Do Not Limit Search Results or Allow To Expand To All Matches

Feature Suggestions
1

I include in the title of my albums, a reference when it is the remastered version. I keep the release date the same as the original but add a note to the title to indicate it was remastered and what year because I have some titles that have been remastered in the 90s and again in the 10s “Album Title [2017 Remaster]”. I have a large collection and would like to find all Titles that have been remastered. I would prefer the Search function to be improved upon so that I can find ALL my albums that have “remaster” in the title. Currently, only a subset appears to be returned and no way to drill down to expand the list in the Music category

2

Keep in mind… as long as you solely rely on having that information in your file names and it’s not actually part of the album title, Plex won’t even use that information (like not at all… not just for searching).

Also, search isn’t considering the folder/file names but Plex’ metadata (independent if it’s originating from embedded metadata or an online source).

So… just to get this straight… what you’re looking for is actually 2 things:

  1. an option to search by file names
  2. support for Plex to display all search results (even if it’s really a ton of them)

Personally I suppose you might be better off by including that information as some kind of tag in your media. Especially if this is searching for those files is a common use case. Keep in mind Plex isn’t a search engine that’ll spill thousands of results in which case filtering or even a (smart) collection might be more suitable. – just my 2ct.

3

The album title has the remaster tag as well as the folder name which is derived from the album title. You see this on Apple Music and Spotify as well.

So point 1 is not the issue for me but 2 nails it. I have over 6000 titles and a growing number of remastered titles.

Not to throw stones or anything, but I haven’t made the switch to Plex from DS Audio (Synology) largely due to this reason. I can easily and quickly search ALL Artists, Albums, or Songs and get a complete list of results. I’m ok with an abbreviated list since it is looking across all media types. But I would like to have the option to click on media type (music) and expand the results and maybe even specify that I’m only interest in a particular field such as Artist, Album, Track, etc.

4

If it’s actually in the album title… why not use a smart collection?

  1. Open your music library
  2. Select Advanced Filter from the filter menu
  3. Configure your filter criteria, e.g.
    • Album Title > contains > Remaster
    • Display as Albums
  4. Save as Smart Collection

Whenever you add a new album with that title, it’ll automatically show in this collection.

That should however not impact your suggestion :wink:
Having a “show all” button / option to drill down would be a nice addition.

5

Thanks for the tip. One of the use cases for the request is being able to build a playlist from the found items and this gets me there. I was even able to go a step further and create shorter playlists based on Album Decade as a bonus. The main drawback appears to be that it can’t be done with the iPhone or iPad apps.

Adding the Album Decade mix to the filter has shed light on the fact that many titles metadata is using the remastered date rather than the original release date and now I have to investigate if I messed up my system with all those albums or if Plex pulled in that metadata and bypassed what was in the file.

You are correct that this tip doesn’t eliminate the request though. Most of the time, I’m looking for an album to play and I’m just trying to narrow down my choices. Going to the playlist doesn’t allow me to drill down to a specific album.