I have a friend that offered up their Plex account/pw so I could share their content. I’ve looked all over the settings and can’t seem to find a way to add an external server to be accessed through my Plex setup.
Is that even possible? I’ve seen articles for multiple users, but that seems to be only for the same network.
I believe the proper way to do it would be for your friend to have Plex Pass, then add your Plex account as a “family member” to their home, giving you access to their server(s).
I don’t believe there’s any way for you to use their account other than you log out of yours and log in with theirs… which is probably dangerous for your friend, since that probably gives you full control of their server.
Yeah, that’s kinda what I figured would be the case.
The route I’ve used has been to get my friend to create an account in Plex and add that username as a friend to my Plex server, and share specific libraries back and forth.
The thing is we don’t want to share back and forth. I can’t share out my server as we both have bandwidth issues, so I want to see first if I can share his collection and see what that does to my network.
I was hoping it would be just as easy as switching to another user and being able to access his whole collection that way.
Yeah your friend shouldn’t have done it that way.
He simply needs to invite you to his server.
It doesn’t need to be via Plex Home…in fact it probably shouldn’t be.
The best way is for you to look at YOUR server settings… It’s pretty easy to figure out how to share, so once you figure it out then simply tell him how to do it properly.
I think it’s only the Plex Home method of sharing that needs him to have a Plex Pass. But I may be wrong.
Sorry, that would be a horrible mistake!
If you accept an invitation into a foreign Plex Home, your own Plex Home will be destroyed. Including all managed users.
The proper way would be for your friend to invite you as a Friend:
https://support.plex.tv/articles/201105738-creating-and-managing-server-shares/
There is no need for Plex Pass for basic sharing, btw.
I guess I’ve always had Plex Pass, and assumed it was necessary (I know it is for the Home User stuff, guess I thought it was for the regular sharing too)… but why would accepting an invite to someone else’s Home destroy your own if you have your own Plex Pass? That doesn’t sound like a smart way to set something like that up.
Maybe there’s something I’m not understanding… This support article mentions that you can add a person with an existing Plex account to your Home… but there is nothing that says if that friend already has their own Plex Home, that theirs will be destroyed as a result of your adding them to your Home, and their accepting. I thought the whole idea behind Plex Home was to quickly and easily share access to your whole server with family (as opposed to specific libraries, which can be done with regular sharing).
Why would someone accepting an invitation to my Plex Home have anything at all to do with theirs that they’ve already set up? And if there’s only a “one home per account” limit, it would be good to call that out somewhere… maybe I missed it.
The user with an own home is warned if he is about to accept an invitation into a foreign home.
Joining a Plex Home is not just about sharing.
https://support.plex.tv/articles/203960236-consequences-of-being-in-a-plex-home/
It also activates ‘Fast User switching’
It is explicitly intended for your immediate family, which lives with you in the same household.
Imagine what would happen if both Homes would be retained:
the user selection list would get longer and each member of the home would be able to see/switch to each of the other home accounts, given that not every member has a PIN set and that a 4-digit PIN is rather easy to brute-force.
Besides, if you have a Plex Pass, you can use the same label-based or rating-based access restrictions with ‘Friend’ accounts like you can use with managed users.
Cool, thanks for the info! I’ve learned a bit more about how it works now, and sorry to the OP for my incorrect info!
So the regular sharing is available without a Plex pass then… and if you have a Plex Pass, don’t add someone to your home unless they’re REALLY in your home! 
Precisely. 
So I’m still thinking that my original assumption is still correct.
That is: currently there is no way to have another user’s externally accessed account to be made accessible by either fast user switching or any other method than to log out of my account and log into his.
Is that the correct assumption of how Plex works? If so, would there be a use case that the devs can think of to allow fast user switching to work outside of the home network?
As I said above:
This will make it possible for you to switch to his server and libraries easily without logging out and in.
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