I’ve taken my time setting up my Plex server, which is running on Linux. So far I’ve only been using just one user account. I have an Apple TV in my study that I use for BGTV (Background TV - can’t work in silence, need noise!) and my wife and I now use Plex for a lot of our viewing in our great room. At this point we have been watching 6-8 different series I have on my media server, all ripped from DVDs. (I also do watch a few shows on my own, in my study, but not nearly as many as my wife and I have been watching together.)
I’d like to be able to separate the viewed status now, so I don’t keep getting mixed up and having data overlap. I’d like to create a new user for what my wife and I watch together, but it’ll be a pain to have to go through and mark all we’ve watched together as watched, since I’ll have to do it by hand.
Is there a way I can create a new account for our joint viewing and copy the watched status of all our shows to that account so I don’t have to recreate it by hand?
I’ve seen one post on this from 2015 and another from 2022. I don’t know how outdated the 2015 post is and there were no replies on the 2022 post. If this is something that has to be done with SQL, I’m comfortable with that. My server is on a Debian Linux system. If I have to do this through SQL, though, I need to know how to connect to or use whatever SQL server is used on the Linux Plex server.
WebTools NG allow you to copy view status from one account on your server to another.
The new account needs to be created beforehand.
For your use case I recommend a “managed user” account, instead of a wholly separate “full” user account: https://support.plex.tv/articles/203948776-managed-users/
You might want to enable “Automatic Login” afterwards on your client devices, to avoid the “user selector” dialog.
I’ve already created the managed user account and I’m trying to copy from my primary/admin account to that. I’m using a Mac as a desktop and installed WebTools NG. It found my server easily (didn’t even realize it had - kept waiting for it to ask me where it was). I picked “Plex Media Server,” then View State Copy. I picked my original full admin account as the source and my managed user account as the destination. Then I ask for a report (I have no idea what that includes, but figure I might as well see) and click on “Copy.” I did that 15 minutes ago and still have this:
This is the 2nd time I tried it and the first time it only listed “Movies” under Info. Let it run 10 minutes that time and saw nothing change. This time it’s been over 17 minutes and I see no change on the status.
Shouldn’t I get some kind of info when it finishes an individual library? And is this a fast or slow process?
After the first time I tried it and had waited 15 minutes and saw no change, I logged into the web interface and went to my managed user account and none of the items marked as viewed in my main account showed as played for the managed user.
