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01

Common fixes

These cover almost every report we receive. Each takes a moment to check before you write in.

Setup from scratch, remote access, playback controls and every setting are covered in the user guide; the troubleshooting section there goes into more detail.

02

Which version am I on?

Every report needs the version. Here is where to find it, and what is current today.

03

Report a problem

Reports go to CineDock's public issue tracker on GitHub, through a short form that asks for exactly what we need. You will need a free GitHub account; you get an e-mail when someone replies.

What to include

• Your CineDock version (container, Fire TV / Shield, both Zidoo app versions, or desktop) and how you installed it.
• The media server — Plex, Emby or Jellyfin — and its version.
• The device: TV model, Fire TV Stick generation, Zidoo model and firmware, or operating system.
• What you did, what you expected, and what happened instead — the exact wording of any error.
• A photo or screenshot if the problem is visual.

Already reported something? Everything open and closed is on the issue list.

04

Ask for a feature

CineDock is built for people running their own libraries, and requests shape what comes next — Browse All in 4.3.0 was the first public request. Say what you would like it to do, why it would help, and where it should work.

05

Release notes

Every container release is described in the public changelog, newest first, in plain language: what changed, what was fixed and whether a television app needs anything separate.

• 4.9.3 + TV app 0.2.9 — The television player no longer sits on a black screen at the end of an episode. Some direct-play files stop delivering picture a few seconds before their stated length, and Fire TV or Shield then waited until Back was pressed. CineDock TV 0.2.9 recognises that stall — only in the last 15 seconds, only while playing, and only after five seconds without progress — and finishes the episode normally: the next episode starts, including across a season, or the programme page returns after a finale. 0.2.9 keeps the 0.2.8 fix for DTS films. Install it over the existing app when the TV app notice appears. Windows and Mac move to 4.9.3 with the container; Zidoo is unchanged on the 0.2.9 + Helper 1.2 pair, which plays through the Zidoo's own player. Also: Search no longer says “No matches” when your media server cannot be reached — it says so and asks you to try again, as Home already does. Top lists are numbered again: a collection or playlist shelf whose name contains the word “Top” shows rank numbers on Home and through See all, in the order the list already has on your server. Switching profile no longer leaves the previous profile's library tabs showing, or empty, until the page is reloaded. Settings → Libraries now sets the order of the library tabs as well as which appear: on a remote, ▶ picks a library up, ▲▼ move it and OK puts it down; with a mouse, use the arrows on each row. Back saves, as in Home shelves.
• 4.9.2 — Remote Emby and Jellyfin playback is repaired. Browser HLS, television direct play and Android TV audio rebuilding now stay behind CineDock instead of returning a home-network media-server address. The media-server address and API key remain private. All three paths delivered real media bytes from a VPS that could not reach the home LAN before release. Windows and Mac move to 4.9.2 with the container; the television apps are unchanged.
• 4.9.1 — A repair release for the 4.9.0 feature set. Television navigation dead ends are fixed, an individual playlist can be placed on Home as its own row, playlist creation is faster, and Emby playlists can be reordered in CineDock. Jellyfin reordering works when CineDock has a user credential; API-key-only connections remain read-only. Search now finds people and studios, and missing titles can be requested through Seerr. Settings → Libraries now controls the already-authorised top-menu libraries and library-led Home rows for Plex, Emby and Jellyfin. Fire TV and Shield stay on the standard 0.2.8 APK. Zidoo uses the separate, already-released pair below.
• Zidoo app 0.2.9 + Playback Helper 1.2 — The required Zidoo two-app release. It keeps CineDock available while the Zidoo's own player runs, saves real progress, returns correctly on Back, completes natural endings and starts the next episode. It also completed an uninterrupted 43-minute Plex episode and a final Emby Back check on a Z9X 8K. Download both files; install the helper first and CineDock Zidoo second. Do not uninstall, clear application data or factory-reset the box.
• 4.9.0 — Playlists have their own top menu. Create and manage playlists, add films, episodes, seasons or whole series, and follow your chosen order across films and different shows. Plex playlists can be reordered in CineDock; Emby and Jellyfin ordering is managed in their own apps. Choose your Plex libraries per profile in Settings, with consistent menus, Home and search. Trailer loading keeps the matching artwork visible on older televisions, small TV libraries lead with series, and background refreshes keep your focus in place. Playback references survive a server restart. The expanded user guide covers every playlist action, library selection and troubleshooting, including current Zidoo instructions. Windows and Mac moved to 4.9.0; Fire TV and Shield stayed at 0.2.8. The standard app is not the current Zidoo release.
