Does Plex NFO actually work?

Plex Media Server
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Server Version#: 1.43.5.11029

I’m struggling to get the new NFO functionality working how I’d like, and would appreciate if anyone could give me a straight yes or no as to whether what I’m trying to do is actually possible before I give up and mark this as yet another “close, but no cigar” Plex feature.

Should be quite simple really. Well known TV show with around 178 episodes over seven seasons. Along side the episodes I have 150+ specials which should sit under season 0, but are not logged in TVDB or any metadata provider. I’ve named the files starting from s00e500 onwards to ensure they don’t collide with what is in the TVDB, and they all need to have their metadata added manually in Plex.

I don’t want to have to manually edit 150+ unmatched episodes, but I could easily generate an NFO file for each of these specials. So, I need a Metadata Agent that will match the proper episodes as usual, while reading the NFO files for anything it can’t match.

I’ve tried creating one agent with Plex Series as the primary, Plex NFO series as the secondary with Plex Local Media as the third. This matches episodes but won’t read the NFOs. I’ve also tried Plex NFO series as the primary, with Plex Series as the secondary. This fails to match everything, series and NFOs.

Can anyone tell me if what I’m trying to do is actually possible? Thanks.

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Not 100% sure this will work for you but try this …

Screenshot From 2026-10-21 21-49-36
Screenshot From 2026-10-21 21-49-36461×610 23 KB

What happens here is matching is done first off the primary (plex series and third on the list) and once matched then the metadata is loaded top to bottom so local assets (artwork), then nfo and finally plex series in that order.

That should mean that if NFO exists its loaded and if not it will load the plex series.

What I’m not sure on is if unmatched episodes will process. There was a bug related to this in the past but I think it was fixed so in theory I think this should work.

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Thanks dokuro. After some further investigating it appears the NFO agent must have a tvshow.nfo file included as well, not just .nfo’s for each custom episode. Then it works.