These 5 third-party Jellyfin clients make remote streaming as easy as Plex

Andy Betts

Sun, June 28, 2026 at 2:46 PM UTC

Angled iPad view of Jellyfin movie poster grid on a wood table. — Patrick Campanale / How-To Geek

The official Jellyfin client is reliable enough, and it runs on virtually all of your devices. But it's pretty basic and not all that much fun to use. If you're a recent convert to Jellyfin but want it to be a little more Plex-like, using a third-party client will significantly improve your experience.

Moonfin

A great-looking client that runs on most devices and TVs

A screenshot from an alternative Jellyfin client on Android called

If you're new to Jellyfin clients, Moonfin is the best place to start and might even end up being all you need. It runs on pretty much anything. Not just iOS and Android, or Windows, Mac, and Linux; it runs on your TVs, too. Android TV, Apple TV, Roku, Tizen (Samsung), and webOS (LG) are all supported.

On launching the app, you can immediately see your library presented in a way that's both more appealing and more useful. Among the tools to help you find things to watch are a featured content carousel, a shuffle button to make a random pick, and all the usuals like genres, favorites, and search.

Almost everything in Moonfin is customizable. You can change themes, enable Trickplay thumbnails (the images that appear when forwarding through a video), change the video playback engine, and enable hardware decoding. And that barely touches the surface.

Fortunately, Moonfin is highly usable in its default setup, so if you don't fancy trawling through all the options, you don't have to.

Wholphin

Built for Android TV and older Fire TV Sticks

Wholphin has been my go-to Jellyfin client for Android TV, including the Fire TV stick, for a little while now. It's a major upgrade over the official Jellyfin client. The app is available through the Play Store or the Amazon Appstore, and it perfectly fills the gap between the functional but basic Jellyfin client and the more professional-looking but bloated Plex.

It's easy to set up and get connected with Wholphin. Once you do, you get an experience that's much cleaner and obviously designed to look good on a TV. Rather than being a straight Plex clone, it resembles, in some ways, streaming apps like Netflix, with auto-generated recommendations and much better presentation of artwork.

Wholphin is an easy recommendation if your client device is an Android streamer, especially if you want something more like a mainstream streaming service.

Fladder

A polished cross-platform app with some useful extra features

Fladder is another Jellyfin client with wide platform support. It doesn't stretch quite as far as Moonfin, but you can use it on Android, iOS, Windows, Mac, Linux, and the web. And with a fluid layout, you essentially get the same experience on all of them.

Fluid animations are at the heart of Fladder, giving it a level of polish that makes it enjoyable to use. While most clients support offline playback, it gets a greater focus here, with a constant shortcut to your "synced" files that also saves your progress. There are plenty of settings to tinker with, too.

You can use Trickplay and enable auto-skipping for intros, outros, previews, and the like. I like how clearly the app shows whether you're using Direct Play or transcoding instead of hiding the info in a menu, as is more common. Best of all, the app gives you full server management settings.

Streamyfin

A lightweight client for iOS and Android with streaming, downloading, and casting support

Streamyfin takes a different approach to many other Jellyfin clients. Rather than providing a near-endless array of customization and tweaking options, it's the app for those who just want the basics done well. It's available for Apple (including Apple TV) and Android devices.

The feature list focuses on the kind of useful things that most of us value, such as intro skipping and casting support, which allows you to watch your movies on a bigger screen without needing the app running on it. It also has Seerr integration, Trickplay images, and a full offline mode for watching without an internet connection.

The UI is less flashy than some of the other apps on this list, but that's also part of the appeal. If you want something that's an upgrade over the official client but doesn't change the experience too much, this is a good choice.

Infuse

A modern client focused on smooth playback and great design on iOS, macOS, and Apple TV

Infuse isn't specifically a Jellyfin client, but it works really well as one. I've been using it for a while as the main media player on my MacBook, and it's also available for iOS and Apple TV devices. For me, it replaced the excellent IINA as my go-to Mac video app.

It's good for many reasons. It presents your library content beautifully, even if it's just a local folder on your hard drive. It comfortably plays all common video files, and you can use it with various online sources. This might be a NAS, a cloud service, or Jellyfin. Just enter your Jellyfin address, and you're good to go. It's so simple.

The only downside is that, while it's totally usable in its free form, you have to pay a subscription to unlock more advanced features, including support for more video and audio formats.

A third-party client makes Jellyfin so much better

Jellyfin supports a large number of plug-ins that can vastly improve its functionality. Yet the simplest and quickest upgrade you can make is to use a third-party client instead of the official one. They add features, look better, and enhance the whole Jellyfin experience. And if you're a recent convert to Jellyfin from Plex, they'll help make the transition a lot easier.

Check out Yahoo's latest streaming advice, based on hands-on testing.

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