Cannot initialize / claim new PMS on my macOS server

Plex Media Server Desktops & Laptops
1

Server Version#: v.1.41.1.9057-af5eaea7a (I also tried v.1.41.2.9134-3391644e0 but mainly stuck with the official release version)
Player Version#: N/A

I’m trying for two days now to set up a fresh Media Server on macOS 15.1 on a Mac mini 2023 (M2, 8GB RAM). I have combed through the forums and web search for several hours, tried many different things. I have re-installed macOS, wiped everything. There is literally only PMS installed on this machine after initial setup, but no luck.

Steps:

  1. Download .zip file for Media Server from plex.tv on the machine, unzip, move .app folder to /Applications.
  2. Start it.
  3. Safari opens up, redirects to login on plex.tv.
  4. Put in my credentials for plex.tv, the login suceeds and I get redirected to 127.0.0.1:32400/ etc.
  5. It will spin for several minutes “Initializing…” and then fail. Any subsequent attempt to somehow claim or go further with initializing (for example by clicking on “Open Plex…” from the menu bar or opening the “Setup Plex.html” from ~/Library/Application Support/Plex Media Server) also fail with a “Not authorized” error.

Screenshot
Screenshot794×630 53.3 KB

I would love to share logs, however they include personal data such as my email address. If you have advice on how I could share these confidentially please tell me.

Edit: I was able to set it up finally, I think setting enableLocalSecurity to FALSE made the difference. I wish I knew why this would be necessary, though. I didn’t attempt to not claim the server and in fact having this setting disabled only allowed me to claim it. I’m still very interested in solving this properly and have the logs saved.

2

New machine, fresh macOS (15.1), nothing installed, just PMS. Same issue. This time I thought “Ok, need to change the setting like last time” but no avail. Cannot claim/use it at all. What’s going on?

My current suspicion: Is being behind NAT necessary for the macOS server? In my case the Mac is connected to a router and has its own IPv4 address (no IPv6 in this environment) without NAT anywhere between the machine and the wider internet.

Maybe Plex is confused that there are no RFC 1918 addresses? I don’t know what to do anymore :frowning:

Edit: This is how it looks when I open the “Setup Plex.html” file: Watch plex-claim | Streamable

Edit 2: Ok I will share the final solution. Apparently it’s important that the enableLocalSecurity flag is disabled and all other settings reset. If you need a quick solution just run this script:

#!/bin/sh
osascript -e 'quit app "Plex Media Server"'

defaults delete com.plexapp.plexmediaserver
rm -rf ~/Library/Caches/PlexMediaServer/
rm -rf ~/Library/Logs/Plex\ Media\ Server/
echo "Plex settings deleted!"

defaults write com.plexapp.plexmediaserver enableLocalSecurity -bool FALSE
echo "Disabled enableLocalSecurity flag!"

Next time you start Plex, it should allow you to go through all the settings and claim the server successfully. Pweh, this took me again so many hours to figure out. I think we can call this thread solved. But hopefully there will be some actual fix in the future. This happened to me on two different machines, in two completely different locations (M2 in Ireland, M4 in Germany), both with fresh and up-to-date macOS without any additional apps or weird settings. This can’t be simply coincidence.

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Greatly appreciate this! It worked perfectly.

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Glad it helped. Just gonna add that after the initial setup is done, you can turn the setting back on. Whether that actually improves any security aspect of the server I cannot say, but it doesn’t seem to impact functionality from then on.

To turn it back on it’s simply:
defaults write com.plexapp.plexmediaserver enableLocalSecurity -bool TRUE

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