Will the new app also support Dolby Vision (profile 5, profile 8) and Dolby Atmos?
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Don’t worry its coming (along with the media info on the details page) ! It just didn’t make it into the initial version of our preview. Keep an eye on our release notes thread for the weekly releases.
I myself love version selection, and knowing if the media is 4K or has 5.1 audio, so I am excited for this feature to be added to the preview app!
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Not sure if anybody else has had the same issue, but currently on the iOS preview I am unable to load posters or seemingly any sort of metadata about anything while on the same local network as the Plex server. The second I swap my phone to cellular (off the same network), they load completely fine and show up as they should. It appears the app is getting some sort of data as the colors behind the items change but no images or anything load. Again, not sure if this is just a me issue, but would love some help.
I’m also experiencing this with the preview app, but I think the issue is mostly a local network one (though fixable with some client updates from plex). This also happens for me on the web client and Plexamp, but not the current iOS app or androidTV app. I believe it’s a router hair pinning/NAT loopback issue.
Basically, the preview app is trying to access your server via the WAN IP from inside the network. If you don’t have some kind of DNS setting or NAT loopback/hairpinning function on your router (my ISP-provided gateway does not) then you run into issues where it can’t resolve the address and find the server.
I looked at the current iOS app logs and (plex employees correct me if I’m wrong) it looks like when that fails/is unreachable, it falls back to the local address of the server and all is good. For some reason, Plexamp, the web app (when accessed via app.plex.tv) and preview app do not do this. It would be nice for this to be fixed client-side on all clients, but there is a solution purely on the user-side too. It just costs money and time
There are no Sleep Timer options either.
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@mitchellth , @cwin2000 : go into the iOS app settings for the preview app and enable local network access.
IIRC this is mentioned in the pinned announcement. I hope the team will add it, so the app actively requests permission on first run.
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I do not see any option for this with the preview app in iOS settings. I was able to fix this though by having the server publish the local server IP in the server network settings. Still not sure why some clients will resolve the local IP by default (androidTV, iOS public) and some won’t (web client, Plexamp, preview app) but it turns out there is a fix users can implement without spending money 
With this enabled the next time you open the app it should ask for local network access. Might take a few minutes to take effect
I didn’t see this mentioned, but if it is my apologies. The 10 second countdown to the next TV episode to auto-play isn’t there. It does show the next episode though.
It’s a shorter timer now, and only displays above the next episode, not on the thumbnail itself.
iOS System Settings > Apps > Plex Preview > Local Network
OR
iOS System Settings > Privacy & Security > Local Network > Plex Preview
Not sure what setting you mean.
Thanks dklein. Now I see it, and that count down goes super fast. Also when I just tried it again it went through each episode that was up next until it got to a season later.
So it was supposed to play s06e18 next, but then each episode skipped until it stopped at s07e13. Super strange.
Didn’t see the timer at the top though, thanks for that. Definitely runs on the fast side though.
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Is this going to be centralized or will it always be that way?
I’ve added the skipping episodes to the tracking post. I think the counter is now 5 seconds instead of 10. I know in the current application it can be customized, but
What does your custom server access url look like for the local plex server? No matter what I set it to, my preview client seems to be trying to go to 10-27-30-23.xxxxxxxxxx.plex.direct:32400. That address doesn’t resolve anywhere. Unless the custom server url takes 30+ minutes to update, which is possible. Technically a workaround I can do is to do a dns override for the plex.direct domain, but I would prefer to get it working using the local ip in there. Currently my custom urls looks like this: https://10.27.30.23:32400, https://plex.example.com:443. I think that should be correct as those are the two ways I have available to access it, but it seems like Plex keeps overriding the local one for that plex.direct url. It still hasn’t prompted me for the local network access like you said yours did.
I believe I have figured out more of the issue after further testing. It appears that Plex direct connections within the preview app don’t play nicely with different VLANs. When I connect to my wifi network on the same VLAN as plex, everything works as it should, but when connecting from other VLANs it has issues because it can’t resolve the plex.direct address. Obviously my network setup is a bit more complex, but it still doesn’t explain why plex is overriding my url in the custom urls for their plex.direct one.
You should only have to publish http://10.27.30.23:32400 assuming that’s the private IP of your server. I don’t use local certificates so I don’t use https when connecting on LAN. I don’t access my server via a custom domain since that seemed to cause issues when I had that set up.
Maybe restart the server but this 100% fixed the issue for me. If you can set a custom DNS rule though, that might be the best move. I don’t have that luxury though with my hardware
Edit: I don’t have experience punching holes in VLANs so I unfortunately can’t help you there. My setup is a relatively simple
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Thanks dklein! It does start at 10, but it goes like double time!
From what I can tell, the app no longer respects the profile sent by the server. That way I can’t watch AV1 content anymore.
Right now it’s just a black screen and the app freezes.
Hopefully they’ll add proper AV1 support with this app, finally.
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Thanks @cwin2000 I appreciate your help, and I’m glad you found a workaround for your network. I think I’ll just do the domain override for now since I only have one server on the network for plex, but hopefully a dev sees this and is able to fix it. For some reason for app.plex.tv it is able to properly detect that the plex.direct url doesn’t work and falls back to my plex.example.com address (which points at my wan) and everything works as it should there, so it seems like a bug within the iOS preview app since the logs say that its detecting the plex.direct address as the best connection to my server despite not being able to use it to connect to it at all.
What does your custom server access url look like for the local plex server? No matter what I set it to, my preview client seems to be trying to go to 10-27-30-23.xxxxxxxxxx.plex.direct:32400. That address doesn’t resolve anywhere.
Based on my experimentation, Plex clients will generally always use the plex.direct URL address first over the custom URL. If you disable remote access you will still have a local plex.direct URL and the custom URL so clients will only use the custom URL if they are outside of you LAN (even if you have separate VLANS).
The 10-27-30-23.xxxxxxxxxx.plex.direct address should be resolving in DNS. The plex.direct domain resolves any address that comprises of an IP address and 32 character subdomain. So even a dummy address such as 123-123-123-123.12345678901234567890123456789012.plex.direct should resolve to 123.123.123.123.
Have you tried resolving the address using nslookup rather than trying to access it via your browser? For example using Google DNS:
nslookup 123-123-123-123.12345678901234567890123456789012.plex.direct 8.8.8.8
Server: dns.google
Address: 8.8.8.8
Non-authoritative answer:
Name: 123-123-123-123.12345678901234567890123456789012.plex.direct
Address: 123.123.123.123
I’ve found the PMS URL is updated to plex.tv API server pretty much instantaneously when something changes. Provided the plex.direct URL returned is in the valid structure it will resolve in DNS even if the IP and subdomain aren’t valid.
PMS is also smart enough to present the correct SSL certificate depending upon whether it’s accessed via the custom URL or plex.direct URL.
I have no issue, but I’m using the Android preview rather than iOS. I’m currently able to access my PMS via a VPN which sits on a different VLAN.
This gets published automatically by Plex and a user shouldn’t need to specify it under the custom URL.
Have you checked what URLs are being published by the plex.tv API? Have a look at this post for how to check.
I suspect you have a DNS resolution issues which is impacting the plex.direct addresses and also some potential firewall and NAT relfection configuration issues which are preventing access.
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