; it's a practical, high-impact addition that could save us time, reduce anxiety, and make the powerful combination of Jellyfin and Jellysweep feel even more integrated and intuitive. We're talking about a small change with a massive impact on how we interact with our beloved media libraries, ensuring that the content we really want to keep stays exactly where it belongs, without any unnecessary detours or complicated steps. Let’s dive into why this simple 'keep' button is not just a good idea, but an essential one for optimizing our digital entertainment hubs.

The Power Duo: Unpacking Jellyfin and Jellysweep for Media Enthusiasts

For any serious media enthusiast out there, Jellyfin needs little introduction. It's an incredible open-source personal media server that lets you collect, manage, and stream your entire library of movies, TV shows, music, and even photos to virtually any device, anywhere. Think of it as your own private Netflix, but with complete control over your content. Jellyfin offers a rich, customizable interface, powerful metadata management, and a thriving community that consistently adds new features and improvements. It’s truly a cornerstone for anyone building a robust home entertainment system. But here's where Jellysweep enters the picture, acting as the perfect silent partner. Jellysweep is a fantastic companion tool, designed specifically to help us keep our Jellyfin libraries tidy and efficient. Its primary role? Automated media management, particularly focused on identifying and, if you choose, removing content that hasn't been watched after a certain period or doesn't meet specific criteria. For those with ever-growing libraries, this is a lifesaver, preventing digital clutter and ensuring that your server space is utilized effectively. Jellysweep handles the dirty work, allowing you to set up rules like "delete unwatched episodes after 30 days" or "remove movies that haven't been touched in a year." Together, Jellyfin and Jellysweep form a power duo for optimizing media collections. Jellyfin provides the polished storefront and streaming capabilities, while Jellysweep ensures the backend is lean, mean, and organized. However, despite their individual strengths, their integration isn't always as smooth as it could be. Sometimes, you might have content that Jellysweep might target, but you definitely want to keep. Maybe it's a classic you haven't gotten around to rewatching, a series you're saving for a rainy day, or a documentary you just know you’ll watch eventually. In these scenarios, the current workflow requires you to leave the immersive environment of Jellyfin, open a separate browser tab, navigate to your Jellysweep instance, log in (if needed), search for the specific item, and then manually mark it to be kept or excluded from cleanup. This disjointed workflow introduces unnecessary steps and breaks the flow of your media browsing experience. While both tools are phenomenal on their own, a tighter integration through a simple 'keep' button within Jellyfin itself would unlock a new level of user convenience and truly solidify their combined utility, making the management of your digital media not just powerful, but also effortless and intuitive for every single piece of content in your precious library. It's about taking two excellent tools and making them an unstoppable, unified force against media chaos, all while preserving the items that matter most to you.

Why a "Keep" Button is a Game-Changer for Your Media Library

Let’s be real, folks: a simple "Keep" button directly within Jellyfin would be an absolute game-changer for anyone using Jellysweep to manage their media library. Seriously, this isn't just a minor tweak; it's a fundamental improvement to our workflow and overall user experience. The biggest win here is efficiency. Think about it: how many times have you been browsing Jellyfin, stumbled upon an episode or a movie you know Jellysweep might eventually delete, and then had to interrupt your viewing session to go manually exclude it? That friction, that context switch, it's annoying, right? With a 'keep' button, that entire cumbersome process evaporates. Instead of multiple clicks, tab switching, and searching, it's just one click, right there where you're already looking at the content. This means less time managing and more time enjoying your media, which is the whole point of Jellyfin in the first place! The impact on user experience cannot be overstated. When we talk about streamlined media management, we're talking about making the interaction with our digital libraries as intuitive and natural as possible. Currently, there's a disconnect. Jellyfin shows you your media, and Jellysweep makes decisions about it behind the scenes. Bringing the decision-making tool (the 'keep' function) directly into the viewing environment closes that gap beautifully. It makes the entire system feel more cohesive, more user-friendly, and frankly, less prone to errors. Speaking of errors, one of the most significant benefits is preventing accidental deletions. We've all heard the horror stories (or maybe experienced them ourselves!) of Jellysweep doing its job a little too well and deleting something we secretly intended to watch later. While Jellysweep has robust exclusion rules, the power to make an on-the-fly decision with a single click in Jellyfin provides an immediate safety net. You see a show, you remember you want to keep it, you click 'Keep,' and boom, peace of mind. No more frantic searches or hoping you remembered to set an exclusion in Jellysweep's separate interface. This direct control empowers users and significantly reduces the chances of losing cherished content due to automation. Furthermore, this tighter integration could significantly increase the adoption and effective use of Jellysweep. When a powerful tool is easy to use, more people use it. By embedding this core function directly into Jellyfin, newcomers and even seasoned users will find Jellysweep's capabilities much more accessible and less intimidating. It lowers the barrier to entry for effective automated media library management, making the entire ecosystem more robust and valuable for a wider range of users. Ultimately, a 'keep' button is about giving us, the users, more control with less effort. It respects our time, enhances our ability to curate our libraries precisely, and turns two great tools into one super-powered media management solution. It's a small feature that would yield enormous benefits, making our Jellyfin and Jellysweep partnership stronger, smarter, and incredibly more satisfying to use, transforming moments of potential frustration into moments of effortless control over our digital treasures.

