Playlists for your home media server (Jellyfin, Plex, Emby)

A home media server such as Jellyfin, Plex or Emby keeps your own music and videos in one place and streams them to your devices. M3U playlists are useful in two directions:

1. Into the server: bring playlists you already have (from a music player, an old PC or another server) into your server’s library.
2. Out of the server: build a playlist of your server’s streams for a player that the server doesn’t have an app for.

Bringing playlists into your server

The golden rule: every entry must point to a file that the server already has in its library, using a path the server understands. A playlist exported from a laptop usually points to the laptop’s folders, so its paths have to be changed first.

Jellyfin

• Jellyfin reads .m3u, .m3u8, .pls, .wpl and .zpl playlist files.
• Put the playlist inside a folder of a music library (or a library without a set content type), then scan the library.
• Relative entries are resolved against the folder that contains the playlist. Absolute entries must use the path as Jellyfin sees it.
• Entries that point outside your library folders, or to files Jellyfin hasn’t added to the library, are skipped.

Our Jellyfin playlist guide goes through it step by step.

Emby

Emby staff have confirmed on the Emby forum that Emby reads M3U playlists, that paths in the playlist must match the paths used in your library setup, and that relative paths are also supported. Emby has no official support article on this yet, so test with a small playlist first.

Plex

Plex Media Server can import M3U playlists, but only through its programming interface, not from its apps. Its official API reference describes an “upload” request that takes the absolute path on the server of a playlist file (or a folder of them) and a Plex access token. The playlist gets its name from the file, and uploading again replaces it. This is an advanced task; if you try it, keep the token private.

Paths: think like the server

Your server may see your files under a different path than your computer does. For example:

Seen from	Path to the same folder
Your laptop	\\nas\music\Artist\
The NAS itself	/volume1/music/Artist/
A server running in a container	/data/music/Artist/

Absolute entries must use the server’s view, which is the path you chose when you added the library. Relative entries (Artist/01-song.flac, written from the playlist’s own folder) avoid the problem. See relative and absolute paths.

Using your server’s streams in other players

Servers can give you a direct address for an item. Jellyfin’s web app, for example, has Copy Stream URL in an item’s menu. These addresses usually include your access token, which works like a password: anyone with the link can use your account’s access.

• Keep playlists with server links private, and lock backups that contain them with a password.
• Don’t share them with other people. Create a separate user on your server instead.
• If links stop working after a server update, copy them again. Jellyfin 12.0 (September 2026), for example, turned off older sign-in methods by default.

M3U.Click is designed to find tokens and passwords in playlist addresses, hide them on screen and warn you before you share a playlist that contains them. See keeping your playlists private.

A workflow with M3U.Click

1. Open the playlist you want to import in M3U.Click.
2. Change the start of the paths to match your server’s library path (find and replace arrives with the editor), or switch to relative paths.
3. Remove entries the server doesn’t have.
4. Export as .m3u8 (UTF-8) so names in any language survive.
5. Copy the file into a library folder and scan the library on your server.

Importing a playlist directly from your server’s address in the browser can trigger a permission prompt, or be blocked, because the server is on your home network. Why some links can’t be checked in the browser explains what to do.