Courses Library Type

Feature Suggestions
1

Add a “Courses” Library Type for Educational Content

I’d like to suggest adding a new library type: Courses, designed specifically for e-learning and instructional video collections.

Currently, Plex offers Movies, TV Shows, Music, Photos, and Other Videos. Educational courses don’t fit neatly into any of these… The better fitting type is TV Shows, but each video is forced into the “episode” model.

A dedicated Courses library type could include:

Core behavior

  • Replace “Episode” with Lesson by default

  • Replace “Season” with Module (or similar)

  • Course → Module → Lesson hierarchy

This small terminology shift alone would make Plex feel much more natural for educational content.

Metadata support

Allow optional metadata files within the folder structure (similar to how NFO or sidecar files work elsewhere), enabling users to define:

  • Course title

  • Instructor / author

  • Course category / topic

  • Description / syllabus

  • Year / version

  • Tags

This would be especially useful for downloadable courses sold independently (not via Udemy, Skillshare, MasterClass, etc.), where there is no centralized metadata source.

Why this matters

Many users (myself included) use Plex to host personal learning libraries: programming courses, philosophy lectures, fitness programs, creative workshops, etc. Right now, this requires awkward workarounds using TV Shows or “Other Videos.”

A Courses library type would:

  • Make Plex a first-class home for personal education

  • Improve organization and discoverability

  • Open the door to future learning-oriented features

  • Align Plex with a growing use case: self-hosted digital learning

I’m aware of an older (2016) feature request (here) asking for custom library types for e-learning content. While I understand that perspective, I’d like to offer a different view.

I believe Courses / e-learning is not just another edge case or “less obvious asset type.” It’s a major and growing category of media with fairly consistent structure: course → modules → lessons, instructor metadata, progress tracking, etc.

Treating this purely as a customizable generic type pushes a common, well-defined use case into a DIY solution space. A dedicated Courses library would avoid fragmentation while still solving a real problem for many users who host educational content locally.

Thanks for considering!