Live Sessions

The main Streaming Dashboard page is your live operations center for monitoring every active stream. It displays real-time metrics, library content, and session details with full administrative controls — all updating automatically without page refreshes.

Admin only

Live session monitoring requires administrator privileges and the wsdashboard feature flag enabled in Settings > General > Feature Flags.

Key features

📡 Real-Time Updates

Sessions appear and disappear automatically as streams start and stop — no manual refresh needed

📊 Stats Banner

At-a-glance metrics including active streams, bandwidth, direct play vs transcode breakdown, and server status

🎛️ Three View Modes

Switch between Categorical, Cards, and Table views to match your monitoring preference

🎮 Session Actions

Pause, resume, stop, kill, message, or mirror any active stream directly from the dashboard

📚 Library Drawers

Browse recently added and newly released content with poster cards and metadata tooltips

🖥️ GPU Telemetry

Monitor hardware transcoding performance with real-time GPU utilization charts on Intel-equipped servers

Stats banner

The hero stats banner sits at the top of the page and provides instant visibility into your streaming activity:

Metric	What it shows
Active Sessions	Animated counter showing how many streams are currently playing
Paused Sessions	Count of streams currently paused by viewers or administrators
Transcoding Sessions	Count of streams being transcoded rather than direct played
Bandwidth	Current total bandwidth consumption across all active sessions
Direct Play / Transcode	Breakdown pills showing how many sessions are using each playback method
Server Badges	Icons showing which media servers are connected (green for Emby, purple for Jellyfin)
GPU Telemetry	GPU utilization pill (when Intel GPU detected) — click to open the GPU overlay

A connection status indicator in the page header shows whether the real-time data feed is active. A green pulsing “Live” badge confirms the connection is healthy.

Library drawers

Two expandable drawer tabs sit below the stats banner:

Recently Added — a horizontally scrollable strip of poster cards showing the newest content added to your libraries, sorted by date added
What’s New — poster cards sorted by premiere or release date, showing newly released content

Each poster card displays media artwork with a small server badge. Hovering over a card reveals a tooltip with the title, episode details, year, duration, content rating, dates, and a brief overview. Clicking a poster card opens the full detail page in the Media Portal.

When both Emby and Jellyfin are configured, filter pills appear to filter drawer contents by server. Only one drawer can be open at a time.

Always available

Library drawers display content from your media libraries regardless of whether any streams are currently active.

Session monitoring

The sessions panel is the main content area showing all active streaming sessions. Each session displays:

Media information — thumbnail, title, subtitle, year, and playback progress bar
User — username with quick access to the user administration panel
Device information — client application, device name, IP address with connection badge, and geographic location
Stream information — bitrate, video codec, audio codec, and playback method (Direct Play, Direct Stream, or Transcode)
Actions — administrative controls for the session

View modes

Three view modes are available, each suited to different monitoring scenarios:

Categorical View (default) — Sessions grouped by media type (Movies, TV Shows, Live TV, Music, Other). Each category is a collapsible section showing the category name, session count, and bandwidth. Sessions are displayed in a dense, multi-column table layout. Clicking on a device name, IP address, or username expands an inline detail panel below the session row with additional information.

Cards View — A responsive grid of richly styled cards, one per session. Each card features a blurred backdrop image, poster artwork, server badge, transcoding indicator, media and stream metadata, and a sliding controls panel. A progress bar along the bottom edge shows playback position.

Table View — A flat DataTable listing all sessions with sortable and filterable columns. Best for administrators managing many simultaneous streams at once.

Session actions

For each active session, administrators can perform these actions:

Action	What it does
Pause	Sends a pause command to the media server. The viewer's player will pause playback. The button changes to Resume.
Resume	Resumes a previously paused session.
Stop	Stops playback gracefully. The media server tells the client to stop playing. The session will disappear from the active list.
Send Message	Opens a dialog to compose and send a text message to the viewer's device. The message appears as an on-screen notification in their media player. You can set a custom header and timeout duration.
Kill Session	The most aggressive action. Disconnects the device entirely from the media server — not just stopping playback, but terminating the device's connection. Requires confirmation before executing.
Mirror	Opens a floating video player dock that mirrors the session's stream. Requires the Mirror feature to be enabled in Feature Flags.

