Server Version#: 1.43.1.10540 (but the issue does not appear server-dependent)
Player Version#: 10.30.8.4222
Steps to reproduce:
- From any Plex top-level library within the main collection menu, select any TV show, movie, etc
- If a TV show, navigate down (depth wise) to the desired season, then episode
- Start playing the show/movie
- Hit the back button on the remote, either while playback is proceeding, or while the program is paused
- The client jumps all the way back to the top library menu level in the collection (left-hand sidebar menu) last selected
I understand a decision has to be made as to what to have the back button do, as the home button on an Android TV remote, including on the Shield, always takes the user back to the home Android TV menu by default. My assumption is that the Plex devs decided to have the back button function as a “home button within the Plex app context”, since there’s no other dedicated button on most Android TV remotes that is (easily, without extra apps, etc) to perform that function.
This behavior, however, diverges from the back button’s standardized behavior across the Android TV platform, which is to simply “go backward one step in the trail of UI navigation;” i.e.: the standard behavior would be for hitting the back button to simply take the user back to the screen for the individual TV episode, movie, video file, etc being played, preserving the ability to traverse the breadcrumb trail backward, stepwise, using the back button as desired. T o my memory, the latter is how every other media/streaming app I’ve ever used (Netflix, Hulu, Disney, etc, etc, etc) on Android TV functions, and Plex’s departure from this standard behavior causes regular (daily) friction and frustration for my family for several use cases / user journeys. For examples:
- User wants to back out of watching a specific episode of a TV show, navigate to the next (or some other, different) episode in the same season (or “series” if you use the queen’s/king’s English), and start playing that episode
- User wants to quickly check the “vitals”/metadata for the TV episode or movie currently being played, such as to answer: “what year did this episode/season first air?”
- User wants to delete the current program (file) being watched, if required permissions nerd knobs have been turned to allow the optional delete command in Plex to execute a delete on the underlying library’s storage filesystem
Using the Plex app’s current implementation of the back function, any of the above requires the user to arrow right to highlight and select the show/movie/file all over again to get to where the back button would otherwise have taken the user in a single click.
Granted this it is not a standard function of the back button on Android TV, but some apps do opt to implement a press-and-hold function of the back button to create a “home, but only within the app” type jump function to navigate back/up multiple levels toward the top level of the app. For reference on Emby: https://emby.media/community/topic/90584-back-button-behaveor/.
Would the Plex devs please consider doing something like this for Plex, in order to restore the standard back button behavior, and avoid the annoying “now I have to start over” situations as I described above?
Thanks for considering this request!
