Kyoo

Kyoo is a self‑hosted media server that prioritizes zero‑maintenance and robust metadata handling. Unlike Jellyfin or Plex, it eliminates the need for a rigid folder hierarchy; media files are discovered and indexed automatically, with bugs in parsing treated as defects rather than configuration quirks. The core philosophy is to ship a feature‑rich experience out of the box, avoiding a plugin ecosystem and instead implementing every capability natively.

Technical Stack & Architecture

Kyoo is built with a modern Rust backend that exposes a fully documented REST/GraphQL API (https://kyoo.zoriya.dev/api/doc). The server orchestrates media discovery, transcoding, and caching while leveraging Meilisearch for typo‑resilient search. Transcoding is handled by FFmpeg, with optional hardware acceleration via VA‑API or NVENC when available. The frontend is a React‑Native/Expo web and Android application, sharing code between mobile and browser clients. The project ships a Helm chart for Kubernetes deployments, indicating an API‑first design that can scale horizontally with multiple replicas (currently a work in progress).

Core Capabilities

• Dynamic Transcoding: Runtime quality switching, auto‑quality adaptation, and seek‑on‑the‑fly without buffering the transcoder.
• Thumbnail Preview: Video previews on progress hover, generated via FFmpeg keyframe extraction.
• Search & Discovery: Meilisearch‑powered search with typo tolerance, anime name parsing, and automatic watch‑list scrubbing synced to services like SIMKL.
• Authentication: OIDC integration supports any provider (Google, Discord, Authelia).
• Offline Playback: Download videos locally; progress syncs when connectivity resumes.
• Subtitle Handling: Full SSA/ASS support with embedded font extraction.

The API surface is intentionally open, allowing developers to build custom clients or integrate Kyoo into existing workflows. Webhooks and event hooks can be wired to external services for real‑time updates.

Deployment & Infrastructure

Kyoo runs as a single binary, making it lightweight for Docker or native Linux installs. The Helm chart abstracts configuration into values files, enabling seamless deployment on any Kubernetes cluster. For scaling, the backend is stateless (aside from media metadata stored in a local SQLite or PostgreSQL instance), allowing multiple replicas behind a load balancer. The optional hardware transcoding support ensures that CPU‑bound workloads can be offloaded to GPUs or dedicated encoders, improving performance for high‑resolution streams.

Integration & Extensibility

While Kyoo deliberately eschews a plugin system, its API-first design and webhook support provide ample extensibility. Developers can hook into media ingestion events to trigger external processing pipelines, or consume the search API from third‑party applications. The absence of a plugin layer reduces surface area for bugs and security holes, yet the exposed endpoints allow for custom adapters (e.g., integrating with home‑automation platforms or CI/CD pipelines that update media libraries).

Developer Experience

The project boasts comprehensive documentation (installation, contributing guidelines, API docs) and an active Discord community for rapid support. Configuration is declarative via environment variables or Helm values, minimizing runtime surprises. The codebase follows Rust’s idioms for safety and concurrency, making it approachable for developers familiar with modern systems programming. Licensing under an open‑source model encourages community contributions and commercial deployment without royalty constraints.

Use Cases

• Home Media Servers: Zero‑maintenance ingestion, dynamic transcoding, and offline support make Kyoo ideal for personal media libraries.
• Enterprise Video Portals: The API and OIDC integration allow corporate deployments where user authentication is critical.
• Streaming Service Back‑ends: The search, subtitle, and thumbnail features can be repurposed for internal video catalogs or educational platforms.
• Kubernetes‑Native Deployments: Helm chart support enables rapid scaling and integration with existing cloud‑native stacks.

Advantages Over Alternatives

Kyoo’s built‑in feature set eliminates the need for external plugins, reducing maintenance overhead. Its Rust foundation delivers high performance and low memory footprint, while the Meilisearch backend offers fast, typo‑resilient search out of the box. Open licensing and a minimalistic architecture make it attractive for both hobbyists and enterprise developers seeking a lightweight, self‑hosted media server with modern tooling and robust API support.