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Jellyfin Library Cleanup: What Awesome Library Cleaner Can—and Cannot—Do

Awesome Library Cleaner can flag or remove aging Jellyfin movies and TV shows. See its supported libraries, review safeguards, schedule, compatibility requirement, and deletion risks.
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Awesome Library Cleaner (ALC) automates age-based cleanup for Jellyfin movie and TV libraries. It can flag items for review or delete them automatically, but it does not handle every library type or every kind of library problem. Because automatic deletion permanently removes original media files, start in manual mode and review the rules before enabling it.

Which Jellyfin libraries does it clean?

ALC’s README documents support for Movies and TV Shows libraries only. Music, books, photos, mixed-content libraries, and other library types are outside that stated scope. Jellyfin itself supports a wider range of library types and describes libraries as collections that can draw files from multiple server locations; that broader platform support does not extend ALC’s compatibility. Jellyfin also discourages mixing content types because metadata results can be unreliable.

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See the ALC project README for the plugin’s stated scope, and Jellyfin’s Libraries documentation for platform guidance. Confirm the current plugin documentation and releases before installing, since support can change.

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How does ALC decide what is due for cleanup?

Rules are configured per supported library. The administrator can choose which date ALC uses to calculate an item’s age:

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  • File-added date: when the item was added to the library.
  • Latest file-update date: the most recent file update.
  • Latest-watch date: the most recent watch activity. For items that have never been played, the README says this rule falls back to the file-added date.

For each library, administrators can also set a “leaving soon” period and a deletion threshold, and choose whether automatic deletion is enabled. These settings determine when items are flagged and whether they are removed without a manual decision; choose dates and thresholds that reflect how you use the library rather than treating the defaults as a universal policy.

Can you review items before they are deleted?

Yes. With automatic deletion disabled, pending items can be reviewed in a “To Delete” collection and through the plugin’s cleanup interface. You can then decide which items to delete and which to retain.

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ALC also documents optional protection for favorites. For TV libraries, its cleanup granularity can be set to episodes, seasons, or whole series. These are configurable safeguards, not guarantees that every favorite or every part of a show will be protected: check the selected options for each library before running cleanup.

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What gets deleted, and how risky is automation?

The project README warns: “Warning: Deletion is permanent and will remove the original media files!” Treat that as a direct warning about source files, not just Jellyfin’s library entries. If automatic deletion is enabled, an item that meets the configured rule can be removed without the review step used in manual mode.

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A cautious setup is to use a test library, choose a generous threshold, leave automatic deletion off, and inspect the pending list before deleting anything. Review the per-library date rule, threshold, favorites setting, and TV granularity. Keep backups of media you would not be willing to lose before considering automatic deletion.

When does cleanup run?

ALC’s README documents a daily 3 AM default for its scheduled cleanup task. It also describes manually triggering the task or changing its schedule. The 3 AM time is ALC’s documented default, not a schedule that applies to Jellyfin tasks generally.

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Jellyfin’s Tasks documentation explains that plugins can add scheduled tasks, which may be configurable in the server settings and manually triggerable. Keep ALC’s media-file deletion separate from Jellyfin’s built-in “Clean up collections and playlists” task: Jellyfin warns that playlists may be lost if media is unavailable when that built-in task runs. That warning concerns playlists; ALC separately warns that automatic cleanup permanently deletes original media files.

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Compatibility and installation considerations

The ALC README lists Jellyfin 10.11.2 or later as a requirement. Check your installed server version against the project’s current release information before proceeding, because plugin compatibility can change. The README provides a repository-based installation route. Jellyfin documents both official and third-party plugin repositories; availability through Jellyfin’s plugin interface alone does not establish that a plugin is official. See Jellyfin’s Plugins documentation for its plugin and repository guidance.

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