eliancodes/aurora

Aurora UI

Aurora UI is a cinematic Jellyfin frontend for self-hosted media libraries. It keeps Jellyfin as the source of truth while offering a more polished browsing and playback experience with featured content, continue watching, richer detail views, favorites, collections, and embedded playback.

Built with TanStack Start and React, Aurora is designed for home servers and simple deployments. It can be configured through an in-app onboarding flow, persists local settings to SQLite, and does not require an external database.

Why Use Aurora UI?

• Modern Jellyfin frontend with a more premium, app-like experience
• Home screen rails for featured titles, continue watching, favorites, and recommendations
• Embedded playback with Jellyfin progress sync
• Movie and series browsing with genres, search, and infinite scrolling
• My List and collection management backed by Jellyfin
• Translation-ready UI
• Optional subtitle support, including OpenSubtitles integration
• Local-first setup stored in SQLite instead of a separate database service

Container Behavior

• Listens on port 3000
• Stores local configuration in /data
• Declares /data as a volume for persistent app state
• Supports either:
  • in-app onboarding after first launch
  • direct configuration through environment variables

Aurora stores connection details and local app configuration in a SQLite database under /data/aurora.sqlite by default.

Quick Start

Run Aurora UI and complete setup in the browser:

bash
docker run --rm -p 3000:3000 \
  -v aurora-data:/data \
  your-dockerhub-namespace/aurora-ui:latest

Then open http://localhost:3000 and connect Aurora to your Jellyfin server.

If you prefer to skip onboarding, provide your Jellyfin settings as environment variables:

bash
docker run --rm -p 3000:3000 \
  -v aurora-data:/data \
  -e JELLYFIN_URL=http://your-jellyfin:8096 \
  -e JELLYFIN_API_KEY=your_api_key \
  -e JELLYFIN_USER_ID=your_user_id \
  -e JELLYFIN_USERNAME=your_username \
  -e JELLYFIN_PASSWORD=your_password \
  your-dockerhub-namespace/aurora-ui:latest

Environment

Supported runtime environment variables:

• PORT - container web port, defaults to 3000
• HOST - ***d address, defaults to 0.0.0.0
• AURORA_DATA_DIR - data directory, defaults to /data
• JELLYFIN_URL
• JELLYFIN_API_KEY
• JELLYFIN_USER_ID
• JELLYFIN_USERNAME
• JELLYFIN_PASSWORD

Best For

Aurora UI is a good fit if you want:

• a cleaner frontend on top of Jellyfin
• a container-first deployment on a VM, NAS, or home server
• a setup that stays lightweight and avoids external infrastructure

Notes

• Jellyfin remains the system of record
• API key access supports most browsing features
• Username and password improve playback session handling and progress sync
• Persistent storage is recommended so onboarding and local settings survive container restarts

Source

Source code, releases, and documentation live in the Aurora UI repository.