Imagining the Workflow: How a "Keep" Button Would Transform Your Routine

Let's really dig into how a "Keep" button in Jellyfin would totally transform your media management routine. Right now, the workflow for marking something to be kept by Jellysweep is, let’s be honest, a bit clunky. Imagine you're scrolling through your Jellyfin library on your big screen. You see that fantastic documentary you added last month, "The Ocean's Whisper," and you think, "Man, I really want to watch that, but Jellysweep is set to clean up unwatched content after 60 days, and I know I haven't watched it yet!" What do you do currently? Well, you usually have to pause, maybe grab your phone or open your laptop, open a web browser, type in the Jellysweep URL, navigate through its interface, search for "The Ocean's Whisper," and then finally click the option to "keep" it or add it to an exclusion list. It's a whole multi-step process that takes you completely out of the immersive Jellyfin experience. It breaks your focus and feels like a chore, detracting from the joy of having such an organized library in the first place. That’s the before picture – a disconnected, slightly frustrating detour. Now, let’s paint the after picture, with our awesome new "Keep" button. You’re still chilling on your couch, browsing Jellyfin. You spot "The Ocean's Whisper." This time, right there, perhaps next to the "Play" button, or maybe in the episode details panel, there's a clear, concise button: Keep with Jellysweep. You simply click it. A quick, friendly confirmation pop-up might appear: "Confirm: Keep 'The Ocean's Whisper' indefinitely via Jellysweep?" You hit "Yes." And boom! Done. In literally two clicks, without ever leaving Jellyfin, you've ensured that documentary is safe from Jellysweep's automated purges. This isn't just about saving time; it's about making your media management feel like an integrated part of your media consumption. Consider a TV series. You've binge-watched the first season, but you're taking a break before diving into season two. Jellysweep might look at those unwatched season two episodes and think, "Time to go!" With a 'keep' button available at the series level, or even on individual episodes, you could easily mark the entire season, or specific episodes, to be kept until you're ready. The button could even intelligently appear only when content is being managed by Jellysweep or when it meets criteria that Jellysweep would otherwise clean up, making the UI/UX even cleaner. This feature isn't just about functionality; it's about peace of mind. It's about empowering users with immediate control over their library's fate, directly within the application they love using most. The ideal placement could be context-sensitive – on movie pages, alongside season lists for TV shows, or even in the '...' menu for more advanced options. The simple act of adding this integrated 'keep' button bridges the gap between Jellyfin's front-end presentation and Jellysweep's back-end automation, making the combined experience significantly more fluid, intuitive, and enjoyable for every single media item you cherish, ensuring your entire library is exactly how you want it, all the time.

Technical Nitty-Gritty: Making the "Keep" Button a Reality (A Developer's Perspective)

Alright, let’s peel back the layers and talk about the technical nitty-gritty of bringing this "Keep" button dream to life. While we want a seamless user experience, there's definitely some clever engineering involved to make it happen. From a developer's standpoint, this feature would primarily revolve around API integration between Jellyfin and Jellysweep. Essentially, Jellyfin would need a way to "talk" to Jellysweep and tell it, "Hey, this specific movie or episode? Yeah, don't touch it. The user wants to keep it." This communication would likely happen via API endpoints. Jellysweep would need to expose an API endpoint that allows external applications (like Jellyfin, potentially through a plugin) to send a request to mark a media item as kept or excluded from its cleanup rules. This endpoint would probably take identifiers like the Jellyfin media ID (GUID), media type (movie, episode), and perhaps a keepUntil date or an indefinite keep flag. Conversely, Jellyfin (or a dedicated Jellyfin plugin) would need to be able to make a request to this Jellysweep API. This brings us to the likely implementation method: a Jellyfin plugin. Developing a new Jellyfin plugin, or perhaps enhancing the existing Jellysweep plugin if one exists and is actively maintained, would be the most robust way to implement this. This plugin would: 1. Render the "Keep" button in the appropriate Jellyfin UI locations (e.g., movie detail pages, episode context menus). 2. Capture the click event from the user. 3. Extract the necessary media identifiers from the currently viewed Jellyfin item. 4. Construct an API request to the Jellysweep instance. 5. Handle the API response from Jellysweep (e.g., success/failure message to the user). Security considerations are paramount here, guys. Any API integration needs to be secure. This would likely involve an API key or token-based authentication system, where Jellyfin (or its plugin) is authorized to communicate with Jellysweep. Users would probably need to configure their Jellysweep API key and Jellysweep instance URL within the Jellyfin plugin's settings. This ensures that only authorized requests can tell Jellysweep what to keep. On the UI/UX implementation side, careful thought would be needed for button placement. It should be easily discoverable but not intrusive. Context is key: a movie's 'Keep' button might be next to its "Play" button, while a TV show's 'Keep' button might appear at the season level, or even in a menu for individual episodes. A subtle visual indicator, perhaps an icon or a change in button text, could also confirm that an item is currently being kept by Jellysweep. Error handling would also be crucial: what happens if Jellysweep isn't reachable? What if the API key is incorrect? The plugin would need to provide clear feedback to the user. This feature, while seemingly simple, involves a beautiful dance between two distinct applications, requiring thoughtful plugin development, secure API communication, and intuitive UI design to deliver that truly seamless user experience we're all craving for our Jellyfin and Jellysweep media management setup. It’s a challenge, but absolutely a solvable one that would unlock immense value for the community and forever change how we interact with our automated libraries. Imagine the discussions in the community forums, the pull requests, the collaborative effort to bring this vital functionality to life – it's an exciting prospect for developers and users alike who want to make Jellyfin the absolute best personal media server out there.

