Delete Episodes After Watching After a Day NOT Deleting

Plex Media Server Desktops & Laptops
1

Hi guys,

I have enabled “Delete Episodes After Watching After a Day” for most series. Days after watching on the Roku the shows are marked as watched but still available.

Any idea what the problem is?

Thanks.

2

When watching on the Roku it is logged in under the Admin account?

3

Mine is, and its not deleting either. That, and I set max number of episodes to 3, and today I have 5 episodes listed.

4

Have you checked the Plex Media Server logs to see if there are any messages regarding trying to delete the episodes?

5

No, but I can delete the episodes manually, so its not a permission issue.

6

I have this same issue. It works for some shows and then for other shows nothing ever gets deleted at all. Same folders so it’s not a permissions issue.

7

Anyone find a fix here? Having the same issue on my Samsung Galaxy Tab3. Deleted movies, no issues. But i’ve got episodes still lingering, and can’t figure out how to get rid of them. Thanks!

8

I’m having this issue as well. Logged into Roku Ultra as admin, but this auto-delete isn’t working. What am I doing wrong?

UPDATE: As of January 2019 this seems to now be working for me on app.plex.tv.

9

I am also noticing this, but I end up manually deleting them after I find them. I’d like to disable deleting from the clients, but before I disable the setting, I’d like to confirm media is being deleted as expected.

Are recordings deleted
A. by scheduled task between 2-5am (depending on server setting?)
B. 24 hours after the show is marked as played?
C. by the next scheduled task following a 24 hour window since being marked as played?

I think if this was clarified, I’d be able to verify that the feature is working correctly.

Thanks!

10

I’m seeing my server behave this way as well. I can delete manually from the GUI, but if I set a series to only keep a single episode or delete after watching, it does not work. Is there any suggestion on how to debug?

11

So I think I may have found a clue on this one. There are two options in each recording’s advanced properties – KEEP and DELETE EPISODES AFTER WATCHING.

I had set KEEP to “Latest Episode” and left DELETE EPISODES AFTER WATCHING at “Never.” In this scenario, I was expecting the server to always delete all but the latest episode, based on KEEP. But this was not working. So this afternoon I set DELETE EPISODES AFTER WATCHING to “After a day” and left KEEP at “Latest Episode.” When the tasks ran, suddenly all of my old watched episodes were deleted, leaving just the latest episode.

So it seems strange to me, but apparently there is an interaction between these two options.

12

So based on your experience:

  • If Keep = All episodes, but Delete Episodes = after a day/week, then the show will delete as expected once it’s viewed by the server admin (in the timeframe expected),
    BUT
  • If Keep = any of the other values and Delete Episodes = after a day/week, then the server will hold on to the show until it’s older than the last x episodes and it’s been viewed by the server admin?
13

Yes, I believe this is what I’m seeing. Haven’t had a chance to completely verify.

14

So I keep tinkering with this, and I’m baffled.

It seems like if I run the maintenance tasks during the day while I’m watching, the shows delete successfully. But if I let it run at 2am as scheduled, they fail to delete.

I’ve turned off things like hard drive sleep to make sure the environment is similar, but no go. Frustrating…