Why I built Media Forge
I've been a Plex user for over twelve years. For most of that time, like a lot of people in this space, I managed my media library the way everyone does at first — manually. Folder by folder, file by file, copying naming conventions from forums and hoping the artwork would show up.
I recently repurposed an old Mac Mini as a headless media server and decided to give Jellyfin a try. I liked the idea of something fully open and self-hosted, but the experience of getting my library looking right was immediately frustrating. Missing poster art. Incorrect metadata. Files that Jellyfin just couldn't make sense of because the naming wasn't quite right.
The subtitle situation was the thing that finally pushed me over the edge. Everyone watches TV with subtitles now — not because we're hard of hearing, but because dialogue mixing on modern productions is genuinely difficult and you miss things without them. And if you're trying to learn a language, having subtitles in that language running alongside content you already know is one of the best passive learning tools there is. But hunting subtitle files manually, matching them to the right episode, dropping them in the right folder — it was tedious in a way that felt completely unnecessary in 2026.
The final straw was my library refresh setup. Because the Mac Mini is headless I'd built a little AppleScript app to trigger a Jellyfin rescan. So my workflow was: manually rename files, trawl for subtitle files, run the AppleScript, hope for the best. Every time I added new content.
There had to be a better way. So I built one.
Media Forge handles the entire process — rename via TVDB, artwork download, NFO generation, subtitle download via Subdl, and library refresh on Jellyfin, Emby and Plex — in one place, with one click per step. The built-in Library Manager lets you browse your entire collection as a visual poster grid, spot missing artwork at a glance, and replace any image in one click.
I'm a web developer by trade and a home media enthusiast by habit. Media Forge is an indie project, built by one person, scratching a very specific itch. It's the app I wanted to exist and couldn't find.
If you're the kind of person who runs a self-hosted media server, cares about your library being properly organised, and has ever spent an evening manually renaming files — this was built for you.
Get in touch
Questions, feedback or just want to say hello — the support page has a contact form, or you can email directly at support@mediaforge.uk