Apple TV: use tvOS' Player UI

Plex Experience Preview
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So I’ve been using the new Apple TV Experience for a little while now, and while I have thoughts about UI/UX design and all the other things that I’m sure are going to crop up over the next few months, there’s one major thing that I just can’t get over that I wanted to bring up immediately.

Can we please use the tvOS’ inbuilt video UI, AVPlayerViewController?

I understand that the new player UI is not finished and likely subject to many changes before official release, but it just completely misses the point.

The default experience for almost any video application on the Apple TV is AVPlayerViewController and any Apple TV user who’s spent more than a minute with the OS is very familiar with the control layout. It takes full advantage of gestures, has a predictable escape button, supports metadata, extras, time-based ‘skip intro’ buttons, subtitles, custom playback speed and other buttons and most importantly, is already a uniform and predictable element of the OS that Apple develops, maintains, and supports.

Every time I open one of the few apps that doesn’t use AVPlayerViewController (…ehemm…YouTube…) I cringe through the entire experience. Now I know that all of the things that bug me about this new player UI can and mostly likely will be fixed, but they’re going to have to be fixed by Plex and likely with their own spin rather than the uniformity that Apple is so well-known for. New features of the OS will remain unsupported until Plex implements them across all of their clients and most importantly of all, users will spend more of their Plex Experience fighting the app instead of using it which is ultimately the antithesis of any UX.

With the new Apple Player Engine in beta I was hoping that the Experience preview might point to AVPlayerViewController being the new default and a move away from the tvOS 14 controller, but I remain sorely disappointed. I understand that Plex is aiming for uniformity across its clients, and that is something I honestly commend when it comes to the navigation interface. But for video player controls please just use the built-in OS. It’s there for a reason.

37 Likes
2

Absolutely agree with this. The current player UI is vastly different from any other tvOS app. That is not good.

It’s also slow, clunky and frustrating but I figure those would be worked out by release time. But still, why waste the effort for what will in evidence be worse than the built in UI?

11 Likes
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Jarring, is the word I’d use. I get how this would be an attractive design for people that use android, but as of right now the only thing the new UI makes me want to do is install emby.

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4

I think it looks great.

I have just as many apps that use a custom UI in the player, so it’s definitely not out of place.

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I completely agree with you. We’re missing out on many features that are sorely lacking in a video playback application. At the very least, Plex should let us choose between these two video players.

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My amazement is that our poorly-funded public broadcaster in Australia, the ABC, manages to implement it (probably because, being native, it’s easy) and it makes what is an otherwise pretty ■■■■■■ app actually not that difficult to use – once you’re playing something it just works.

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7

If it’s a universal app that needs to exist across multiple ecosystems, integrating AVPlayerViewController on Apple TV means they still have to build a custom player for everything else.

It’s understandable why they would want not to go that route, even though I prefer the native player.

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It may be understandable, but the fact remains that by replacing a perfectly well-functioning and rather attractive native app with this clunky, webOS-like universal app, they essentially removed themselves from consideration for anyone who chose the Apple TV Plex app as their client because of its superior software experience - one of the key advantages of the Apple platform. This is bad news not only for Apple TV Plex app users but also for those (including myself) who had already switched to Infuse due to various playback issues with the Plex app.

Infuse already had the best playback engine on tvOS by far, but now they can worry even less about improving their somewhat stagnant UI since the only superior competitor (at least among popular apps) has effectively taken itself out of the race, allowing Infuse to win by running in place. Obviously, Plex has different priorities and incentives than competing with an Apple-only local media player, but, as usual, it’s the users who will ultimately be worse off because of this.

8 Likes
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I completely agree with the concerns raised about the new player UI. The decision to move away from the native tvOS player feels like a significant misstep for Apple TV users. The built-in player is a core part of the Apple TV experience – it’s intuitive, polished, and deeply integrated with the OS, making it second nature for anyone familiar with tvOS.

The custom UI, on the other hand, feels out of sync with the Apple TV design principles, plus the native player is developed and maintained by Apple, ensuring long-term compatibility and updates.

I hope Plex reconsiders this approach.