• 4.8.9 — A fix for the series page, released outside the Friday cycle. Episode images on a series page were cut off top and bottom: the card’s height was tied to the width of the whole screen while its width came from the grid of cards, and the two only agreed by coincidence at some screen sizes — at a television’s 960-pixel page width every still lost 29% of its height. The height now follows the card’s own width, so every still is shown whole, at 16:9, at every screen size and on every television engine. Menu and shelf spacing on older televisions: boxes whose browser has no flexbox gap fall back to fixed margins, and those had kept the spacing from before 4.8.8, so with a long list of libraries a library tab was folded away behind “More” that newer televisions still show; the tabs and shelf cards now sit at the same spacing everywhere. The Windows and Mac editions move to 4.8.9 with the container; the TV app is unchanged at 0.2.8.
• TV app 0.2.8 — DTS films no longer crawl on Fire TV. The app now tells your CineDock server which audio and video formats the box can actually decode — read from the box, not guessed from its name — and the server hands over the original file unless no audio track is decodable, rebuilding only the audio when it must. Proven on a Fire TV Cube through seven seeks. It also stops forcing English in its own player. Needs container 4.8.8; Zidoo players are unchanged. This is a new APK — install it over the old one and restart the box.
• 4.8.8 — The first Friday bundle. The picture no longer crawls while the sound carries on when a Fire TV plays a DTS film: a Fire TV Cube has no DTS decoder and passes it through to the receiver, and after any seek or a subtitle change that output never kept up — three or four seconds of film for every ten on the clock, and a mono DTS track silent altogether. With TV app 0.2.8, released the same day, the television tells CineDock which formats it can actually decode, and the server hands over the original file unless no audio track is decodable, rebuilding only the audio (6-channel EAC3) when it must. Proven on a Cube through seven seeks; older apps and Zidoo players, which decode DTS themselves, are unchanged. Subtitles on Emby and Jellyfin follow the viewer’s own account — its audio and subtitle language and subtitle mode — instead of a hardcoded English; an account with nothing set behaves as before. Marking an episode watched moves to the Plex grammar: a tap of OK plays, a held OK offers to mark it watched or unwatched by name, ▶ and ◀ step episode to episode, and the tick chip from 4.8.4 is gone. On Plex, searching for a series no longer returns every one of its episodes, and an episode result names its show. The Home screen is resized, measured on the same television — posters are smaller and more of them fit across the screen, with a wider gap, larger headings and synopsis, and the episode label on the same line as the year and rating — and every shelf now scrolls the same way: the focused title stays in line with the row heading with the previous title peeking, on short rows and long. Menu tabs are larger, with a gold underline on the focused one. The Spotlight reel starts at a random title. Televisions on TV app 0.2.7 or older are offered 0.2.8. The Windows and Mac editions are on 4.8.8 as well.
• 4.8.7 — The television’s Help screen works with a remote. Back from a Help topic threw you all the way out to Home instead of back to the topic list, and left the app in a state where no further Back did anything at all; one press now undoes exactly one level — topic, then the list of topics, then Settings, then Home. The bar along the bottom reading “OK open, Back Settings” was also painted over the last few topics, so moving the highlight onto one of them made it vanish underneath. The Windows and Mac editions are on 4.8.7 as well. They stayed at 4.8.5 for a few days through no fault of their own — their build kept finishing and then failing at the last step, on a monthly limit that reset on 1 September. Nothing was missing from them; they simply could not be handed over. The TV app is unchanged at 0.2.9.
• TV app 0.2.6 — The end of an episode is safe now — the fix that 0.2.5’s notes wrongly promised, proven on a real device before being described here. On boxes that hand playback to the device’s own player, such as Zidoo, the television was quietly shutting CineDock down within seconds of the hand-over; everything looked fine until the episode ended, when there was nothing to come back to and nothing was marked as watched. CineDock now holds itself open the way Android expects a playing app to (a small notification shows while it does), your position reaches the server every few seconds during playback, and if the television shuts it down anyway it notices on its next start and marks the episode watched — but only when the timing genuinely shows it was played to the end. Verified end to end on a Zidoo Z9X: played to the natural end, marked watched, next episode offered and started. Fire TV and Shield behaviour is unchanged. This is a new APK — install it over the old one. The container is unchanged at 4.9.3.
