Request to allow home users see shared libraries.
A number of my friends have content that my kids watch but i am trying to the users features for home users so i can control what they watch but they cannot see any shared libraries under their home login. if content is shared with me as the admin then i'd like this content to be available to my family also and can control whether they see it, similar to how i can control what they can see from my server library.
thanks
While there may or may not be a Voting thread on your subject, a quick search would have given you a current answer to your question...
There is a reason why "branched" sharing (as I call it) is not a good idea. Whomever chose to share their server with you, did not choose to share it with all your family or friends simultaneously. It can become a serious bandwidth issue for the person sharing if things get out of control. The share is set up with one user. For example, if I shared some of my libraries with someone at a large organization like, say... Microsoft, and then he decides to share it with 2,340 people in his department, if even a percentage of them choose to watch movies from my server at the same time, my server goes up in smoke.
Perhaps once Plex includes more controls at the server for who can and can't have access, things will change, but until then sharing is an invite thing. You can always have the person that shared with you... share with the others directly. Just set them up with free plex.tv accounts first.
[places tongue in cheek]
That's why the invite email calls them "Someone Wonderful" :)
Simply put, if this feature were to come about, where people could re-share my content with their own users, I would unshare with the first shared user. I might not know the second shared person, or if I did, I might not want to share my libraries with them. If someone else shared my stuff with out to others, I would be pretty upset.
If you have content shared out to you from someone, and you would like to have your users see that content, you need to talk to the one that shared with you to have them make the accounts for your users on their system. If they decide they don't want to do that, that is their choice. NOT YOURS! It is THEIR content, and THEIR bandwidth, computer equipment, etc.
It's actually pretty bold to expect to be able to share out someone else's shared content, especially without talking to the sharing person first... :/
You mean like the time you loaned me that Power Tool, and after a few weeks I never brought it back, so you dropped by to get it.... and I loaned it to my buddy across town... who loaned it to his dad for the weekend... a month ago.
That kinda thing?
:rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes:
Yeah, worse thing about that is, I went across the street to borrow one from the neighbor and he loaned me my own tool back... :)
dont comment if its not useful!
i have 4 plex's running in my house and all have access to shared libraries before the home users feature was even available so there is no difference in wanting to restrict family members what they see but still having access to the libraries. Just as the friends i share my libraries with have a number of devices and allow their families in their home to use the devices with access to all libraries. its not like im adding half the people in my street into my home user account.
as the feature was already there before the home users feature i cant see the problem with the home users having access to the same libraries as before but allowing more control on the content from the admin. if the feature doesnt come then it makes the home users function useless and i'll just carry before the feature became available
Ok, here's something useful to the discussion then:
I don't want someone I'm sharing with sharing out my entire library to any Tom , Dick or Harry. PERIOD!
But, let's put this on the other foot for a minute... You are sharing your library with me. I have Home Users set up for both of my "Home" areas. Western Washington, and Alaska. Users in Alaska use my media when I'm in Washington and the server is located there. I move back to Alaska, the server moves with me and my Home users in Washington use the same media but now relocated to Alaska...
You share with me, and I share your media with my Home Users. These Home Users access your server when I'm traveling and when they do, they take the full bandwidth or full transcode ability of YOUR server to view your media on their devices. And you would be cool with this? What if they did this when MY server was also set up completely, but I didn't have the show they want to watch? What if their use of YOUR server starts to affect YOUR ability to watch your media remotely, or even locally?
Their hardware would have the limits I placed on them, or the settings I want them to use, but not what you might want them to use. And then you would be calling ME to get me to change MY settings, even though I'm not the one doing the watching....
The bottom line is, this would be, IMO, a BAD thing. Sharing the sharing would need some sort of controls in place to come live as the ability to do so came online, otherwise it could be really abused. (And certainly would be.)
People are already starting to abuse (IMO) Home Users beyond what it was originally designed and intended for. People are asking to extend the limits beyond 15 users so their users "get the same experiences" as the main account does. People are asking for how to get their friend's Xbox set up without needing their own Pass account. They are being advised BY NINJA'S to add these friends to their Home User accounts.
Sharing a shared friend's content would also be abused very quickly, I think. And there would likely be no controls placed on this for a considerable length of time. The tools we have been asking for and desperately NEED haven't shown up yet. I doubt this would get implemented with those tools and controls in place.
