Server Version#: 1.43.0.10231
Player Version#: 2025.30.0 (both iPad and iPhone)
I suddenly noticed that the backgrounds on my movies are not the ones I have in the movie folders on my NAS and when using Plex Web are also the ones that is choosen.
So suddenly it ignores that?
/KD
The latest beta has a change to use “square art” for backgrounds on mobile, it was always the intention to use these for mobile as the regular backgrounds don’t have the correct aspect ratio and things often get cut off - we just had to wait until PMS fully supported this and that web had the ability to change these before changing this.
There is a web release going out shortly which will allow you to change these.
You can also already use local images for square art on PMS 1.43.0: https://support.plex.tv/articles/200220677-local-media-assets-movies/
Does this mean that mobile will no longer use local fanart.ext and it will default back to plex clouds square versions if a local square version does not exist?
Correct. The mobile apps will always prefer the square art for backgrounds.
The apps on TV will continue using the the existing background type as it’s the correct aspect ratio in that case.
Thanks and I’m grateful for the confirmation. Needless to say I HATE this. Not that you are implementing squareart that is fine, its that yet again my perfectly curated content is being changed by plex. First logos and now this. IMO, it would have been way better to assume that if local fanart.ext exist to use that. Anyhow, a workaround is simple enough so I’ll just do that.
Yep, unfortunately it’s one of those changes that will benefit the vast majority of people as the backgrounds now won’t be all weirdly cropped, but will negatively affect some people (like you) in the short term that have meticulously curated their images.
Overall I think it is the correct decision and I don’t think it would have been the right move to assume all existing art was square art as that would break the logic for local assets.
Correct. However its more like 90% would be okay and 10% would not, meaning us admins could go and fixup up the 10% as we find it. Now we need to fix everything as all square art would be different from what we have for backgrounds. What I’ll probably do is just do a find all fanart.ext, copy it to square.ext and then just fix the outliers myself by hand as I find them.
You could just reduce the height of the header on the mobile app’s preplay screen so it’s still 16x9. Nobody’s asking for such a tall topper.