• 4.8.6 — Televisions are told that TV app 0.2.7 exists. Televisions on 0.2.6 or older are now offered 0.2.7 — on boxes that hand playback to the device’s own player, such as Zidoo, that is the release which makes the screen catch up when you come back from an episode. 4.8.5 put the mechanism in place; 0.2.7 is the half that lives on the television, and this release is the only thing that tells anyone it is there. The television setup guide now also says to restart the box after installing the TV app, and why. Container only: the Windows and Mac editions stay at 4.8.5, which loses them nothing — the whole of 4.8.6 is that television notice.
• TV app 0.2.7 — For boxes that hand playback to the device’s own player, such as Zidoo. When you came back from an episode, the screen still showed what it showed before you pressed play — the episode you had just finished was still offered as the next one, and its tick did not appear until you restarted the app. The server had it right all along; the screen simply had no way of being told. CineDock now asks the page to re-read watched state and Continue Watching the moment it comes back, which is something these boxes never signalled on their own. Needs container 4.8.5 or newer for the full effect. Also in this release: the app stops guessing which file its saved server address is stored in, so the address survives an update; and it recovers more tidily if the television reclaims its display mid-episode. Fire TV and Shield behaviour is unchanged. Install this APK over the old one — it does not update itself — and restart the box afterwards (see Common fixes).
• 4.8.5 — A film no longer freezes part-way through. When a television’s own player fills its buffer and then reads nothing for a quarter of an hour, the connection carrying the film can be dropped with part of it still to come. CineDock had no answer to that: the picture simply stopped, and only skipping forward brought it back. It now re-opens the file at the exact byte it had reached and carries on, so the player never sees the join. This was reproduced and measured before release — an eighteen-minute silence mid-film, the connection killed with 380 MB still owed, and every byte delivered intact. Also fixed: on Plex, anyone signing in with a PIN saw an empty More like this row on every film and programme, permanently, and each visit to a series page quietly began a scan of the whole library whose result was then thrown away; only the server owner’s own profile was unaffected, which is why it went unnoticed. Behind the scenes, a playback link now expires once it has gone unused — never while it is delivering a film — a media server’s refusal is passed on as what it actually said rather than a generic failure, and its credentials are no longer sent on if a request is redirected elsewhere. Televisions still on TV app 0.2.4 or 0.2.5 are now offered 0.2.6, the release that fixes the app closing at the end of an episode. The TV app itself is unchanged at 0.2.6.
• 4.8.4 — A remote can mark one episode watched again. On a series page, ▶ on a highlighted episode steps onto the episode’s own ✓ tick — the card stays lit beneath it — and OK marks that single episode watched or unwatched; ◀ steps back, and OK on the episode itself still plays it. This route had been missing since the one-page series redesign in 4.6.0 left only a keyboard’s W key and a mouse click, so a remote had no way to correct one episode. The tick is deliberately unlike the season control in the button row, so one episode can never be mistaken for a whole season. The television Help and this site’s guide describe the new grammar, and televisions still on TV app 0.2.4 are now offered 0.2.5. The TV app itself is unchanged at 0.2.5.
• TV app 0.2.5 — Robustness, and better reporting when something goes wrong. CineDock now rebuilds its display instead of closing if the television reclaims it, remembers your server address if it is restarted in the background, and reports a crash back to your own CineDock server so faults on boxes without developer access can actually be diagnosed. A correction: this release was first described here as fixing the crash at the end of a film or episode on boxes that hand playback to the device’s own player, such as Zidoo. It does not, and that was our error. The cause is now understood — the television shuts CineDock down within seconds of handing over the picture, so when the player finishes there is nothing left to return to — and the fix shipped as TV app 0.2.6, above.
• 4.8.3 — Help worth the name, finished. The television’s Help now carries the full user guide word for word — thirteen topics, from the remote to Requests, with Up/Down scrolling the longer ones and Back returning to the topic you came from. The Help page leads with the guide’s address and a QR code, so help is point-your-phone-and-you-are-there. And pages that depend on something now say so large: a TMDB key for biographies, Seerr for Requests, local trailer files for reliable television trailers. The TV app is unchanged at 0.2.4.
• 4.8.2 — A faster series page, a Help worth the name, and CineDock stops curating. The curated shelves — Hidden Gems, Top by Actor or Director and Top from a Studio — are removed, on a simple principle: your collections are yours to make, and CineDock does not curate for you. Recently Watched, Playlists and the Seasonal shelves stay. The television’s Help now walks every screen of the app — profiles, Home, shelves, seasonal, collections, Watchlist, browsing, More Info, playback and Requests — in the same order and words as this site’s user guide, which was rewritten with this release. And opening a series from Continue Watching loses its long pause on Plex: the library inventory behind More Like This now refreshes in the background instead of in front of you. The TV app is unchanged at 0.2.4.
