Hi, I love the service, so thank you. I have one little issue that would most likely be a very easy fix. I am a dad and share my media with other families in my family as well. So I like to divide my media up accordingly whether it be movie or tv show.
so my library on screen would look like this.
Movies — will contain all movie files
Family Movies — will contain all family and children’s movies
Children’s Movies — will contain only children’s movies
To make things clear just in case anybody is wondering I only have one copy of each file. I am making that copy available to multiple libraries in plex.
The problem this presents is that in every plex app and conceivable player interface at the top of the screen where it gives you the most recent things you have been watching ( a movie for instance ). If that movie is in The movies category and the family movie category it will show it twice instead of just once. The same problem arises if you a watching something out of the children’s category instead of showing it twice it shows the movie as the first three options to keep watching.
The same problem persists under the recently added offerings. things added to more than one library show duplicate entries.
I consider this a bug that needs to be fixed rather than a feature. However, I dod not see a category and this seems the closest.
If there is a fix for this I am open, however, please do not inform me of the wonderful sorting options available in plex I know about them. I have people over to my home all the time and don’t want to give a lesson on plex every day of the week. Instead, I need parents and children to be comfortable using the system with no explanation.
Please only comment if you have the same issue, are a tech authority, or work directly with development. Thank you.
Unfortunately, there is no fix to this. Plex treats each library individually therefore each library a file is added to, it gets added to the dashboard also, eventhough it is only 1 file.
From reading what the original poster said, they don’t wan’t DUPLICATES FROM THE SAME FILE showing on the dashboard. If they follow your suggestion, they won’t get anything from a certain library, which is not what they want.
I do the same thing as the original poster. And I DO NOT like the duplicates appearing.
Unfortunately, Plex has SO MANY problems, they most likely will never get to this. They probably wont even acknowledge it with their track record.
Disabling this only prevents the items from showing on the default or home page of Plex. You can still see “On Deck” and “Continue Watching” by going to the Discovery page for each library… The home page, from the OP’s example will show all of the “On Deck” and “Continue Watching” from all libraries, since the the first library contains all the movies.
It might be considered a work-around, but it does get rid of the duplicates, and all items are visible on the home page.without the duplicates.
Well speaking for me personally, I like using the “On Deck”, “Recently Added” and “Continue Watching” from the MAIN home page and not the individual library sub (discovery) pages.
It is a pain to see multiple instances of the SAME file in these categories just because I choose to put them in different libraries. To me, disabling them from the main home page is not an option, NOR SHOULD IT HAVE TO BE.
There are SO MANY problems with Plex, as a company right now…
They put out incomplete and/or buggie features (or whole versions) of their product instead of waiting until they are 100% complete and properly functional. It is more quantity instead of QUALITY with them.
They (mostly) don’t acknowledge and/or get snarky with their customers when they point out their mistakes or technical issues. They get upset and close a topic when a customer does not search for a topic before posting, yet their forums have SO MAY topics and SO MANY problems listed, it makes it nearly impossible to search for the proper thread to post in.
They really do not like to use customer feature requests and/or feedback. They really do have a “My way or the highway” mentality towards their customers.
They use a very poor way (these forums) to communicate and resolve issues instead of having a proper, functional customer support system. Because of this, someone’s very real technical issue can be buried pages deep in these forums with no chance of ever getting acknowledged or resolved.
EVERY customer tech issue should be acknowledged, PERIOD! I have read where @elan has said that they don’t have enough staff or time to do so because the issues greatly outnumber their staff. TWO problems with that, 1) Hire more staff! and 2) Don’t put such buggie features and versions out in the first place (or hire more qualified personnel to write your code).
It truly seems like they are at a point where with every upgrade they do, they break or make inoperable twice as many features as they fix.
They claim they are going to get better, but time and time again, they show no signs of actually getting better or changing their ways.
They seem that they want to compete with the “big boys” (Netflix / Hulu) by offering web based content, yet they don’t have the staff and/or knowledge base to do so. Could you imagine if the “big boys” had the usability and technical problems that Plex has? It would be national media attention worthy.
Anyway, getting back on track, just because there is a “work around” to a problem Plex has created, doesn’t mean the customer should have to figure it out and/or use such “work around”.
“Work arounds” are like band aids. They don’t fix a problem, they just temporarily cover it up. Unfortunately, many people’s Plex systems must look like mummys with all the band aids we have to use!
Read what I said again. What you want to see is exactly what will happen. One entry on the main, home page from all libraries, with no duplicates. You will be able to access everything from the home page.
You will not be missing any items from the home page. from the libraries where you have disabled the “show on Deck.”
You will not have to go to the individual libraries to see On Deck, Recently Added or Continue Watching, unless you choose to, where you will only see the items for that library.
Actually, I think the problem is self-induced. We have created libraries pointing to the same files, and expect Plex to sort out what we want to happen. I only called it a work-around, because it seemed apparent you wouldn’t accept an answer, and probably haven’t tried it to see how well it actually works.
Thank you so much for pointing out the obvious to me. I have so much on my plate this one slipped right under my nose. Also sorry for not voting the response sooner.
Please fix this… I have the same issue where my libraries contain a subset of my main libraries. I have no duplicate files only subsets.
Duplicate items showing up everywhere is a bug. It is very annoying and utterly silly. You should not be allowed to use the admin account as a media viewer (other than web) because it is broken! It either needs to be intelligent or configurable or you should not be able to use it.
Any of these would be more acceptable; can you please fix this?
• Possible fix: Admin account is only for creating other accounts and on the web and cannot be used as a media center user. Why allow users to use a broken account. You would need to be able to copy watched items to the different account.
• Possible fix: Admin account smart enough to see that the same video from the same location is the same and is not a duplicate. (crazy thing, plex knows these are the same file look below at my screenshot) How could the same exact file path be two items? It shows on dashboard that I am in the middle of two identical movies at the same time time location, but it is the same movie it is not a duplicate. Admin account must be crossed eyed seeing double.
• Possible fix: Admin account could ignore libraries. If I could set admin to ignore libraries all duplicates will vanish, but Admin is not allowed to do the most basic task of ignoring a library or ignoring exact same files or being able to see this is the exact same file path. I am not talking about duplicate files but the exact same file path, location, same hard drive, same same same!
Thanks for reading. I am enjoying using plex but I have so much invested in my broken admin account it will take me hours and hours to create a new account and set all of my watched shows and my wife’s watched shows and I will want to rename my admin account to BROKEN and remember never to use it again. If you can please fix this…
The plot thickens…
Look at screen shot below of my media center. Plex is seeing that the file is the same but still shows it twice.
Scenario: I watched This Is Us and The Office from only one library and stopped it part way through. Why does plex show the progress of the same file in both libraries (same video displayed twice same progress bar)? Plex must be detecting it is the same file (or it would only show one video with a progress bar from the lib I was watching) but it still is displaying that I am watching both libraries. Plex sees it is the same file in both but laughs at me and displays it twice…
Plex treats each library individually therefore each library a file is added to, it gets added to the dashboard also, eventhough it is only 1 file.
They probably wont even acknowledge it with their track record. 
