Has the Plex Photos App been Discontinued?

Plex Players
1

Server Version#:1.42.2.10156-f737b826c
Player Version#:2025.2.0

Has the Plex Photos app been discontinued?

Both the Android and iOS Plex Photos apps have not received an update since June 2025—over seven months ago—which raises serious concerns about whether this app is still being actively maintained.

I want to echo what many others in the community have already said: please bring back the original Plex app where photos and home videos actually worked. It’s difficult to understand why a feature that functioned well and met users’ needs was removed, replaced with something far less capable, and then seemingly abandoned.

At this point, it feels as though the Plex Photos project no longer has an active development team. Wouldn’t it be far simpler to re-release the original, all-in-one Plex app that included photos and home videos? I can no longer reliably access my personal photos and home videos while away from home—which was the entire purpose of using Plex for this content in the first place.

Issues experienced (on both iOS and Android)

The following problems are not isolated to my setup; they have been widely reported by other users as well:

  • Photos and videos cannot be viewed in landscape mode

  • Frequent error: “An error occurred while loading high-resolution photo”

    • Results in only blurry, low-resolution images being viewable

  • No option to download photos to the device

  • No option to share photos

  • No option to save videos locally to the device

  • Timeline view fails to load

  • No search functionality

All of these features worked reliably in the original integrated Plex app.

Given the lack of updates since June 2025, the Plex Photos app appears to be discontinued in practice, even if not officially stated. Restoring the original integrated Plex app—one that already worked—would likely be far easier than attempting to fix the numerous issues present in the current Photos app.

If Plex Photos is not going to receive further updates, can anyone recommend a viable alternative for securely accessing a large 16TB database of personal photos and home videos remotely?

I am a paying Plex Pass subscriber, and I honestly feel abandoned by the current state of the Plex Photos app after seven months with no updates or communication.

2

They’ve signaled that they’re bringing Photos back to the main application and will continue supporting the standalone Photos app.

(By the way, you also can’t delete photos with the new Photos app either, which is another missing feature.)

My assumption is that it’s going to be low priority, though. They’re busy destroying the UI of the main Plex app while trying to bring the new interface to smart TV platforms.

If it were up to me, I’d abandon the Photos app initiative after bringing it back to the main application - they’re already spread thin enough as it is that the main application has had major bugs and missing features for nearly a year now with only incremental improvements in that time.

My best guess (and this is entirely speculation on my part) will be that it will receive little to no future updates beyond basic maintenance and while not officially discontinued, will effectively be.

3

Glad I searched for this. I recently replaced my plex server. Seemed straight forward enough, but I’ve been sporadically getting this same error. I thought I had it weeks ago and did “something” to fix it…couldn’t remember what I’d done. Perhaps restart the server.

I also wish they’d never have mucked around with the original plex (which I bought a lifetime pass for immediately…you would think that would entitle me to that original server….anyway).

Just ranting here. I guess.

4

I was using the old App for this feature but since they remove it from main app, I mobed to another solution which is Immich

They went stable by now and works great

The new plex app is way too limited for me.

Too bad…

5

Thanks, Immich looks like it could be promising. I initially used to use Plex for watching my own movie and TV show library. It’s always been wonderful for that. But I transitioned to using it primarily for managing my photos and home videos library. However, it seems Plex is moving more towards being a streaming platform offering sponsored content. At least on the website, that’s the first thing you see.