Marquee

Marquee turns a spare TV, tablet or wall panel into an always-on display for a Jellyfin server. It runs as one Docker container, polls Jellyfin over its HTTP API, and shows what is playing right now, who is watching, and what was recently added. There are no controls — it is a screen, not an app.

Early

The display and its first-run setup flow work. The surface is deliberately small: now playing and active sessions, recently added movies and shows, server name and total library count. There is no playback control, no scheduling and no multi-server support.

Requirements

• A running Jellyfin server reachable from the container
• A Jellyfin API key and the user’s UUID (not their username)
• Node.js 24 LTS if you are running from source. Node 22.5 is the hard floor — Marquee uses the built-in node:sqlite module, which does not exist on Node 18 or 20.

Running it

docker run -d \
  --name marquee \
  -p 3000:3000 \
  -v ./marquee-data:/data \
  -e MARQUEE_DATA_DIR=/data \
  -e JELLYFIN_URL=http://your-server:8096 \
  -e JELLYFIN_API_KEY=your-api-key \
  -e JELLYFIN_USER_ID=your-user-uuid \
  getcoral/marquee:latest

Then point the display’s browser at http://<host>:3000 and leave it there.

You can skip every JELLYFIN_* variable and configure Marquee at /setup instead — it stores the connection in its own SQLite database. The environment variables exist so an operator who configures everything through compose never has to open the UI.

Marquee exposes /healthz, which returns non-200 until the server is ready.

Environment

Verified against marquee/.env.example and marquee/src.

Variable	Required	Default	Purpose
JELLYFIN_URL	No	—	Jellyfin base URL. Must resolve from inside the container
JELLYFIN_API_KEY	No	—	API key from Dashboard → API Keys
JELLYFIN_USER_ID	No	—	The user’s UUID, not their username
JELLYFIN_USERNAME	No	—	Optional. Opens a real playback session
JELLYFIN_PASSWORD	No	—	Optional, paired with JELLYFIN_USERNAME
MARQUEE_DATA_DIR	No	./data	Where the SQLite database lives
HOST	No	0.0.0.0	Interface the server binds to
PORT	No	3000	Port the server listens on

Nothing is strictly required: with no Jellyfin variables set, Marquee redirects to /setup on first run.

Storage

Marquee keeps its Jellyfin connection and settings in a SQLite database under MARQUEE_DATA_DIR (/data in the image, ./data from source). Mount it if you do not want to redo setup on every container replacement.

From source

git clone https://github.com/Get-Coral/marquee.git
cd marquee
pnpm install
cp .env.example .env
pnpm dev

Script	Purpose
pnpm dev	Dev server on :3000
pnpm build	Production build
pnpm start	Run the production server (node server.mjs)
pnpm typecheck	TypeScript check
pnpm check	Biome lint + format check
pnpm test	Vitest

Related

• What Marquee is for — the overview on getcoral.dev
• Aurora — the interactive frontend Marquee complements
• Running a stack with Docker Compose
• Get-Coral/marquee on GitHub