Yeah, no, that’s really bad behavior.
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Exactly, so you see what I’m saying, right? Not having this feature does not protect the server owner, it just makes it more cumbersome to share content with people you actually want to share it with. People can still (and do) share login credentials with others as much as is done with any other streaming (or otherwise) service even if this feature does not exist.
If we’re talking about protecting the server owner, there are other ways to achieve this. But this just give a facade if of protection, not actual protection.
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Sure but since when does this stop people from doing it? Like others said, people share their netflix/Disney+/etc. accounts every day.
The Feature to extend the sharing of your library to managed users of your friend would more likely prevent sharing of credentials than enabling it.
I am glad that there finally seems to be some sort of movement in this thread.
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Hi elan, thanks for joining the discussion.
No, I would even say the opposite is the case.
I’m thinking from the perspective of the server owner.
I as a server owner share with a user and maybe limit their streams and/or quality.
I DON’T care (as it makes no difference at all) if they share their access with their household by using the main account on every device OR if they would use managed user under that account (for segregating watch history or protecting children)
The load on my server would be exactly the same, BUT it would be a great improvement for the users.
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Holy words!!!
Managed users means shared credentials. No matter if you have this feature or not, people who you share your library with will have the ability to share what you give them access to, by sharing their credentials.
Not implementing this does not mean more control for the server’s owner AT ALL. It just means having separate history and playlist when you are logged in on a shared device, such as a smart TV.
Without this feature, everyone that lives in my home (and therefore use my TV) can access whatever is shared with me. Implementing this would not make service owners lose any control whatsoever, but do the exact same thing just with a nicer UX for history.
Also, as it’s been suggested many times before in these last 9 years, this could be disabled by default which would mean server owners would OPT IN for this behavior. Best of both worlds.
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Been searching for a way to restrict what my kids can view on the various servers that are shared with me, only to come across this thread and find out it’s not implemented. Thankfully I only signed up for Plex Pass monthly instead of annual.
You can just create separate Plex accounts for your kids, and then add those accounts to your Plex Home. Next, ask the outside Plex server admins to share content with your kids’ Plex accounts.
This effectively does what you want.
Just don’t give your kids the passwords to their accounts, just as you don’t give them your Plex password (I assume). Then you can control the Account settings to lock the account down to mimic a Managed User Account.
This is incorrect.
You can turn off all online media sources for your kids’ accounts. You just don’t give your kids the password to the account nor allow them to use the account with a web browser or Plex web.
Plex doesn’t offer that type of control over shared content to ANY account. No client can selectively restrict content shared with them.
I’m currently working with two families to set up exact what people are hoping to achieve in this thread. The parents want unrestricted access to my content but they want their kids to have restricted access.
I help those families set up separate Plex accounts for their kids. I then have the parents add those kid accounts to their Plex Home, so the family can share devices.
Next, I shared unrestricted content to the parents’ account and then I share a restricted amount of content with the kid accounts based on Labels.
It’s different in that Plex provides the restriction controls on the server-side instead of the client. Most streaming services pass those controls to the client.
Plex was setup with the mindset of allowing a parent to control content to their kids. Plex then projected those server side controls into the sharing ability with friends.
Plex was not setup to be like a paid content sharing service. Those services do want to give all the controls to the clients. Plex on the other hand is about an admin controlling how their own content is shared.
What I really believe people are asking for here is the ability for a client account to create restrictions on the content shared with them.
This topic is HOT!
There are a lot of spicy takes, and it seems like there is also a lot of pushback from Plex. Some of the things Ive seen in this thread are to do with:
- The sharing users ability to control what’s being shared and with whom
- The receiving users ability to control who views what in their plex home
- Privacy concerns
- Data use concerns
and more
As a user of plex myself, I would love the ability to narrow what my kids can watch or even see.
A comment a while back from Big_wheel was that users who share would want to limit how many streams folks use for various reasons - I think this is flawed, since I could share my credentials with anyone, and they could use plex at the same time as me. The same within my home - I have my plex installed and logged in to all my devices, and so my kids or I can watch what we want any time. Having more user accounts does not change the number of streams we use.
I’m not asking to share my account with the world and thus share my friends generosity with the world as well. I am asking for the ability to limit content shared with me to age appropriate content for my family. This seems like a pretty standard offering in most streaming services these days.
As it stands, the only way to do this is by having multiple Plex accounts, and my friend sharing the age appropriate content with the kids account directly. This is a pain because we have to log out and back in to the different accounts on some devices.
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No, Plex Home allows you to NOT login for each account.
Yes, it does require asking the server admin to set up the restrictions. I do agree, it would be nice to allow the client to set the restrictions, but I understand how Plex got to where it is with the server admin having those controls.
This is not what I said. I am saying that plex home currently does not give access to shared libraries to managed users. In order for me to be able to restrict content for my kids, and still enjoy the full content myself, I need two plex accounts (not plex managed users) in orders to do it with both accounts having the content shared, and one having the content restrictions managed by the sharing party, not myself. all of this is frustrating beyond words. and after that, I cannot log into multiple accounts on one device, so I must log out of one account, then into the other depending on who is accessing the content.
I think I see what you are getting at with you comment - the workaround you suggested which is to have the two accounts and add the second account to the plex home of the first. this is still a poor user experience, which plex has in it’s power to fix, but are unwilling to do on arbitrary basis.
My wife currently has a second Plex account, which is part of my Plex Home. I did this to allow her to have her own Playlists and “watched” tracking. We use PINs to “login” to each account (so the kids can’t access) but it doesn’t require the full username/password. It isn’t much of a hassle and I use the “automatic login” on my protected devices (phone) to avoid the PIN requirement there. So, the only place I have to use the PIN is on my Roku, which the kids use too.
If I wanted to, I could restrict my wife’s access to specific content. I could do this with my kids too.
I haven’t yet jumped in fully, but I have setup, as a test, a full Plex account for one of my kids and added to Plex Home. I did restrict content to it. However, I still have my kids using the managed users account because they don’t need access to shared servers at this time.
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And you need to pay a Plex pass for the receiver client in addition to the server Plex pass admin just to be able to create a Plex Home.
Smart.
No, you only need Plex Pass for the server. My wife’s free Plex account is part of my Plex Home and we only have a Plex Pass for the server account.
I’ll add that if you don’t have a (lifetime) Plex Pass, then you really can’t complain.
I have a lifetime pass. But I have friends that I shared my server with (they are 2). If they want to use their own account on the same device (say the living room Tv) to keep track of their own history, they have to buy a Plex Home only for that. Otherwise they have to disconnect and reconnect their account.
That is the issue for me.
I could share the server with one account that creates a managed user, but we fall in the topic in that case.