Stop vs Kill

Stop sends a graceful stop-playback command — the device stays connected to the server but playback ends. Kill disconnects the device entirely from the media server, which is useful for removing unauthorized or misbehaving clients. Kill requires a confirmation dialog before executing.

Inline detail panels

In the Categorical View, clicking on certain metadata fields expands an inline detail panel below the session row:

Clicking a device name — expands a device detail panel with device history, rename options, and connection stats
Clicking an IP address — expands a geographic information panel showing city, country, ISP, coordinates, and a map
Clicking a username — expands a user profile panel with watch history and policy controls

In the Cards View, clicking these fields opens the same information in a modal dialog instead of inline expansion.

Real-time updates

The sessions panel updates automatically through a server-sent event connection. You do not need to refresh the page. When a new stream starts, it appears immediately. When a stream ends, it disappears. When playback state changes — pause, resume, bitrate shift, progress — the display updates live.

If the real-time connection drops, the dashboard automatically attempts to reconnect with progressive backoff. The connection status indicator in the header reflects the current state.

GPU telemetry overlay

On servers with an Intel integrated GPU, the Streaming Dashboard can display real-time GPU utilization in a floating overlay. The overlay shows:

Three engine utilization lines — Render (3D), Video (decode/encode), and Copy (DMA/blit) engine percentages
Current GPU frequency in MHz
GPU temperature when sensor data is available
5-minute history chart with continuous updates every 2 seconds

The overlay is a draggable panel that persists its position. Toggle it on and off using the GPU telemetry button in the page header. This feature is only visible when Intel GPU hardware is detected on the server.

Intel GPUs only

GPU telemetry currently supports Intel integrated GPUs (i915 driver) used for hardware transcoding. Dedicated NVIDIA or AMD GPUs are not displayed in this overlay.

Empty state

When no streams are currently active, the sessions panel shows an empty state message. The stats banner displays zero counts. The library drawers continue to function normally since they display library content rather than active session data.

If no media server is configured at all, the page displays a setup prompt directing you to configure at least one media server in the Streaming Dashboard settings.

Best practices

Do

Use the Categorical View for quick at-a-glance monitoring of grouped sessions
Use the Table View when managing many simultaneous streams and sorting by specific metrics
Check the GPU telemetry overlay during heavy transcoding to monitor hardware utilization
Use the Send Message action to notify viewers before performing maintenance
Reserve Kill Session for genuinely unauthorized or problematic clients — Stop is sufficient for most situations

Don't

Don't use Kill Session casually — it disconnects the device entirely, not just the current playback
Don't rely solely on bandwidth numbers for quality assessment — check the playback method (Direct Play vs Transcode) for context
Don't ignore a disconnected status indicator in the header — it means real-time data is not flowing
Don't forget to enable the Mirror feature flag separately if you want to use session mirroring

FAQ

Verify that your media server API key is configured correctly in the Streaming Dashboard settings. The dashboard needs a valid connection to your Emby or Jellyfin server to retrieve session data. Check the connection status indicator in the page header — if it shows disconnected, review your server URL and API key.

Direct Play means the media file plays natively on the client device with no conversion — best quality and lowest server load. Direct Stream means the container is repackaged but the audio and video streams are not re-encoded — near-original quality with minimal server load. Transcode means the media is converted in real-time to a format the device can play, which requires significant server CPU or GPU resources.

Bulk session controls are available in the Control Center under the Sessions & Playback domain. From there you can stop all active streams or send a broadcast message to all viewers simultaneously.

GPU telemetry requires an Intel integrated GPU with the i915 driver on your server. If your server uses a different GPU vendor or does not have a hardware transcoding GPU, the telemetry button will not appear.

No. The real-time connection uses server-sent events, which are lightweight and only transmit data when sessions change. The dashboard does not stream any video data — the Mirror feature is the only exception, and it requires explicit activation.

Streaming Dashboard Overview

Overview of all Streaming Dashboard features and prerequisites

Control Center

Server health, user management, device tracking, and libraries

Analytics & Logs

Watch statistics, trending content, and activity history

WSD Application Docs

Installation, service management, and backend configuration

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