[ WORKAROUND ] Disable Discover's external search results on your Plex account

General Discussions
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Enough people seem unhappy enough about not being able to selectively opt into (or completely opt out of) the new Discover feature that I figured it’d help to post this.

Here is the shortest guide you will read in a very long time (assuming you’ve already unpinned Discover from your sidebar):

  1. Create a Managed User inside your account, and use it from now on.

That’s literally it!

You will no longer see advertising results for content from external platforms, at the expense of not being able to auto-login on the profile.

All other managed users already cannot see anything Discover-related.

External users can do this too if they want, but it’s a minor hassle & you may find that many would prefer to hybridise. Keep in mind that ultimately, this is all about the freedom to choose!

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Trouble with this is folks are asking for this to be enabled for managed users so it may come in the future.

Better solution is to have a way to disable it which would keep everyone happy, those who want it and those who don’t.

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Maybe rename it to [ WORKAROUND ].
Keep in mind that people have lots of watched/unwatch stats on their main account.
Which will be lost if you switch to a Managed User

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This should (in theory) be easy to workaround by updating the account_id field in a number of tables in the plex db. Its one of things I’ll be trying myself as I evaluate this new feature.

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people are trying to modify the db, because they dont add an opt-in option. it’s so sad.
but thank you for the tip will also look in to it.

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Yes, this is 100% a temporary solution whose lifespan is directly tied to that being implemented.

Ideally (for all user stakeholders), Plex will choose to let you opt in/out.

I just wanted to keep the OP brief and solution-focused, especially after seeing some of the posting in the other threads.

I was def. being a bit cheeky with the word choice, but unfortunately I can’t edit the title.

@dokuro sketched out the rest — db shenanigans are effort, but some people would consider the effort worthwhile.

For anyone who feels strongly enough about watch history that they’d take the dive, here’s a starter thread:

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You should see a ‘pencil’ icon next to the title of any thread you originate:

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I really like the idea of the feature so I’m not opposed to it at all, but I don’t need it so I’d like to turn it off just like I can turn off “movies & tv”. I’d like “Discover” to be listed in the Online Media Sources of my account settings so I can turn it off the same way.

Thanks for the workaround but at least unpinning Discover from the sidebar takes care of keeping most of it out of view - I’ll be interested to see how long this workaround lasts.

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Thanks! Turns out that because of the specific line length, the icon was pushed to its own row and my eye just never picked up on it.

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Should mention, in case anyone comes back confused — this doesn’t seem to affect platforms appearing alongside media in Watchlist page results, but it will keep search results clean.

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