How to Set up Emby on a Synology NAS

Today we are going to take a look at how to set up Emby on a Synology NAS.

Emby is a home media server that will allow you to stream your digital media to client devices. When running Emby on a Synology NAS, I prefer running it using Docker. Emby is a great alternative to Plex and is the platform that Jellyfin was forked off of before Emby changed to closed-source. If you’d prefer using an open-sourced media tool, please check out my tutorial on Jellyfin!

Before you get started, make sure your media is stored on your Synology NAS.

1. User Account Permissions

1. Create a user named Emby and give them Read Only permission to your media folders. You can deny access to everything else if you’d like.

2. SSH into your Synology NAS and run the command below to get the User ID of the user we just created. Remember this user ID as we will need it in later steps.

id -u Emby

2. Install Instructions – How to Set Up Emby on a Synology NAS

1. Install Docker from Synology’s Package Center. 

2. Open File Station and create a folder named Emby under the Docker folder (which already exists), then create a sub-folder under the Emby folder named config. This is where we will store all of our configuration files.

3. Open Docker and double-click to download the emby/embyserver latest image from the Registry.

4. When the image is finished downloading, double click it to start the creation of the container.

5. Give the container a name, then select Advanced Settings.

6. Select Enable auto-restart.

7. Under the Volume section, we will be creating three total folders. Map the config folder that we created earlier to the /config mount path. Then, create two additional folder mappings – one for your TV shows and one for your Movies. You can choose to create one for music as well if you’d like.

8. Navigate to the Port Settings. Change Auto to port 8096 and 8290 as shown in the image below.

9. In the environment variable section, change the UID from 2 to the ID you found above. Mine will be changed to 1028.

10. If you’re using Synology’s Firewall, create an allow rule for port 8096 (and 8920 if you will be using HTTPS).

11. Select Next and then Apply to create the container. After a few minutes, navigate to the IP address of your Synology NAS and port 8096.

http://[SYNOLOGY_NAS_IP]:8096

3. Emby Setup

1. Select your preferred language and proceed.

2. Create your user account.

3. Select your Content Type, then add the folders that we mapped earlier.

4. Select your Metadata language.

5. Configure Remote Access as you’d like.

6. Accept the Terms of Service, then Finish! You will be able to login using the username and password you defined, and your media library will start to sync!

4. Conclusion – How to Set Up Emby on a Synology NAS

This tutorial took a look at how to set up Emby on a Synology NAS. Your media files will now slowly start to crawl in all of the metadata. If you’ve watched my last tutorial on Jellyfin, Emby will look and function very similarly since they have a close relationship.

As always, thank you for reading the tutorial. If you have any questions, please leave them in the comments!