It does. As a server owner you can e.g. restrict the number of concurrent streams for a single account… so there’s ways to limit users just signing in dozens of friends with their own account.
Not saying this suggestion doesn’t have its merits… that doesn’t mean everybody must fall in line and like it the same way as you. Could be “as simple as”** allowing an option when sharing with a friend if they should be allowed to inherit their access to their own managed users (potentially with their own parental controls added).
**) referring to “as simple as” from a usability point of view… not sure if/how simple an actual implementation like this will be
Of course you can, but that has nothing to do with who is getting access to your media.
And I would think that the stream limit will of course be valid for an account AND ALL managed accounts under that, so it would even support my claim, that it would be no difference at all for the server owner.
Currently you can do this. It requires that you make a separate Plex account and add it to your server as a Home member user. Then have your friends also share to it with the content restrictions you would like on the account.
Home Users are kind of like managed users except that they have their own login to plex.tv.
Why are such feature requests always such a tough thing?
I can limit the streams per user, but the user himself can’t create home accounts for his family and limit the access per user (primarily it’s about children).
In my opinion, it can’t be that you have to waste 2 slots on my server for this, if he would like to have 2 simultaneous streams, but there are 4 people in the household and they all want to have their playlists and selections. This is also about child protection. Unfortunately, Plex doesn’t seem to care about that.
Especially in this regard, they lag behind the other providers. All the others offer to create up to 10 user accounts, but that doesn’t work here, only by recording all the people individually, which is simply not practical.
++++WOW, I was searching all day how to do this on my server. Need this badly. I share my server with friend family, but his managed users on tv (kids) can’t see anything!!!. Only admin user can. If you can take movie from my server to friends account, you can add friends managed users play history to my server. It’s not so hard how it looks. I am programmer, and some smart changes to code could do this.
This really has to happen, both my brother and I who have individual households share content, yet our content can only be shared with each others admin accounts? Really need to rethink this, as our managed users (wives, kids, live-in parents) really want shared access as well. Seems pretty basic… Yes, we are both invested as lifetime pass members and support plex. This is a big miss regarding addressing customer use cases.
How is this so controversial? This is no different to how Netflix, Spotify etc all work. I know Plex is a little different, but hear me out…
With Plex currently, if I (server owner) grant library access to my brothers Plex account, then with how Plex currently exists, my brother’s wife and kids have to directly use my brothers account meaning watch progress/history etc is all shared between them. This is big problem when the family may all watch the same media independently.
If Managed Users were able to have the same access as the Home Admin, then my brother’s wife and kids would have their own watch progress and history. My brother would not be granting ADDITIONAL access to my server, they are just SEGREGATING the histories and defining their own restrictions (with Plex Pass).
This should mean the Server Admin has no less control over their media. If my brother was planning to abuse this and create Managed Users for people such as non-family members, he would have already been doing this with the current system by sharing his account. There is no difference, as Server Admins are already having to keep an eye out for this and Managed Users still need to initially log in as the Home Admin.
Since this somehow seems controversial, then having the sever owner be able to control my brothers ability to do this would be fine too.
Having this intentionally missing in Plex just seems like nonsense to me.
Instead of using managed users, you can create an account for all the persons you want to share your server with.
Then, one of these accounts will need to create a Plex home et group the other accounts in the same place (i.e. home)
Of course, you need Plex pass for that.
The feature of sharing with managed user of other accounts will not be coming (I guess), as they earn money from the Plex home creation.
Why services like Netflix, Prime Video, Disney+ etc… can have it and Plex can’t?!
I saw that this discussion is like 9 YEARS OLD and no such option has been implemented yet!
If Plex is designed specifically to be more in control of our own media through sharing our PMS with other relatives and close friends, why the heck we lack control on a thing as basic as this??
Hope someone at Plex reads this and listen to us, the faithful ( and paying) users of their platform who are demanding this for years now!
It has nothing to do with money; it’s mainly that from the point of the the server owner, it’s weird if you saw stuff streaming to people you didn’t know. And if I’m giving you permission to stream, what should that allow you to give permission to other people, when it’s coming from my server?
I understand what you’re saying, but you’re thinking purely from the perspective of the users doing the streaming.
I’ve re-read this whole thread and I’m starting to wonder if the inability for these users and Plex staff to see eye-to-eye on this has to do with a difference in thinking regarding what Managed Users are.
Please correct me if I’m wrong, but to me it seems that Managed Users exist as a sub-user controlled by a real user (the Home Admin).
For that reason it seems like Managed Users are analogous to every streaming service’s Profiles feature, primarily useful as a way to segregate watch history/progress between the members of a household.
If that’s not what Managed Users are, I can’t see what use they serve and would love to be clued in.
Is there perhaps another solution Plex has in mind for implementing what were describing? Something that every streaming service seems to have figured out at this point.
A couple more thoughts:
If I’m correct that Managed Users are just an extension of a normal Plex User, could the streams not just appear as coming from the real Plex User that had been invited? Whether it’s the server owners brother or the brother’s kids playing the stream, that shouldn’t matter to a server owner.
Currently a family will already be sharing an account, so taking advantage of Managed Users in the way described above shouldn’t have any impact on the average number of streams. They would just benefit from seperate histories.
If this Managed User Sharing was controlled by the server owner than does that negate any argument against doing it? As they already have to do currently, it would be up to the Server Owner to ensure undesired account sharing wasn’t occuring.
I as a server owner can understand the frustration of my friends who have family and can not protect their underage children with their own sub-account that hides and blocks the 16 and 18 content.
Finally, I as a server owner can say how many streams the user may have, so greater abuse is excluded anyway. So in the end I don’t care who is watching from his family. You can limit it to home accounts, but personally it does not matter who watches from his family, because I know all my users personally and know that they will not make unnecessary sub-accounts, etc., but it is a need.
I do not find your argument at all conclusive. I don’t care if you have to pay for it or if you have to extend your Plex Pass again, it would be worth it to me because I know that many of my friends want the feature and it seems to be a need not only in my environment if you read here.
I often have the feeling that you always turn it around depending on the feature as it just fits into your state of mind. With other features it is said not always think only of you (server admins) but also of the users and here it is now the reverse. But in the end you don’t have to care who benefits from it or not. In the end you only produce a software that should have as many features as possible and each server admin is responsible for what he allows and what not. So why don’t you make a setting that prevents the sharing, similar to the blocking of transcoding. Either you allow it or not.
I would be pleased if a rethinking takes place with you. I think the majority of users want to protect their children and I think that should also be in the foreground for you.
Sorry but I don’t understand your argument, if I chose to share my library with another user I’m already essentially giving them the ability to share with other users that I don’t know simply due to the fact that they can share their credentials.
If anything, the current situation makes it more difficult to control/understand who’s the “legitimate” users because those additional “illegitimate” people could not even be differentiated from the legitimate user with whom you intended to share your library with.
Bottom line, this doesn’t matter. People want this, if there’s concern here simply have this as a configurable setting that’s off by default and when a user toggles it on have a simple message that explains the repercussions and asking to confirm they understand. Problem solved.
