Every screen in the dashboard
The dashboard has nine screens. This page goes through all of them: what each one is for,
what you have to fill in, what is optional, and what you can safely ignore on day one.
**If you are setting up for the first time**, you do not need all nine. Four get you
watching:
1. **Build Library** — where the whole thing starts
2. **Film & Series** — your metadata key and your folders
3. **Pair Clients** — get it onto your television
4. Whichever of **Live TV**, **Grand Comics** or **Unrated** you actually want
The rest can wait, and several of them fill themselves in as you use it.
---
1. Build Library
**This is the screen to start on.** It is arranged as three steps:
1. **Review sources** — what GeekStream has been given to work with
2. **Shape collections** — how your library is grouped
3. **Verify and pair** — check it worked and get it onto a screen
The button that matters is **Build Film & Series Library**. It reads your sources, matches
what it finds against a metadata service, and produces the shelves your television shows.
**It is slow the first time and that is correct.** A large library takes a while. It shows
progress as it goes, and you can leave the page — it keeps working.
**Press it again whenever** you add a source, change your quality settings, or things look
stale. It does not start from nothing each time.
---
2. Film & Series
The biggest screen, because it holds Film, Series, Audiobooks **and** Music. Work down it
in order and ignore the parts you do not want.
### Film and Series
- **Folder on your server** — where your existing films and series already are, if you have
some. Leave blank if you do not.
- **Starting mode** — how much GeekStream brings in to begin with. Start narrow; widening
later is one click, and a first build that pulls in everything takes a long time.
- **Minimum TMDB votes** — a quality filter, not a rating filter. Obscure titles with three
votes are usually mislabelled rather than hidden gems. Raising this is the single most
effective way to get a cleaner library.
- **Lowest age rating to show** — the floor for this whole server. Per-person control is on
the Profiles screen.
- **Heart it on TMDB, find it here** — connect your TMDB account and anything you heart
there turns up here. Optional, and the nicest way to drive a library once set up.
### Audiobooks
- **Open Library username** — your shelf there becomes your wanted list.
- **Metadata service / Server address / API key** — where chapter and cover information
comes from.
- **Maximum metadata requests per hour** — leave it alone unless a service asks you to
slow down.
- **Add an owned audiobook** — upload a file you already have, with title, author, narrator
and duration.
- **Encrypted backup and recovery** — audiobook progress and bookmarks, backed up with a
passphrase. **Keep the passphrase.** Without it the backup cannot be read, by you or by
anyone.
- **Taste Studio** — describe what you like in your own words, plus favourite authors,
narrators, series, genres and styles. This feeds recommendations.
### Music
- **Discogs username** — your collection there becomes what GeekStream looks for.
- **Managed Music folder** — where music it fetches is kept.
- **Optional local-library folder** — music you already own, left where it is.
---
3. Live TV
For an IPTV subscription. Skip entirely if you do not have one.
**Set up your channels and guide** takes a profile name, connection type, server URL,
username and password — all from your IPTV provider. There is an optional custom EPG URL
if your guide comes from somewhere other than your provider.
Then:
- **Load groups for this country** and tick the ones you want, rather than importing
thousands of channels you will never open.
- **Remove duplicate channels** and **Remove channels that no longer exist** are worth
running occasionally. IPTV lineups change constantly.
- **Default view** sets how the guide opens on the television.
---
4. Unrated
Hidden by default and off unless you turn it on.
- **Connect your metadata** — the API key for your chosen Private Metadata Source. One is enough.
- **Results to include** — whether titles without artwork appear.
- **Your favourites build it** — this section grows from what you mark, rather than from a
list you maintain.
**Who can see it** is set per person on the Profiles screen, not here. Turning it on here
does not make it visible to everyone.
---
5. Grand Comics
- **Metron sign-in** (username and password) — free, from
**metron.cloud**. **This is the one to use**, because Metron keeps a
**Pull List**: follow a series once and every new issue is added for you as it ships,
the way a shop holds a stack behind the counter.
- **Comic Vine API key** — an alternative that can confirm an issue's details but cannot
hold a list for you.
- **When both are saved, look in** — which to prefer. Metron first is a good default.
How it works: you follow series on Metron, GeekStream reads the list, looks for each issue
on your indexers, and adds what it finds. Issues open in the reader on your television,
and your page is remembered per person.
---
6. Profiles
- **Starting access** — what a newly created person can reach.
- **Unrated destination** — per person, who can see that section at all. This is the
control that matters; the Unrated screen only decides whether the section exists.
Each person gets their own taste, progress and recommendations. Nothing is shared between
them unless you say so.
---
7. History
- **Tracking service** — connect Trakt or Simkl if you want progress to follow you between
GeekStream and other apps. Entirely optional.
Progress is kept per person and works with nothing connected at all. This screen is for
when you want that progress to exist somewhere else too.
---
8. Recommendations
- **Privacy** — how much of what you do is used to shape suggestions. The strictest setting
still works; it simply has less to go on.
- **Choose your signals** — which of your behaviour counts: what you finish, what you love,
what you abandon.
This screen decides how Discover behaves. Which **model** writes Discover is set under
Connections — see [Connections and keys](connections-and-keys.md).
### Automatic taste recommendations
The part that actually fills Discover. It has to be switched on, and it needs
**Enable scheduled recommendations** and the sharing tick together — with nothing shared,
there is nothing to describe to a model.
Two numbers decide how often it runs:
| If your model is | Refresh interval | Most requests per day |
|---|---|---|
| **Free** | 2 hours | 12 |
| **Paid** | 1 hour | 24 |
**The interval is the real limit.** One run an hour is twenty-four a day at most, so the
daily figure is a safety net underneath it rather than a target. If Discover feels stale,
shorten the interval; raising the daily number on its own changes nothing.
**Why twelve rather than twenty-four on a free model.** Scheduled runs are not the only
thing that counts against your allowance. Every collection preview, taste preview and AI
search you run by hand comes out of the same pot, and those arrive in bursts while you are
sitting at the screen. Twelve leaves room for an afternoon of tinkering without the
scheduled runs falling silent afterwards.
**Most requests per day is GeekStream's own limit, not your provider's.** It stops a fault
here spending your allowance overnight; it says nothing about what your account can afford.
Your provider enforces its own, and refuses with a rate limit when you reach it — at which
point GeekStream waits rather than retrying.
#### Reading the status line
It reports two different counts, and they are not the same thing:
- **scheduled runs today** — against the number you set above. This is the one that field
controls.
- **model requests from this whole server** — everything: scheduled runs, collection
previews, taste previews and AI searches together.
It also says when the next attempt is due. A worker resting after a failure looks exactly
like a broken one otherwise.
---
9. Pair Clients
1. Press **Create pairing code**.
2. On the television, open GeekStream and enter the code.
3. The device appears under **Authorized devices**.
Codes are short-lived deliberately. If one expires, make another — nothing is wrong.
Anything listed here can be removed, and removing it takes effect immediately.
---
The Check strips
Most screens carry a **Check** panel showing anything wrong on *that* screen, with a
button to fix it where fixing is possible. A screen with nothing wrong shows nothing —
a wall of green ticks is noise while you are setting up.
Three kinds of finding:
- **Needs fixing** (red) — something is stopping this section working.
- **Worth a look** (amber) — working, but not as well as it could.
- **Normal** (grey) — worth knowing, nothing to do. These are not problems.
The checks re-run when you save something, because saving is exactly when a screen's
answer changes.
---
Next: [Connections and keys](connections-and-keys.md), which covers every key and service
in one place.