I'll leave the discussion with one last comment.... Who are you (or anyone, really) to decide who, how, when or what of MY media gets shared with whom? Isn't that MY job as the Server Administrator?
** ridiculous reprimand removed **
i have 4 plex's running in my house and all have access to shared libraries before the home users feature was even available...
I assume by this you mean that each of those devices (before) were logged in as the same user. You could always continue to do that of course. Just do away with your PlexHome and log everyone in as you again... kind of defeats the purpose though doesn't it?
What if the way this was implemented was the addition of an “Allow viewing by Plex Home (managed) users” checkbox on the sharing restrictions page? This would give the server owner the ability to authorize certain people to share with their Home members while still restricting other friends.
I think we all have some friends we know won’t be an issue and others where we worry. This would give just the right amount of flexibility.
I had hoped this idea would have found a happy home instead of being revived… 
Your idea is probably one of the best we could hope for if something like sharing shared gets implemented. As long as it DEFAULTS to Not Shared when I’m clicking through making a new user.
The questions I have to ask are: Who is reported as watching the video/movie to my PMS when your shared user is viewing something from my server? Is it YOUR user name as the grand share or your USER’S name who isn’t even on my list of users?
And how do you set up any kind of access controls for your users? I could have opened up all of my adult content to your 13-15 year old. How do YOU control this from my end? (You better not be able to do this, anyway!) How do you control it from YOUR end? If you call me up to get permissions to certain things cut off, the easy way to do that is revoke your share, so no sweat on me. (Which would be exactly what would happen, BTW.)
The bottom line is, regardless of how this were to be implemented, it’s going to be problematic for everyone involved to make something workable. At least in a way that will make you, and your users and I and my server happy. If you want my shared content for your users, then either give them access to your shared account on my server or get the media and share it yourself.
If you really feel you want your users to access my content, then you need to have them request I share it with them. And then have me set the viewing permissions accordingly. That way we BOTH are happy. I get their name in my logs, you get restricted viewing on shared content. If they start to abuse my system I can revoke their access and not affect yours.
I easily could see the idea of user groups coming from a discussion like this, and permissions based on the group and not solely the individual. Individual restrictions can be either looser or more stringent based on the individual, with the individual restrictions winning out. Since we don’t have any of the other tools and controls we have asked for yet, I doubt this is going to happen any time soon, either.
Yea opening this up is just a horrible idea. Just ask the server-owner to add your family members and problem solved.
@RockStar said:
Yea opening this up is just a horrible idea. Just ask the server-owner to add your family members and problem solved.
Again, if the users are “managed users” then it can’t be done… right now. That’s the whole issue.> @MikeG6.5 said:
I had hoped this idea would have found a happy home instead of being revived…
Your idea is probably one of the best we could hope for if something like sharing shared gets implemented. As long as it DEFAULTS to Not Shared when I’m clicking through making a new user.
The questions I have to ask are: Who is reported as watching the video/movie to my PMS when your shared user is viewing something from my server? Is it YOUR user name as the grand share or your USER’S name who isn’t even on my list of users?
And how do you set up any kind of access controls for your users? I could have opened up all of my adult content to your 13-15 year old. How do YOU control this from my end? (You better not be able to do this, anyway!) How do you control it from YOUR end? If you call me up to get permissions to certain things cut off, the easy way to do that is revoke your share, so no sweat on me. (Which would be exactly what would happen, BTW.)
The bottom line is, regardless of how this were to be implemented, it’s going to be problematic for everyone involved to make something workable. At least in a way that will make you, and your users and I and my server happy. If you want my shared content for your users, then either give them access to your shared account on my server or get the media and share it yourself.
If you really feel you want your users to access my content, then you need to have them request I share it with them. And then have me set the viewing permissions accordingly. That way we BOTH are happy. I get their name in my logs, you get restricted viewing on shared content. If they start to abuse my system I can revoke their access and not affect yours.
I easily could see the idea of user groups coming from a discussion like this, and permissions based on the group and not solely the individual. Individual restrictions can be either looser or more stringent based on the individual, with the individual restrictions winning out. Since we don’t have any of the other tools and controls we have asked for yet, I doubt this is going to happen any time soon, either.
Not really though. As @BrianAz pointed out, a simple “Allow viewing by Plex Home (managed) users” checkbox would fix it and no shared user would get access to that other server.
just create real accounts for each family member then. Problem solved, for real this time.
