So I really liked the ability to launch apps in Plex 8 which I specifically used to launch games with. So the culling of that functionality in Plex 9 left my regular workflow quite itchy.
Assuming that someone would have this corrected in a jiffy, I patiently waited for someone to write a plugin, but that didn't seem to happen. If my google-fu has deceived me, I'd love to know and take a look at alternative solutions.
Anywho, I got weary of waiting and had some late evening hacking time on my hands and wrote up AppTV for launching OS X apps and aliases. It's my first Plex plugin and only my second stab at Python, so any feedback would be appreciated.
If people find it useful, I'd love to take feature requests, tracked in the issues section of my repository.
Thanks for doing this. It’s definitely very handy to have. I’ve missed this feature too. Just wondering: is there a way for it to keep recently used or preferred applications easily available for launch. Back in the plex 8 days, you could pin preferred applications, I think. That would be pretty handy for those of us with huge applications folders. Just wanted to ask as I’m not sure if I’m missing something.
I could implement something like this, but I’m not entirely convinced about its usefulness.
What I did myself was make a bunch of aliases to the applications I wanted to launch, put them in ~/Applications and pointed AppTV at that path in its settings.
I took the design from this launcher and made one for Windows. Its not very useful at the moment because all of the applications are hard coded. If you are comfortable with editing some code I can send it to you.
I'm interested in seeing a Windows version as well, could you send me a copy please? I'm just learning python but am comfortable in code.
If I understand correctly, this plugin runs the app on the Plex server and as such requires the Plex Media Center and Media Server to be the same machine. I have server and client running on separate machines and would love to have the ability to launch games or Steam from the Plex Windows client. Any ideas on how to put a menu item in the Plex client that lauches apps on the client machine?
Do you think if your app could work when the actual plex server is running on another host (say a NAS box) and link to mac apps? Or is that a bridge too far?
I poked around a bit with this and got it to show up from a remote server but the content is empty. I tried changing the default path to something with a mac app installed. I’m wondering how this plugin finds the app back. Maybe if i could get the paths to be in sync, it could work?
Like some of the others here, I was looking for a way to launch programs out of a Windows machine as well. I took AngryAnt's plugin, made some modifications and created a modified Windows version.
My implementation is slightly different than AngryAnt's. Windows users will create a folder called C:\apptv\ and then place any shortcuts, files or programs in the folder that they want to be able to launch from within Plex. This helps keep you from having to dig through folders and menus and has the benefit of limiting your choices only to the ones you actually want to launch. One other nice thing about this implementation is that you should be able to open/launch just about anything including files. If you can double click it in explorer and something happens, it should launch just fine out of Plex (this means you should be able to launch batch files or other types of scripts straight from the interface).
As with AngryAnt's, your server and client need to be on the same machine. I'll look into it and see if it's possible to implement a client only version at some point.
On my todo list is to allow users to specify their own folders/paths using Plex's preferences, but I was having some weird issues when I tried earlier. If you're savvy enough, you can alter it pretty easily in the source code.
Kudos to AngryAnt for doing the heavy lifting, I just modified the file structure and some of he system calls to fit Windows.
Disclaimers: This is just me hacking together a plugin - it works for me, but I offer no guarantees that it will work for you. Use at your own risk, etc.
Create a shortcut for Steam and move it to the apptv directory
Right click > properties
In the Target box, add the option "steam://open/bigpicture" to the end. The whole path should look something like: "C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\Steam.exe" "steam://open/bigpicture
Create "Chrome Apps" from web pages I frequent or don't have plugin channels:
Navigate to the page you want
click on the options menu > tools > Create Application Shortcuts
Check the "Desktop" option
Move shortcut to apptv launcher directory
Create a script file (like a batch or python script) to handle routine tasks or maintenance.
Hi, newb question here. Is there a way to add this to the Plex client? I have Plex media server running on a headless Linux box and Plex client running on Mac OS X and a couple of iPads. I don't see any examples of launch external apps like EyeTV form Plex 9.
How difficult would this be to port to linux? I’m looking for a way to control services and possibly run scripts ,from any plex client, on my linux server. I got the idea from the ability to change stream settings from my Xbox with folder menus. I couldn’t find any info on how they implemented this in plex, so your app seems like what I’m looking for.
As long as the scripts you're trying to run are on the linux server and not one of the clients, I think it should be fairly straightforward. If I get some free time this weekend, I'll see what I can come up with.
My Plex server is on a Linux host and I have a PHT on a Windows system.
I would like to be able to go, within the Plex Windows client, to an instance of Chrome that goes to a specific bookmark (ie, Netflix, which won't run natively on the Linux host because it lacks Silverlight).
Would this plugin be suitable? If not, do alternatives exist? My second choice would being able to program keys on an WMC remote control to swap between Plex and Chrome.
Also, a general point... This may sound noob but I don't actually see installation instructions for this (or any other "unsupported" plugins) ... anywhere. I eventually figured out that it's merely a matter of unzipping and moving the files to a directory (which for the repository Ubuntu install is the non-intuitive /var/lib/plexmediaserver/Library/Application Support/Plex Media Server/Plug-ins -- who puts non-system apps there?). But that process is not exactly spelled out anywhere until you examine the plugin's own README file, which is already into the install process.
Anyway, just a suggestion that there might be a use for a Plex documentation page of "how to install an unsupported plugin" for the different server platforms. I don't know how the same thing would be done (or how the files would be extracted and placed) on a Windows or Mac platform.
