For the sake of the privacy of the users on my sever I would like to be able to hide what it is they are watching and just see that a user is watching so I can track the bandwidth and CUP usage instead.
It is your server. You are entitled to know what your users are watching.
After all, Plex is for sharing media with family members and personal friends only. Not for sharing media to some stranger who might sue you for violating his privacy.
Also, you might be interested in what they are watching, so you can remove unpopular content from your server.
What your shared users are watching is not logged on plex.tv. Only your server has these data stored locally.
Exactly, it is my sever and being able to choose to keep what they watch private then that would be a invaluable tool.
I would very much use the option to keep what my personal friends watch to themselves, I do not feel I am entitled to see what they watch. I suspect we disagree completely on that., which is totally fine. I can see if it was your family and you had young children perhaps you would want to see that.
It is an option that I would love to have.
Knowing what is being watched is some of the most important information on the server for a whole host of reasons, most important of them being troubleshooting. Also how do you propose they make it so that server owners can’t see what is being watched while still maintaining that in the server for variety of reasons? I think what you are asking is likely either incredibly difficult to implement or even possibly impossible. I also can’t see this being a feature anyone who is using their server legitimately would actually want. Why would your “friends” care if you can see what they watched? I regularly talk to my friends about what they watch and manage my server based on that.
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Hey Blkbyrd,
I have not once needed to know exactly what is being watched by a certain user for trouble shooting, if you have an example I would be interested to hear it however.
I am not going to propose how Plex does anything, just like I would not with any feature, I am customer not an employee. I have never had episode or film specific issues that I have needed to fix via the dashboard. Just like yourself my friends message me and chat about what needs improving or if something is broken. If that is the case I am unsure why you are saying the do require to know. Why do you when you say you chat with them anyway? I am not quite sure why you would push back against this as an option unless you were concerned your friends would ask for this. As you can simply not use it.
This is a fundamental issue of privacy - I strongly believe my friends and family are completely entitled to their privacy for what they are watching and I respect that privacy. If this was an option my only advice to you would be to not use that functionality, as you seem like you wouldn’t use it anyway.
I really think this would be a feature request and I cannot think of anyone except you that would vote for it. Sorry.
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Spend some time on the forums. I constantly need to know the device they were watching on, what they were watching, and when so in the server logs I can see the decision as to why the server did something. I do this for both my server and other folks who come here looking for help. Just because you haven’t experienced that doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen all day on these forums.
I proactively ask them about what they watch based on what I see in the server so that I can make improvements. Oftentimes based on what they are watching in a diverse library like mine I can give them guidance on how to avoid problems when I see them pop up. Without knowing what they are watching I would never be able to correct those problems. They know that I monitor the server and have never once objected to it because they trust me since we are friends/family, and they know I need to do it to maintain the server properly and to make sure their viewing experiences are the best they can be.
Then don’t use a service like Plex, or Netflix, or Hulu, or cable, or the internet, etc. Although Plex is miles more private then any of those others as the data is stored locally and only viewable to the server admin. Again, this request seems like the request of someone using the service for means other then sharing to those near and dear to them. People running private home media servers are not the people selling the viewing habits of their users, but someone who is trying to use Plex commercially…
Either way I’m done with this. The reason I asked you how they would implement it is because it seems pretty clear to me that you don’t really understand how the nitty gritty parts of a Plex server work. Your basically asking for the scanner ports on cars to be removed because it may expose someone’s driving habits even though that data is critical to the maintenance of the vehicle. What users are viewing, on what, and when is probably the single most important data that the server logs when it comes to troubleshooting problems with Plex.
I would like to say that I and imagine a ton of others on here who spend a lot of their personal time trying to help people troubleshoot issues on their servers are/would be vehemently against Plex ever implementing a feature that obstructs the ability to see what users are watching both because of the nightmare it would turn troubleshooting into, and because of the massive amount of development effort it would take to make something like that work without wreaking havoc on how these servers work.
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You have not understood where I am coming from with this. I respect my friends and families privacy, and as I have said many times now I want an option to respect that privacy. You would not use it, and thats fine. It is disrespectful to imply I am using plex for nefarious reasons because I respect their privacy however.
A lot of what you mentioned just does not have anything to do with my original request. Thank you anyway, I can see we have gone as far together we as possible can.
Incorrect, I understand exactly what you are saying, and I along with I’m sure a mess of other people are adamantly against the Plex developers spending any of their precious time to implement a feature that from my understanding of how the server functions likely borders on impossible, and for 99.99999999% of legit server admins completely unnecessary and unwanted. For shady admins though I could see this being a desired toggle. What you are definitely correct about though is that you and I are done with this. Good luck.
I think everyone has given their viewpoint, let’s not create animosity about this. The request is made, folks will vote on it or not to express interest in it.
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@A_Dandy Hey just as a possible work around, why not just create a non-admin account for yourself and use that for instead of the Admin account? That way you don’t have the access to that information? Only using the Admin account when absolutely necessary. Just and idea 
P.S. I would suggest you actually vote for your own request 
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I think the easiest way would be to allow you to create users (which you can do right now) but then associate the device code with that user. This would solve your problem and allow each house hold that you share with to only see what they are playing. I have asked this prior but did not go anywhere. I think would be a simple fix to just allow you to assign the device to a user so when that device connects it knows what user it is and not have to log in.
