(tl;dr below)
Context:
Up till now my use of Plex has been pretty vanilla. And, of course, by “vanilla” I mean “not at all.” There was always some deal-breaking lack of functionality or flexibility or bug that made using it more of a hindrance than even a basic tool. And as much as I HATED google play, it provided a terrible -but better- experience than plex. But, I’ve been hopeful and continued testing the waters every year or so and now with the addition of plexamp, my transition to a synology NAS, (and the inexorable demise of google play and further evil-fication of google/alphabet/evil-inc), plex has become -dare I say- marginally better (as a usable music server).
The trick with plex has always been, how do I trick plex into doing what I want when it clearly doesn’t want to do it. (You will find that this “doing what I want” business is a pretty important sticking point to us old diy htpc media server types.) I thought I finally had an important (read: deal-breaking) hurdle beat with a little creative library item deleting. But, not so (as usual). As other topics have covered, not being able to delete media from an individual library database without being forced to delete it from the filesystem is a real bummer.
Seems like I remember in the early days, plex had more than just a yes/no confirmation box when you tried to delete something; instead opting to give you a checkbox if --in addition to only removing the item from that library (and then NEVER, and I mean NEVER allowing that sucker to be brought back from the dead)-- you ALSO wanted the file deleted. But I digress
I’m not going to rehash the finer points of those topics, but the “solution” seemed to boil down to a sort-of Hobson’s choice. If you only want an item removed from a library but not deleted from the filesystem, then your only option is to continue forbidding plex from deleting anything --ever-- by leaving the “Allow media deletion” box in the global library setting tab unchecked for all time. However, turns out that ain’t so either. Because, if you uncheck “Allow media deletion,” the “Delete” option disappears entirely from an item’s actionbar list. So, there’s no way that I’m aware of to remove an item from the library without deleting it from the filesystem. That makes me sad. But, I guess—at this point—it’s still better than google.
(tl;dr)
So, here’s the deal: why not make media deletion an individual library advanced setting rather than a global one. Keep the global “allow media deletion” option only to prevent file deletion entirely or not and thereby control whether the option even appears in the advanced settings for each library or not.
Option 2 could be a return to (as I remember it) a checkbox in the deletion confirmation box. That way, instead of getting:
“Are you sure you want to delete this item from your filesystem?
[CANCEL] [DELETE]”
you might get something like:
“Are you sure you want to delete this item from your library?
also delete this item from my filesystem.
[CANCEL] [DELETE]”
if the global setting is enabled; BUT if the global option is disabled:
“Are you sure you want to delete this item from your library?
[CANCEL] [DELETE]”
Well, I guess that’s pretty much it.
BTW, I’m not interested in hearing “solutions”:
- beginning with the words “why don’t you just…”
- requiring that I go full-Tetris with my filesystem
- requiring PlexDance 2: Plexlectric Boogaloo
- recommending I use emby
I only make the suggestion because it seems to make sense and doesn’t sound that hard to implement (at least so says the non-dev peeve who believes everything existing inside the void of my ignorance is easy magic. “Chop! Chop! coding gnomes!”). 
Cheers everybody!
(I mean it when I say I’m diggin plexamp so far)
EDIT: adjusted feature suggestion to accommodate that the global option didn’t work as explained in another topic. also added unhelpful solution options.
