Alternatives to Dim
Self-hosted media manager with automatic metadata fetching. The listings below can replace it for an important use case. Each note says what changes if you switch.
The original
Dim
Self-hosted media manager with automatic metadata fetching.
Replacements
Listings that take over the same core job as Dim.
Jellyfin
A free media server for your own films, shows and music, with no premium tier and no account.
Jellyfin is a free GPL-2.0 server with a larger community, covering films, shows, music, live TV, books and photos, with server packages for Windows, macOS, Linux and NAS devices.
Plex Media Server
A polished media server for your own library, free on the home network, with a paid pass for remote streaming.
Plex is closed source and freemium, adds client apps for most smart TVs and automatic matching, but remote streaming needs a paid pass and sign-in uses a Plex account.
Emby Server
A personal media server for video, music, photos and live TV, with the good parts behind a subscription.
Emby Server is closed source with polished client apps and live TV, but hardware transcoding, offline downloads and full mobile apps require a paid subscription.
Universal Media Server
DLNA media server that streams a local library to TVs, consoles and phones.
Universal Media Server is a free GPL-2.0 DLNA server that transcodes on the fly for TVs and consoles without apps, though browsing is clumsier than a dedicated client.
Kyoo
A self-hosted media server for movies, TV series and anime, with transcoding and Chromecast support.
Kyoo is an open-source video server for films, series and anime with a built-in transcoder and OpenID Connect login, but runs as several services.
Similar software
Related functionality, not a direct replacement.
Kodi
Media centre that turns a computer, box or TV stick into a home theatre front end.
Tautulli
Monitoring and statistics dashboard for a Plex Media Server.
Jellyseerr
A request and discovery front end for a home media server, so family and friends can ask for a film without touching Sonarr.
Kometa
A Python tool, formerly Plex Meta Manager, that builds collections, overlays and metadata for media libraries.
Tdarr
A distributed transcoding system that automatically converts and cleans up files in a media library.
Sonarr
Watches for new episodes of the TV series you follow, downloads them through your client, then renames and files them.
