Expanded Sorting, Filtering, and Mode Options When Viewing/Creating Collections

[TheMonitor]

It would be nice to have expanded options for Collection Modes and filtering options while viewing a collection. The current limitations of both have become minor pain points for my personal user experience. As an example:

I have a dedicated Foreign Films library. This library is specifically for films from other countries, particularly in another language (i.e. Spanish, Korean, Japanese, etc.). Within this library, I have organized the films into collections based on originating country, like so:

Some of these collections can get quite large, which in turns leaves the default sorting options when browsing through collections feeling lackluster. Currently sorting is done at the Advanced Options level in the Collection settings with no ability to toggle. The current options are: Release Date, Alphabetical, Custom. When browsing a collection in a Plex Client, you are left at the mercy of the collection’s sorting setting.

It would be nice to leverage Plex’s filtering and sorting features within a collection. Firstly, to change the sorting method while viewing the collection, from date to alphabetical to the other library options (critic scores, rating, year, duration, etc.). Secondly, to filter by genre, format, actor, etc. within a collection. In essence, just bringing the library browsing sort/filter options into collection browsing as well, turning collections into “mini libraries” of their own.

Additionally, the available Collection Modes feels limiting. Using my Foreign Films library as an example: the collections mode is set to “Hide items which are in collections” in the advanced library settings. Each collection is set to “Library default” individually.

You’ll notice in the above screenshot, I also have two Collections based on the Academy Awards: Oscars 2023 (all nominated films from 2023) and Best Picture Winners. I would prefer to have the two Academy Award-related collections hidden from the Library view. The typical option for this would be “Hide this collection but show its items”. However, when set to this mode, the collection itself is hidden, but it forces the library items within the collection back into the library view amongst the country collections, like so:

Obviously, this is not ideal. Amongst the available collection modes (Hide items in collection, show collection + items, and hide collection but show items), nothing will allow me to hide the Oscars collections while keeping the library items hidden within their respective country collections.

Additional collections modes would be nice here to truly manage my libraries how I see fit. There are a number of possible solutions I can throw out here, but it would be up to Plex devs to determine the best solution.

• A “Hide collection and ignore items” mode, essentially doing nothing to the items within.
• An optional checkbox in Advance Collections settings that would force collection mode parameters to ignore library items / not affect them.
• An overhaul to the collection mode system whereby collection modes and library item modes are separated. Collection Mode options would be “Hide” and “Show”. Library Items Mode options would be “show” “hide” “unaffected/ignore”.

[tom80H]

Just wondering… have you considered simply filtering by a particular collection and then use the library sorting features?
Don’t get me wrong… those collection posters look beautiful but it appears you’re trying to force a square part through a round hole – i.e. using a collection as an additional way to structure the entire library vs. grouping related items / franchises.

@TheMonitor

• A “Hide collection and ignore items” mode, essentially doing nothing to the items within.

There’s already an existing suggestion addressing this – please vote in that collection in order to help us avoid distracting or cannibalizing votes.

Add an extra library option for Collections // mod: hide collection and its items from library view

Currently the collections settings in each library has 3 options: Disabled Hide items which are in collections Show collections and their items I would like to add 1 option: Hide collections and items which are in collections This way, you can still use the collections tab to look at collections, but the library will not show collections or their items. This should make it easier to check items which haven’t been placed in collections yet (If you are like me and want to “collectify” a lot…

@TheMonitor

• An optional checkbox in Advance Collections settings that would force collection mode parameters to ignore library items / not affect them.
• An overhaul to the collection mode system whereby collection modes and library item modes are separated. Collection Mode options would be “Hide” and “Show”. Library Items Mode options would be “show” “hide” “unaffected/ignore”.

I suppose this is also covered in a number of existing suggestions, e.g.

New options for Libraries (Collections) and Collections (Collection mode)

Currently the Library advanced options for Collections are: Disabled Hide items which are in collections Show items and their collections And the Collection advanced options for Collection mode are: Library default Hide items in this collection Show this collection and its items Hide collection Choosing Disabled in the library options means none of the collection options will work. So, it’s not possible (unless I’m missing something) to have collections hidden by default and then select…

Collection Display Issue

It’s not a full feature request but there seems to be some issue with current per collection viewing rule for current implementation. For example, The Return of the King is part of Lord of the Rings collection as well as Oscar Best Picture collection in my case. I’d rather hide individual items for Lord of the Rings collection. But I don’t want to do the same for movies on Oscar Best Picture collection for obvious reasons. This creates two conflicting collection rules, resulting Return of the…

Collection details

If you are using collections and you want to change a setting, right now you have to go through each one and change the setting manually. On the collections tab, what would be nice is if we could switch to a details view to see some of basic details of the collection, mainly, the name, sort title, collection mode, and collection order. So you can, in a glance, see what all your collections are appearing as vs having to go through each collection one by one and verify. That’s it.

[TheMonitor]

have you considered simply filtering by a particular collection and then use the library sorting features?

I have and used to use that, filtering the full library by country. But it wasn’t perfect as it was relying on external metadata and that can get kind of messy when it comes to country of origin for specific films. Several Thai and Hong Kong films would show up as Chinese films instead when just using library filtering.

it appears you’re trying to force a square part through a round hole – i.e. using a collection as an additional way to structure the entire library vs. grouping related items / franchises

Perhaps a bit, as it pertains to the second half of my request with library-style browsing within Collections, essentially like I said making Collections mini-libraries. But based on the below linked post of Collection Display issues, the crux of the issue for me seems to be shared amongs other users, particularly those who curate an Oscars collection.

There’s already an existing suggestion addressing this – please vote in that collection in order to help us avoid distracting or cannibalizing votes.

I somehow missed this post when I was searching through the suggestions. It is asking for a similar feature to one of my solutions, but that’s the only similarity. This request is for additional features.

New options for Libraries (Collections) and Collections (Collection mode)

This one is again, asking for a single specific feature that is somewhat adjacent to my request. Also clearly a dead post since even the author has withdrawn her vote, leaving it at 0 votes.

Collection Display Issue

This is precisely what I’m talking about in the first half of my post. Again, I missed this in a cursory search which is strange because I searched for “Collection Display” and only found the prior post. I will add my post to this thread since it is clearly the most visible and create a new one for the library-style browsing options since none of these posts seems to tackle that.

Collection details

I don’t think this is the same as library-style browsing implemented into collections. They are asking just to be able to view collection details, but not make changes to them.

Thanks for your reply, I’ll make those changes.