Adblock Plus browser extension stops Sharing Tab displaying when editing a movie...WHY? [SOLVED]

Plex Media Server Desktops & Laptops
1

Server Version#: 1.21.3.4014
Player Version#: 4.51.1

This has been raised before but on the basis of the Sharing Tab simply not being available. I am raising this again because we now know that the cause is (in my particular case) the Adblock Plus extension for Chrome.

When “app.plex.tv” is whitelisted in Adblock Plus the Sharing Tab appears when you edit a movie within Plex. When “app.plex.tv” is removed from the whitelist of Adblock Plus then the Sharing Tab does not appear.

The question I have is WHY?

I spent a long time searching for an answer and finally found some comments that made me look at the adblocker as a source of the problem. I think it took so much time to find an answer because the search criteria is generally along the lines of “plex sharing edit movie label” and this just provides lots of answers to a different question usually to do with managing server shares which is just different.

If anyone has an answer then I’d be very grateful indeed for some insight coz I’m baffled!

Update 2020-02-09
The problem lies within the ad blocker in your browser and not within Plex itself. Although Plex could be updated to remove the issue and there is a good argument for doing so, the problem can be solved without an update to Plex.
The ad blocker in your browser is incorrectly identifying part of the rendered web page within Plex as being an advert and it therefore removes it. Removing ads is what we want ad blockers to do after all. However in this case the ad blocker just gets it wrong and removes something we don’t want it to remove, namely the sharing Tab within the Edit Movie popup. See below for the technical details of why.
Quickest and easiest solution is to whitelist Plex (https://app.plex.tv) within the ad blocker extension.
As Plex does not serve us any ads within the media player then any ad blocker will provide little, if any, benefit when using Plex.
Just remember that you will have to whitelist the plex url in every instance of every browser you have that has an ad blocker extension installed which is the main argument for having Plex updated. If the Plex developers could make this simple change then many many hours of users time would be saved.

2

You’ll probably need to ask them.
If I remember correctly, ad-blockers use all kinds of patterns to identify what they consider ads. Most obviously there’s of course URLs pointing to the common ad networks – but they also look for certain image sizes commonly used by ads.

Given Plex isn’t really showing you any ads (except you’re watching content from the ad-supported video on demand service)… what’s wrong with simply white-listing it?

3

Side effects can always occur with any browser add-ins which manipulate websites (or the plex web app in this case) by filtering out or suppressing parts of these, based on lists but also generic pattern matching.
Whitelist plex web and be done.

4

There isn’t a problem whitelisting it. In fact it is the solution I have used.

The problem is really that there was no info on this particular problem on this forum or within a google search. Much time was wasted by me searching with the “correct” criteria before I found anything to help identify the problem, which, in the end, was simple to resolve.

I have therefore raised this post in the hope that others will find it easier than I did to resolve the issue of the sharing tab simply not displaying when you are attempting to edit a movie. I spent ages searching through the settings within Plex convinced that this was where my problem lay. In the end it was a browser problem but it was not a logical step. I mean why would the browser stop only one tab of a six tab edit box from displaying???

The text of these few posts should hopefully save someone out there alot of time and frustration.

5
6

People are still having problems with this?

I should think a developer who actually cared would change the code of the Sharing tab to not be called “share-btn” and fix the problem it creates with ad blockers.

Glad to see my figuring out what the problem was (and how to fix it on the user end) is helping other people.

EDIT: For the record, this is what is being blocked by your adblocker, and needs to be whitelisted:

image
image799×618 29.4 KB

7

This topic was automatically closed 90 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.