We need this
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I run a server. My family that speaks another language has access to my library. I would like my family to be able to have multiple users on one account (different than the account sharing the library due to the language situation), all with access to the same library.
Ultimately, there are only legal and technical arguments against this.
There is no argument against this based on “I run a server and don’t want people I share with to then share my library without my consent”. This is not an argument because every single person who has argued for shared libraries with managed users on other accounts has made it clear they would be happy to have the current restriction as the default option.
From my perspective after reading this decades-old thread, plex staff either seem unable to comprehend what’s being presented to them OR they have intentionally dodged this feature for legal or technical reasons but never wanted to admit it.
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I invite friends and family to my server. And most of my friends and family have wives, husbands, kids, etc.
It would be absolutely amazing if I invited someone via their email. And once they’ve accepted the invite, they can then create profiles associated to their email. Giving them the ability to create say one profile for the husband, one for the wife, one for the kids… Each with ability to have their own restrictions.
I can apply say a top level amount of restrictions, and they can modify anything up to my restrictions, and not past. That way they can have access to all of my libraries on their account, but maybe their kids only have access to Kids TV and Movies with Restrictions for playback set to a maximum rating of like PG-13 or something.
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6 posts were split to a new topic: Sharing with kids (managed users) while they‘re with their grandparents
Hello. I’m new to Plex and this exactly what’s missing. I need this to set up my home media. I have a friend sharing movies with me. And I want my kids to watch some of that content. Or set up just one device (tv in the living room) to access age appropriate content from shared library. How do I do it?
You can’t. That is what this feature request is asking for
Counter-suggestion: managed users are clearly confusing. They also contribute to the password sharing security problem.
Take them away. Just have normal users.
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It’s been 10 years :-)… Plex must have good reasons not to do this. However there is something not logical in this whole managed users thing. They are not plex users, the way I see this. Just some kind of “sub-users” under my own account. When I look at this this way it seems completely feasible that those “users” can access a shared library. Why not? It is “me”, not some other plex user I added. My use case (parental control over shared library) is not refuted with the arguments given before. Plex can call it any other way. Maybe they can revisit this feature and allow access to shared library for up to 2 managed home users that are not real plex accounts. I really need this.
—edit
I don’t want to create a real plex account for my children and ask my friend to share his library with them and then manage those accounts by myself. I know this is how people have worked around this but it looks like everything is there to make this happen without extra work. It would be ok for me if those “managed accounts” became “managed devices”. My account - different restrictions per device. HTH
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Seems like an easy add, why can’t this be done?
Parent owns main account, has media kids should not watch so sets up a kids account with age restrictions. Relative shares home videos, with can’t be shared with the child account for some unknown reason, meaning you need to trade family videos for child restrictions. This is objectively a bad design and needs to be fixed…
Edit: The workaround works and so that’s fine - Create a plex user, share your library with the user and have whoever else wants to share with that plex user. You can add restrictions on the sharing to that user. Not ideal but it works. You only need 1 plex pass, for the server, the clients shouldnt matter
Its been more than 10 years.
Its ridiculous. We still need this! How hard can it be to implement?
As far as I can remember individual answers, you don’t want to implement it. They think you should just create multiple accounts.
I don’t understand it either because every other streaming service has the option of creating sub-accounts.
For me, this contradicts the possibility of allowing multiple streams per account. What use is it to me to enable 3-4 streams for someone if they all come from the same account without their own history etc.?
Especially in families with children, it simply cannot be that this is not possible. You can only really protect the children if you have several accounts, which simply makes the whole thing massively more expensive.
I’ve already suggested once that you could even ask the main owner to buy a Plex Pass if he wants to create sub-accounts, but nobody has responded to that either.
It’s a pity that Plex so often fails to programme the real problems. But the main thing is that at least the 4th redesign is coming since I joined. That is of course much more important.
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It all boils down to the devs seeing it as a separate account, except it’s an account with no ability to actually log in, nor be shared with by anybody, because it doesn’t act like a separate account.
It was probably designed by one guy to add extra control in his home, then pushed to everyone else and advertised as something it’s not. Because that’s the thing, it works perfectly as long as it’s your server and your login.
In the end it’ll never change, because they refuse to see it the way actual users see it, so they cripple it down to a useless “feature” where you basically have to let everyone use the Admin Profile because that’s the only one that has any access to servers.
So my brother can watch anything he wants, and so can everyone else in his home, on as many devices as they want, but only from the main profile. If everyone else, that uses the same login credentials, but has a different watch history, would watch something it would be sacrilege and uncontrollable.
There should be an internal email to use to invite managed users, I only recently ran into this when someone wanted to have a managed account for their child have restricted access to my server.
say I already invited them through person@example.com , inviting another user (probably with the email copied from their managed account) with something like man1:person@example.com . The invite will still go to the users email just like a normal invite, only it just affects the users managed account.
Or there should be an option when inviting a user to allow their managed accounts to access the shared library. This should not be restricted to the server owners account or be pay walled behind Plex Pass
And while plex home is a good solution for when using it on shared devices, when the device just isn’t shared, there doesn’t seem to be a usable solution except creating a new seperate account for the child and logging in/out whenever needed.
I have people that I share my server with and those people have children that they would like to create managed account for to be able to do content restrictions, but they are unable to pass the shared content over to the managed account. This only seems possible if you are the owner of the server. It would be nice if there was an option for these users to be able to pass media shared with them over to their managed accounts to help with content control inside their households instead of having to make more Plex accounts, just so their kids can have content restriction. This also puts the ownness on the server owner instead of the individual household that is streaming shared content.
This feature should be implemented by now. It is simple. You [Plex] already have ALL of the stuff in place.
First, when sharing a library with someone you already have the ability to limit the number of streams as well as what is shared. So you can’t say that allowing home accounts is ripe for abuse. It is already abused because people share credentials.
Second, you already have age and parental controls in place so the home account admin can limit what their kids/family members can watch as long as the person sharing and the media being shared honor ratings.
Third, allowing home managed accounts does NOT provide for abuse. My family all use MY account because they can see shared libraries so we are all accessing the data anyway. What is NOT happening is my kids/family can’t have their own watch lists, and their activity clutters up my experience. To even insinuate there is abuse is crazy. I look at the authorized devices on my account and there are no less than 20 devices actively logged in with my account (I know this because I had to force everyone to reauthorize when you had your last security fix. So all of those clients already have access to what is shared with me. My friend is well aware.
Fourth, I pay every year, and love Plex but it is crazy that features like this (as well as support for .nfo files) which every other home media server support somehow are lost with Plex. I can’t even count the number of times I’ve had to move my library only to have to rebuild metadata because I can’t keep info with the mkv in the same folder, and migrating metadata is a complete ■■■■■. Maybe you can implement a database backup and restore if you are not going to implement local metadata). SMH. I digress.
Guys, get it together. You can implement this, and it can be done well, securely, and with controls in place. I know because I manage a developer team. Your issue is you don’t want to do the work because actually thinking through the entire process might take some time and a need for consensus.
Just do it already!
Lastly, I love this platform, and have been committed to it for more than 10 years. But I just setup a Jellyfin server in 15 minutes, and it honored all of the ‘local” metadata right out of the gate. This is so insanely silly. If you guys don’t want to add new features then you can lower the cost for a Plex Pass, and stick to security platform updates. Otherwise… what am I paying you for?
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