Hey everyone,
It’s been more than a year since we first shared some important updates about the future of remote streaming on Plex, including the introduction of the Remote Watch Pass. Since then, we’ve been rolling out these changes platform by platform. For instance, recently, this change came to our Smart TV devices and was brought to Roku prior to that.
Over the period of a few weeks, starting next week Plex will be slowly over the course of the next few weeks, Plex will be releasing an updated version of the Amazon Fire TV application, which includes changes to how remote streaming is handled. Moving forward, remote access to personal media on Fire TV will require either a Plex Pass or a Remote Watch Pass. Keep an eye out for the new version arriving on your device soon.
This release will also introduce the updated and improved new app experience.
What’s New
Remote Streaming
If you stream video from a personal Plex Media Server outside your home network (i.e., remotely), you or the server owner will need one of the following:
- Plex Pass: If the server owner has an active Plex Pass, all Plex accounts accessing that server can continue to stream remotely at no additional cost. If you are unsure, please ask the server owner if they have a Plex Pass.
- Remote Watch Pass: If the server owner doesn’t have a Plex Pass or you don’t need all the functionality that a Plex Pass offers, you can purchase a Remote Watch Pass instead. This lets an individual Plex account stream remotely from any server it has access to (but does not extend to other Plex accounts).
You can purchase a Plex Pass or Remote Watch Pass here: https://www.plex.tv/plans/
New App Experience
The new experience, announced early last year, has been rolling out to devices over the course of 2025 and we’re bringing it now to Amazon Fire TV. Made with movies, shows, and Live TV in mind, this app is meant to focus on those aspects to give you the best possible experience watching what brings you joy. The first time you use the new version of the app, you will be shown a short series of tips introducing you to the changes. We’ve listed out some below, but this is not an exhaustive list and recommend you try it out as soon as it is available!
- Library Metadata Editing - While editing metadata on TV is limited to artwork, this is a new feature now available for Fire TV. Read more about it here!
- Updated Navigation – We’ve reworked how you move around the app. Navigation now lives at the top of the screen for faster access to your libraries, Live TV, and the rest of Plex.
- More screen space & performance: Menus now overlay content instead of pushing it aside or navigating you away. You get less wasted space and menus load instantly.
- Quick Access to more - Access to your Watchlist, Profile, and more from everywhere in the updated menu.
- Centralized account information - Profile, Friends, Watch History, and more are accessible in the User menu
Music & Photos
At launch of the new updated experience, Music library support will be available. Photos will not be available immediately at launch and anyone who is currently accessing Photo libraries from a Fire TV will lose that capability. We are working to restore this functionality as soon as we can.
What’s Not Changing
- Local streaming remains completely free. If you’re on the same network as the Plex Media Server, nothing changes for you.
- If you already have a Plex Pass, you don’t need to do anything — remote streaming will continue to work without interruption.
Once this update begins, we will come back and update this post when it goes live and how you can best share your feedback with us.
Thank you!
Plex
