An option is also to switch to docker (compose) which would allow you to VPN just the qbit container instead of your whole host machine. Recommend hotio, he has containers for a bunch of apps in this realm and has VPN support built in with pia support.
this post was submitted on 22 Jun 2025
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I think I understand your question. The VPN should let you connect in the exact same method you use when you're on the same network. Example: connecting to http://192.168.X.X:8096 when local, is exactly how you would with the VPN on.
I think pia is full tunnel by default. he may need to turn on split tunneling...
Ohhh, I think I understand now, they can't connect to jellyfin because that computer has the VPN on. I thought their question was turning on a VPN to connect to Jellyfin outside their house.
Then yea split tunneling would be a good solution. Set up so only the torrent application uses the VPN. Or that Jellyfin is excluded from the tunnel.
Unfortunately I'm not too up to date on VPNs and which offer that. Perhaps their network equipment could apply the VPN to only the torrent traffic, and then they match the port number used inside the torrent application's settings?
I haven't had to deal with this specific kind of use case before (accessing the local Jellyfin service while the laptop is connected to a VPN), but after some cursory research, one of these approaches may work for you:
Easy Option (only available on some VPN software):
There may be an option in your VPN client that lets you access local network addresses like your Jellyfin server. Check your settings and see if there are any options like "allow local network traffic" and then try opening up your Jellyfin server in a browser (e.g.: http://192.168.1.100:8096/)
Less Easy Option:
If your VPN client doesn't have an option for allowing local traffic, you can open up the command prompt on your macbook and run a command like this:
sudo route add -net 192.168.1.0/24 192.168.1.1
Where 192.168.1.0/24 is the local network you want to connect to (where the Jellyfin server is located), and 192.168.1.1 is your local gateway (probably your wifi router's address). Change both of these depending on how your network's local IPs are formatted.
This should update your routing table to handle local network addresses without the VPN and this should persist between reboots.
Hope this helps.
Well, for starters thanks to everyone who replied so far. I really appreciate you taking time out of your day to try and help me.
Unfortunately while waiting I was playing around with my files and I noticed that I could no longer add, move, or edit folders on my external hdd(the one with the library content for Jellyfin). While initially setting up the server I could not find my external hdd in the files section of Jellyfin despite knowing the path. I looked it up and someone said it was to do with mounting and I needed to go into disks>mount options> and uncheck "User session Defaults" and check "Mount at system startup". After doing such the path changed but I was able to get jellyfin to access the files. (Unfortunately this meant that my qbit no longer knew where said file were for seeding so I had to go through and point them to the drive....again). So i put 2 and 2 together and figured I did not have read write permission for the dive anymore. I did not know how to change such so I reverted my change in disks and now, obviously, jellyfin cant access the files but I cant change, move, and add my files again.
I also noticed while Jellyfin was actually working, On the server pc Jellyfin was extremely slow and laggy. And Many of my files were changed into random pieces of media that I did not own. I have my files separated into Eastern and Western. With further file groups in each like Anime>Scifi>Gundam>TurnA Gundam. I thought intuitive but maybe I'm the one at fault. It changed the data for Scifi into a single series called Scifi Harry with all my other files being episodes or seasons. It also did this with the entire parent file of Western, changing it into Western Line with a crazy image that I'm guessing is from the show/movie it is confusing my media with.
Overall I'm pretty frustrated and I might have to walk away from this project for a little. If anyone wants to add any info of tell me some obvious mistakes I made please do, I appreciate all the knowledge being passed around here. I'm still reading it all but I'm going to go build some Gunpla to take my mind off this for a few.
Don't get too crazy into categorizing your media. Keep it simple with your folders, so Jellyfin can know what the file is then scrape the internet for meta-data.
Media -> Movies -> Example Movie (year) -> Example.movie.file
Media -> Shows -> Example Show (year) -> Season 1 -> Example.show.S01E01.file
Ideally your media downloads will have the name and release year in the folder name already. It knows to ignore or match things like x264, DD.5.1, and release group name.
this.
jellyfin has a pretty strict format structure if you want everything to auto discover.
Is all your traffic going through the VPN? You can bind the VPN in the torrent client so that only torrent traffic goes through the VPN, while other traffic does not. This way, you should be able to connect to your local network.
:/web
Computer IP is the internal one, usually like 192.168.1.56
Port is... Uh check docs, I don't remember or the one you set