6 Likes
10

I could live with the new UI. There are some odd things that I wish were a bit different, but I think it looks reasonable and have no qualms about apps not looking like an Apple cookie cutter template. My main gripes about the UX are things like:

  • The sidebar was an easy way to get back to home regardless of how deep you were rather than having to click back a million times. Maybe a home button in the top corner or something could solve this without re-adding the sidebar.
  • If you have lots of libraries (which I don’t) then the new sideways scrolling library list is a real problem. Doesn’t bother me since I only have 3, but still…
  • A few missing buttons and clunky implementation of long-press.
  • When entering a new level or moving between sections of selectable elements the cursor rarely goes to a predictable start point.
  • Switching profiles is a mess.
  • The show-season-episode levels of TV Shows is quite convoluted. Not sure there’s a perfect solution available here and Plex has struggled in the past/other apps with this, but it’s still not great.
  • Everything is multiple clicks deeper than it used to be. I’m spending more time navigating the experience than have one.

The non-native player though is a travesty that is unjustifiable in my opinion. All of the controls are the opposite of the native player’s and so I every time I pick up the remote I accidentally scrub playback or do something else unintended.

Would love to see Plex have a cross-team alpha or closed invite-only beta for design/UI changes to get the opinion of someone who hasn’t been staring at it for months to actually try and use it in their home for a day. I was ready to provide feedback after playing with this for less than an hour. I’m sure Plex devs are more than capable of all of this and are trying to put out the best app they can – I just think that perhaps they get their blinkers on sometimes and end up forgetting the KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid) principle: something can be pretty and functional at the same time.

8 Likes
11

This UI reminds me of the early days of the Roku player UI. It’s just terrible and now i can’t use the scrubbing gesture to quickly seek in the video. Please give us a “Native video player” option and don’t force this hideous player UI on us.

7 Likes
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Hear, hear.
The worst part of the new app is the lack of “physics” on each item on-screen: they’re all static, solid blocks. As a result, the scrolling physics are all off and I keep over/under-shooting my target.

The new player experience is positively terrible, though. Please, please can we use the native UI again. Every Apple TV app that doesn’t use the native UI on the Apple TV, categorically sucks. Most especially YouTube. Don’t be like them.

6 Likes
13

I have to agree, the lack of AVPlayerViewController makes this whole update a non-starter for me. As a dev myself, I empathize with the goal of a unified codebase but I’m sorry Plex you guys are not going to beat Apple’s dev team at controls for their own product. The new art-focused design is beautiful but if I have to use a clunky 3rd party’s interpretation of media controls I’d rather go back to Infuse and their bare bones UI.

10 Likes
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Agreed. YouTube is the second-most-used (after Plex), and least-enjoyable-to-use app on my Apple TV. The native player was built by Apple for a reason. Unless there is some specific reason not to, don’t use anything else.

5 Likes
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They are probably trying to come up with a universal solution rather than catering to a very small niche portion of their user base.

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Yeah the new player kinda sucks. Choppy “thinking wheel” animation while scrolling thru a media file while playing.

Navigation thru media is kinda double, you need to go thru 2 landing pages to see the file and change settings.

Errors when backing out from a media file playing.

4 Likes
17

Big disappointment. Horrible. The only positive thing is the logo, the rest is very cumbersome, not very intuitive. Everything is the same as before except for the layout of the menus, which is worse. I expected trailers instead of fanart. I expected to have size changes in covers by rows, I expected to see the score without having to enter the movie, I expected to be able to configure the 4 tabs to, for example, hide the tab by genre. The new menu format is horrible. Netflix has the best graphics and ideas. But being the last to update the graphics, it is last, behind Netflix, Prime Video, Max, Disney… They are all better, Plex’s graphic designers are very bad. So much time waiting to just add the logo and destroy the menus. Emby has always been behind in everything compared to Plex, but with this change Emby is better than Plex.

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18

This new player would be a show stopper for me to use the app.
UX is such bad, and completely breaks the muscle memory.
And I’m afraid the native player won’t come back anytime. :frowning:

8 Likes
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+1 this even on iOS! the current tvOS player adds enough functionality to allow for a broad enough feature set! please Plex listen to the feedback. There is not a single native player that understands how frustrating their interaction and designs are for their apps. tvOS Youtube and Prime players are THE worst experiences I have ever used on any platform. I actively avoid Prime at all cost.

Make yours and our lives easier. Help us use your app. thank you!

9 Likes
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Yep, native player was the best. Bring it back.

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