The Future of Media Management: Beyond the "Keep" Button

Thinking about the "Keep" button really gets the imagination flowing, doesn't it? While a direct "Keep" button for Jellysweep within Jellyfin is a fantastic starting point, it's just one piece of a much larger puzzle when we envision the future of media management. This single feature acts as a gateway to a world of deeper integration between our personal media servers and their powerful companion tools. Imagine, guys, if we could extend this concept to other aspects of our media interaction. What if, for instance, Jellyfin could not only tell Jellysweep to "keep" something but also give Jellysweep insights into our viewing habits in a more nuanced way? We could have buttons like "Mark as Watched in Jellysweep" or "Temporarily Exclude for X Days" directly in Jellyfin. This would allow for even more granular control without ever leaving the Jellyfin interface. Think about other common media management tasks. What if you could see a quick status from Jellysweep right on a movie's page in Jellyfin? Something like, "Jellysweep will delete this in 25 days if unwatched." This proactive information empowers us to make decisions before an item is even close to being removed. It moves from reactive clicking to proactive decision-making, offering unparalleled transparency in our automated media management. This kind of two-way communication could also open doors for more sophisticated smart automation. Imagine being able to set up Jellysweep rules based on Jellyfin watchlists or collections. If you add a movie to your "Movies to Rewatch" collection in Jellyfin, Jellysweep could automatically know to keep those items indefinitely, overriding its standard cleanup rules. Conversely, if you remove an item from a Jellyfin watchlist, Jellysweep could then consider it fair game for its cleanup process. This level of intelligent synergy would truly make our media libraries feel alive and responsive to our personal preferences. Beyond Jellysweep, this philosophical approach to deep integration could extend to other Jellyfin plugins or external tools. Imagine buttons to trigger re-scans for a specific folder from within Jellyfin, or a direct link to re-encode a problematic file using an external tool, all from the Jellyfin UI. The key here is to move towards a unified dashboard for media control, where Jellyfin isn't just a player, but the central hub for all media-related activities, including automation and management. The "Keep" button is a crucial first step, demonstrating the immense value of bringing these powerful tools into a single, intuitive interface. It shows us the potential for a future where managing our media is as effortless and enjoyable as watching it, making our digital entertainment experience richer, more controlled, and truly cutting-edge. It's about building an ecosystem where every component works together seamlessly, making Jellyfin not just a media server, but the ultimate command center for our entire personal media universe, giving us unparalleled control and peace of mind over our treasured collections.

Conclusion: Your Media, Your Rules – Easier Than Ever Before

So, there you have it, folks! The idea of a simple, clickable "Keep" button directly within Jellyfin to interact with Jellysweep isn't just a minor feature request; it’s a game-changer for anyone serious about efficient media management. We’ve talked about how this small addition would dramatically streamline our workflow, eradicate those annoying tab-switching moments, and significantly enhance our user experience. No more scrambling, no more worries about accidental deletions – just pure, unadulterated control right at our fingertips. This isn't just about convenience; it’s about making our Jellyfin and Jellysweep setup feel truly integrated, turning two powerful tools into one incredibly cohesive and intuitive system. It’s about ensuring that your precious media, the content you really want to keep, stays safe and sound, exactly where you expect it to be, without any unnecessary friction. The technical implementation is certainly achievable, and the benefits for the entire Jellyfin community would be immense, paving the way for even deeper integrations and a future where media management is truly effortless. Imagine a world where your media server isn't just playing your content but actively helping you curate and maintain it with minimal effort. That’s the vision we’re working towards, and this "Keep" button is a vital step on that journey. Let's rally behind this idea, push for its development, and collectively make our Jellyfin experience even more fantastic, powerful, and user-friendly. Your media, your rules – and now, making those rules stick can be easier than ever before. Let’s make this happen and enjoy a truly seamless media management workflow together!