The Media Server is the heart of the Cardinal ecosystem, and powers all of your self-hosted apps.

Features

Get all Cardinal apps for free with Cardinal Media Server. Comes with a dashboard and everything needed to run your apps. No sign up required.

For audiophiles and casuals alike, with a set of features that long time music collectors will love.

Collect, curate, and rediscover your music every day with Cardinal Music's modern interface and powerful audio playback features.

Made to handle the era of camera ubiquity, and the lifetime of photographs that comes with it.

Archive a lifetime of photographs, and keep them safe from prying eyes. Only you can be trusted as the keeper of your photos and videos.

Embrace your inner projectionist and never worry about your favourite show leaving again.

Take back the future of movie and TV streaming in your home, and get that familiar online streaming experience for your own media.

_Cardinal Accounts_ provide **Identity** and **SSO** services for all Cardinal apps using Cardinal's cloud infrastructure. Accounts are free to create and use. Optional [paid subscriptions](https://cardinalapps.io/pricing) are available that unlock capabilities in your self-hosted apps, and grant you access to Cardinal's other cloud services.

Using a Cardinal Account is entirely optional, and you have the option of using your Cardinal apps offline, logged out, and restricted to the local network. However, users that use a free or paid account will benefit from these fundamental improvements to their apps:

### Secure Authentication for Your Apps

Using a Cardinal Account enables secure cloud authentication for your apps. The cloud authentication paradigm means that your self-hosted apps are relieved of most credential management duties, so that you don't have to worry about how your server is storing passwords or how your users will get their password reset emails.

A single identity provider also makes it easy for you to run multiple Media Server instances without having to juggle logins. Using `stable` and `beta` in parallel has never been easier.

### Connecting Users

Cardinal Accounts also make it easy for server owners to onboard new users. There's no need to manually create and issue account credentials, instead just click once to copy a link that you can send to anyone, or type the username of an existing Cardinal Account and we'll email them for you.

Information on how Cloud Accounts integrate with your Media Server.

Use a Cardinal Account

Secure authentication for your Cardinal apps.

1. Added Users page to Admin app.
2. Added user management drawer.
4. Added enable/disable user feature.
5. Added user seats.
6. Updated layout for the Indexing page.
7. Updated layout for the Jobs page.

1. Updated the [docker-compose.yaml](https://help.cardinalapps.io/getting-started/quick-start) service and container names to eliminate namespace conflicts when running multiple media servers simultaneously. Users must update their docker-compose.yaml file.

#### New

1. The Dashboard app has been renamed from "Dashboard" to "Admin", and the URL has changed to `/admin`.
2. A unique signing secret will be generated automatically by the server.
3. The build tag has been added to the app settings.
4. Added the Music Releases page.
5. Added the Music Release page.
6. Added the Music Artists page.

#### Fixed

1. Fixed an issue where users could get stuck in the First Time Setup until the next health check.
2. Fixed an issue where data could not be removed during a factory reset.

Cardinal Home Server is now known as Cardinal Media Server.

##### New:

- Added music indexing.
- Added music playback capabilities to the Music app.
- Added the Tracks page to the Music app.

##### Changed:

- Removed server owner info from login screen.
- Updated the Factory Reset and Reset Media Data flows.

##### ⚠️ Breaking changes:

You will need to start with a new database instance. Run `docker compose down -v` before updating to remove your current database and cache.

##### New:

- Added the [Libraries](https://help.cardinalapps.io/guides/cardinal-home-server/libraries) page to the Dashboard for music.
- Jobs now run concurrently.
- Added new environment variables:
  - `POSTGRES_HOST`
  - `POSTGRES_PORT`
  - `MAX_CONCURRENT_JOBS`

##### Updated:

- Updated login screen layout.
- Updated layout of the Advanced tab in the Dashboard settings.
- Removed GraphQL and moved the four GraphQL endpoints to the REST API.
- The EventSource endpoint now requires an auth token.
- Optimized indexing update stream to the clients.
- Optimized out most of the preparation phase of jobs.
- These environment variables have changed:
  - `LOG_HTTP` is now `HTTP_LOG_LEVEL`
  - `LOG_EVENTS` is now `EVENTS_LOG_LEVEL`
  - `DEBUG_INDEXING` is now `INDEXING_LOG_LEVEL`
  - `DEBUG_JOBS` is now `JOBS_LOG_LEVEL`
- Added logging levels.

##### Fixed:

- Various uncaught errors that could arise during indexing.

- Added an option to disable the Guest account.
- Added the SIGNING_SECRET environment variable.
- Added buttons to copy tokens to the developer tools.
- Various styling improvements for mobile devices.

##### New

- Added [music indexing](https://help.cardinalapps.io/guides/cardinal-home-server/indexing/music).
- Added the [Album Art](https://help.cardinalapps.io/guides/cardinal-home-server/jobs/album-art) job.
- Added the [Photo Variations](https://help.cardinalapps.io/guides/cardinal-home-server/jobs/photo-variations) job.
    - Photo variations will be used during the [Photo Thumbnails](https://help.cardinalapps.io/guides/cardinal-home-server/jobs/photo-thumbnails) job  and will be served to client devices.
- Added the Apps widget in the Dashboard Overview.
- Added the Activity widget in the header.
- Indexing history now shows the list of all indexed files.


##### Updated

- New indexing page layout in the Dashboard.
- New login screen layout for self-hosted apps.
- Improvements to the photo viewer layout are in progress.

##### New:

- Added the jobs system, and the first job: create_photo_thumbnails.
- Added the beta release channel.
- Added a setting to open apps in a new tab.
- Added app logos to the login pages.

##### Changed:

- Initial file indexing is faster now because jobs run afterwards.

##### Fixed:

- Fixed an issue where the theme selected during setup was being discarded.
- Fixed a timezone issue with some date values in the database.
- Fixed an issue where active users would get stuck loading.
- Fixed an issue where photos were not filling entire rows.

##### New:

- Active users on the Overview page in the Dashboard.

##### New:

- Added fallback photo thumbnails for certain edge cases.
- New container variable: HEIF_CONVERSION_TIMEOUT

##### Fixed:

- Fixed an issue where indexing would hang when encountering a corrupt HEIC file.
- Fixed an issue where some unsupported browsers were trying to load HEIC files.
- Fixed a few issues with the dark colour theme.
- Fixed an issue where reloading the page would cause the login state to be lost.
- Fixed an issue where there was an extra "v" in the available update URL.
- Various other small improvements.

##### Fixed:

- A specific photo indexing issue with Google Photos dates.

##### New:

- Server name setting
- Telemetry setting

##### Fixed:

- Various photo indexing issues.

##### New:

- Cloud status icon.

##### Fixed:

- Fixed various indexing issues.

##### New:

- "Automatically check for updates" feature and a setting to disable it.
- Can add photos to photo albums.
- Automatic cover photo for photo albums.

##### Fixed:

- Photo indexing bugs.

Release notes

Cardinal Media Server

beta

Next

stable

v0.3.3

v0.3.2

v0.3.1

v0.3.0

v0.2.2

v0.2.1

v0.2.0

v0.1.15

v0.1.14

v0.1.13

v0.1.12

v0.1.11

v0.1.10

v0.1.9