• 4.8.1 — Three fixes from 4.8.0’s first evening in use. Home’s Continue Watching now advances to the next episode by itself — it keeps asking the server for up to two and a half minutes after playback and stops the moment the row moves. A library deleted on the server leaves the menu on the next request instead of surviving in a ten-minute cache. And the television help row is now simply Help.
• 4.8.0 — Five features and one look. Protected profiles are honoured on Emby and Jellyfin: a profile with a password on the server is asked for it on the Who’s watching screen, like a Plex PIN, and choosing a profile now talks to the server as that user, so per-user library limits genuinely apply. A Requests tab appears when you connect Overseerr or Jellyseerr in Settings. Around each occasion Home dresses for the party — seasonal featured titles and a backdrop framing the billboard, switched off with the seasonal shelf’s own toggle. Settings is rebuilt: on the TV a small D-pad screen with a built-in How to use CineDock guide and a QR code handing setup to a phone; in a browser everything configurable, including a Report what I watch switch. The menu bar folds extra libraries behind More instead of breaking; on television the wordmark moves to a boot splash shown only when there is loading to cover. One colour scheme and one selection ring everywhere — and Back always undoes exactly one layer, so choosing a subtitle then pressing Back no longer ends the film.
• 4.7.1 — Two things a television series was getting wrong. A finished episode now shows as watched straight away, instead of only after you leave the programme and come back — and it keeps looking for a couple of minutes, because a Fire TV reports what it has played on a slow beat. And a series now resumes where you were however you reached it: previously only Continue Watching remembered, and arriving from a search or a shelf started the programme again from episode one. The button says which episode it will play. Also: the brief “what’s new” notice after an update has gone — it was too quick to read and its text was usually a release out of date — and a series’ action icons now match a film’s exactly.
• 4.7.0 — Collections. A seasonal shelf that appears only in its season and is named for it — ‘Tis the Season, Fright Night, Love Is in the Air, Hop To It and Gather Round — showing the films you already own that belong to it. Four more kinds of shelf: Recently Watched, Top by Actor or Director, Top from a Studio, and your Playlists. Collections now turn up when you search, instead of only in the shelf picker. Every smart shelf now rotates — steady through the day, different tomorrow, and different for each person in the house. Also fixed: on Emby and Jellyfin, choosing a viewer’s profile did not actually stop them playing something their profile is not allowed — it does now, and refused playback says so plainly. Plex was never affected. The Fire TV / Shield / Zidoo app is unchanged at 0.2.4.
• 4.6.2 — A maintenance release; nothing changes on screen. The container and the Windows and Mac editions are back on the same version number, where they were before 4.6.1 — that release was a Windows-only fix published without a matching container, which briefly made “which version am I on?” a question with two answers. Behind the scenes the version now lives in a single file that the whole build reads, instead of nine separate places. The Fire TV / Shield / Zidoo app is unchanged at 0.2.4.
• Desktop 4.6.1 — Windows and Mac editions only; the container stays at 4.6.0 and needs no update. The tray menu’s labels are visible again — on Windows the right-click menu opened with its items working but no text on any of them, so there was no way to tell what they did.
• 4.6.0 — Television series now live on one page. Opening a programme shows its details, seasons and every episode on a single scrolling screen, with the title and actions beside a fixed, sound-on trailer window instead of stranded at the top-left. Season buttons open their episodes directly, episode cards use wide still images with clear watched and focus states, and Remove from Continue Watching has a centred row of its own so the main actions stay tidy. Cast, extras and a More Like This shelf of series you actually own remain below. Film pages are unchanged. CineDock can also show a quiet notice when a newer Fire TV / Shield app is available — the check is entirely local and sends nothing anywhere. On Windows and Mac: running a newer build now replaces an older one still sitting in the tray rather than reopening it, so upgrading is simply “run the new file”; closing the window says once that CineDock keeps running in the tray; and the tray menu has a Help & user guide item. The TV app is unchanged at 0.2.4.
• 4.5.1 — The desktop upgrade notice now takes you to the update: the “Upgrade available” chip added in 4.5.0 announced a newer build but was not clickable, and older desktops’ Settings link pointed at the TV app’s page. The chip now opens the right release page when clicked. Desktop editions only — containers never show the notice, and nothing else changes.
