Whenever I hear someone brush off secure remote access on Jellyfin with "just set up Tailscale and connect your devices" I have to wonder how many elderly relatives they have walked through doing that with a streaming device.
To which I would respond, how many elderly relatives need REMOTE access to their local video content?
To which I would respond, "You aren't following the convo". This isn't about a local server. It's about all the people who run Plex servers in their home that are used by friends and family that live other places (like their elderly parents in another state). With Plex, these people getting connected is a piece of cake. You just open the app, link your device with the app code (or sign-in with your Plex account), and you're off to the races. Same as if they were using Netflix or HBOMax.
Now, you can set up Jellyfin with a simple reverse proxy and run over SSL, which makes it almost the same (the Jellyfin user would have to enter the FQDN of the server on the app setup), but a lot of homelabbers nowadays seem to think that's not good enough, and you need a full-blown VPN tunnel. So now we're telling people to install a VPN client and configure it to connect back to the host user/Tailscale network, and then entering the local IP (or Tailscale IP) of the server on Jellyfin's setup. Is it possible to use Wireguard/Tailscale with split tunneling, so only the Jellyfin app uses it? Or are we in a situation now that the remote user has to turn the Tailscale connection on/off before they open Jellyfin, or they proxy all their streaming apps through you?
All that to connect to this "easy" steaming setup. Oh, and they aren't on a computer. The user in another location is doing this with that little remote that came with their streaming device more likely. That is my point.