Documentation

Why stry?

Jellyfin and Plex are media servers first. stry is built for streaming first: it plays your videos directly from their files as DASH and HLS streams, packaged on the fly, with optional encryption, smaller renditions and AV1 transcoding. You get more control over how video is delivered, but setup takes more work.

Topic	Jellyfin / Plex	stry
Primary focus	Personal media server	Streaming platform
Setup effort	Quick and simple	More involved
Playback	Plays library files directly, transcodes if needed	Plays files directly as DASH and HLS streams
Packaging	Mostly plays files as they are	Packages segments on the fly, nothing up front
Best for	A convenient home library	Netflix- or YouTube-style streaming

Getting started

• Production Setup: start here to deploy stry on a server.
• Development Setup: start here to work on stry locally.
• Screenshots: see what stry looks like before you install it.

Guides

Guide	What it covers
Podman Quadlet	Running the services: install, secrets, GPU
Docker Compose	An alternative setup, maintained best-effort
Reverse Proxy	Subdomain routing and bringing your own HTTPS
Object Storage (S3)	S3-compatible storage for generated images
Application Configuration	Direct play, video and encoding settings
CLI Interaction	lpod and stry's own Artisan commands
Upgrading	Updating an existing production install

Key concepts

• stry-env secret: the app's .env file, stored as a Podman secret and mounted at /app/.env in every app container.
• Presets: the templates in containers/stubs/{preset}/. production runs the app and its services, development runs them against your local code, s3 sets up buckets and CORS, and devcontainer builds a VS Code development container.
• Quadlet: the systemd integration that starts the containers in the right order on boot.

Common tasks

# Start, stop and check status
lpod stry up
lpod stry down
systemctl --user status stry

# Follow the logs
journalctl --user -u stry -f

# Open a shell or run Artisan
lpod stry shell
lpod stry artisan migrate --force

Need help?

• Read Podman Quadlet and the lpod reference.
• Check the logs with journalctl --user -u stry -f or podman logs -f systemd-stry.