• 4.5.0 — Collections, and a Home that belongs to the viewer. The same collection split across several libraries is now one shelf, with a line saying where its titles came from (Emby, Jellyfin and Plex). A new Collections tab is the chooser: pick what appears on Home and in what order, from everything your server offers — your own collections, genres, library rows and CineDock’s built-in shelves. Collections you make yourself arrive switched on; anything CineDock guessed at arrives off and marked New, so Home never rearranges itself behind you. Home is per viewer, and Continue Watching can be moved or switched off — off, it waits at the top of the picker. Desktop editions now announce a newer build beside the version number instead of only in a line inside Settings. Also fixed: a shelf change could show the old Home for up to ten minutes; switching Continue Watching back on needed a reload; row headings sat under the selection glow. On the television: a lighter selection band, menus as words rather than chips, and a quieter watched tick. Browsers, phones and the TV app (0.2.4) are unchanged.
• 4.4.0 — The More Info screen, finished — and a line drawn under 4.3.4 and 4.3.5, both pulled within hours after checks on a real television. Fixed: the info-screen trailer is now seen as well as heard (on Fire TV the clip played behind the page); Up on a film no longer marks it watched; the Spotlight artwork no longer disappears after an info screen; in Browse All the A–Z rail is no longer a dead end, Home from the menu really goes Home, and the selection is a deeper amber with the selected poster slightly enlarged; Plex “Recently Added” shows the programme rather than “Season 1”; confirm dialogs open in silence. New on the television info screen: the title’s clearlogo from your server (Plex, Emby, Jellyfin), ratings with their source (IMDb, Rotten Tomatoes, TMDB), Plex-style action buttons, the director’s portrait and the Dolby mark on Dolby badges. Browsers, phones and the TV app (0.2.4) are unchanged.
• 4.3.5 — Completes the More Info redesign released in 4.3.4 the same day. The trailer on the info screen did not actually play on a television — it was held behind a check on a flag the Plex connection never sets, so on Plex it never started and on Emby only about a third of films had one. It now plays, with sound, once, after a short pause so browsing stays quiet, and stops as soon as you press Play or leave the page. The TRAILER badge follows what is really playing, and audio badges drop the technical qualifier so “5.1(side)” reads “5.1”. Browsers, phones and the TV app (0.2.4) are unchanged.
• 4.3.4 — The More Info screen is redesigned for televisions: the whole page now fits one screen for a film and for a long-running series alike (it ran to one and a half screens, and over three for a long series), text no longer sits on artwork and the description is larger. Media information — resolution, HDR or Dolby Vision, codec, frame rate and audio format — is shown for a title and for each episode, with director, studio and country. Seasons and episodes have their own screens that open on where you are up to. Marking watched is signposted, the two actions that cannot be undone ask first, and a trailer plays with sound where your server has one. Browsers, phones and the TV app (0.2.4) are unchanged.
• 4.3.3 — Zidoo support: the interface now displays correctly on Zidoo players (Z9X 8K tested); other devices unchanged. TV app 0.2.4: on a Zidoo, Play opens the film in the box's own player (HDR / Dolby Vision, lossless audio and frame-rate switching as for local files); resume and finishing position were carried both ways in that historical release. Current Zidoo use requires the dedicated two-app pair listed above. Fire TV and Shield behave exactly as 0.2.3.
• 4.3.2 — Performance: Home appears in about a second on first launch and after idle spells (was 12–15 s on Plex); Home is served from cache and refreshed in the background, and pre-warmed at container start. TV app unchanged (0.2.3).
• 4.3.1 — Bug fixes: the empty navy band over the top menu on a TV app's first launches is gone; Search and Requests no longer open under the header; in-app help points here. TV app unchanged (0.2.3).
• 4.3.0 — Browse All: every library as a full poster grid with sorting, an Unwatched filter, a Genres page and an A–Z rail; “See all” on shelves; Fire TV geometry fixes. Fire TV / Shield app unchanged.
• 4.2.1 — Plex artwork delivered at display size; smart collections on Plex Home.
• 4.2.0 — Chapter preview images, Hidden Gems and Short and Sweet smart collections, Watchlist as a top-level tab.

Full changelog ↗

06

Community and contact

CineDock is free and independent. It includes no media and never touches your files; your Plex, Emby or Jellyfin server stays in charge.

• Issue tracker — github.com/cinedock/unraid-templates/issues: reports, requests and their status.
• Downloads — the downloads section on this site, the Fire TV / Shield app, the Zidoo two-file release and the desktop release pages.
• Unraid — CineDock is in Community Applications; search for “CineDock”.
• Say thanks — if CineDock has earned a place on your television, you can buy the developer a coffee. Entirely optional.