I suggested this previously and got the same feedback. I’d still like to see this implemented. I’m good with having a check box to allow the user sharing content to decide if it is re-shared. I only share with about 4 other co-workers so everyone would be good with it. Until this is added I don’t really see much value in the “Home” users.
If a form of this ever gets implemented I hope it is only released with a way to control bandwidth usage @ the server on a per user basis.
I would guess most do not have google fiber so upload bandwidth is at a premium and opening up shares to the rest of a users household can quickly eat-up that upload resource
Or it’s just a case of different people in a household having different accounts for media tracking purposes, and being able to track their own progress on a shared library rather than one person having to login as another to access a particular shared account.
My GF and I use the same TV, but she still needs to use my account, and quite frankly neither of us are happy with that, so the end result is that we don’t end up using any of the shared libraries at all and just have everything locally. While this works for me, it wouldn’t work for many others in the quite the same way.
It would be nice if this was a feature. It would also really simplify things for everyone when we break up, I can just remove her from my home and she loses all my friends shares. Voila. Problem solved 
@Plexhilarated said:
While there may or may not be a Voting thread on your subject, a quick search would have given you a current answer to your question…There is a reason why “branched” sharing (as I call it) is not a good idea. Whomever chose to share their server with you, did not choose to share it with all your family or friends simultaneously. It can become a serious bandwidth issue for the person sharing if things get out of control. The share is set up with one user. For example, if I shared some of my libraries with someone at a large organization like, say… Microsoft, and then he decides to share it with 2,340 people in his department, if even a percentage of them choose to watch movies from my server at the same time, my server goes up in smoke.
Perhaps once Plex includes more controls at the server for who can and can’t have access, things will change, but until then sharing is an invite thing. You can always have the person that shared with you… share with the others directly. Just set them up with free plex.tv accounts first.
[places tongue in cheek]
That’s why the invite email calls them “Someone Wonderful”
So why not limit the amount of home users allowed within PMS to a maximum amount of users so this doesn’t happen?
+1 on getting this implemented, Home users is great if you have a TON of personal media to share with your family but if your kid(s) rarely pick (or search for) a movie, tv show etc, and another family/friend/whomever share has it then it would make life a lot easier. Sure some users will try to abuse this privilege (obviously), I’m sure they already are. But for users that don’t abuse the privilege this really is a bummer. Make a way to limit it somehow to a small amount of home users/bandwidth/PMS allowed home users sharing as @BrianAz mentioned set on default off/or another method. Home users at least for me is for my kids to not watch pron or bad movies/bad shows/bad music. When a new library is added don’t code PMS to allow it to be shared until you have checked that the user doesn’t have a new share with pron in it. Personally I have never seen a user share any pron before out of my 20-30 shared lib’s but I’m sure some do in very RARE cases. Since most users that actually have a brain use Plex to begin with and would be managing their PMS plex home and monitoring what goes on I really don’t see this as much of a huge issue as others have pointed out especially when as stated before a simple message like (a new shared library has been added would you like to review and share its content to your plex home?), limits can but put into place on the amount of home users allowed, bandwidth cap (if needed if not on FTTH or a higher tier ISP), PMS limitation by default to have this option disabled on the shares users PMS libraries end. After purchasing a PlexPass this was disappointing to not see this as a feature and not being able to utilize my shares (I understand the concern but something can be done here to prevent abusing it). Lets think of a realistic solution to this instead, not all of “this is a bad idea due to this and that” due to the obvious concerns we would all have when using a Plex Home as intended. Just think outside the box guys, come on now.
I’ll say again…
Perhaps once Plex includes more controls at the server for who can and can’t have access, things will change, but until then sharing is an invite thing. You can always have the person that shared with you… share with the others directly. Just set them up with free plex.tv accounts first.
Pron [sic] or not, this is more of a bandwidth management issue than it is about content control.
There are already limits (15) on the number of PlexHome users if I understand correctly, but this has nothing to do with controlling shared content.
A request for the same feature exists already, and it has more votes.
Therefore this one is closed.
Votes are given back to the users who voted on this request. Please think of re-voting in the other thread if you still want it.
Please search before creating a new suggestion thread.
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https://forums.plex.tv/c/general/feature-suggestions/l/votes
