How can I add my family to use my Plex Pass

General Discussions
21

I try my best, but I know that my mind works differently, and the way I describe something is how I’d like it described to me, which may not work for others.

As far as I know from my family’s Netflix account, is we only have the one email. I must log in with that email to enter the account, upon which I am asked which profile to select. These allow me to keep my “continue watching” and watch history separate from the rest of the family. It hasn’t even occurred to me that it would be possible to combine separate email accounts into one “family” account type (which, based on the sound of it, would be Account type 3 I mentioned above. Huh). Anyway, that is what I am describing as Type 2: That they are sub-profiles of the account itself. If the account is deleted, then these managed users would also disappear, since they cannot exist without the base account itself. There is no separate email address to enter to login.

Type 3 accounts would continue to exist, however, if you deleted the “Home admin’s” account. Otherwise, they act similar to Type 2 accounts, in that upon login they are required to pick a profile.

All that aside, it’s good to know that your wife is a Type 3 (A user invited to the home. You can only tell this because they are in the home, but do not have “Managed Account” under the center column). Your kids are Type 2 (Managed users, mini-profiles created under the base account “anq”). The final qmail account below is a pending invite for a Type 3 account to join your home, but we can ignore that for now.

I think what we need to do now is make sure your Managed User/Account profiles are not restricted from downloading. Hover over the row of one of the kids, and click anywhere OTHER THAN the “X” that appears at the right-hand side (Which is where you click to set a PIN). Next, click on the “Restrictions” header along the top area to check if you removed “Download” permissions when you created the managed users.

EDIT: Your wife is a Type 3 account, but still has access to Downloads, right? Can you check her row by clicking it, to see if Downloads are allowed as well? I don’t have “Home” user Type 3 accounts, so I’d like to know if the menu looks the same as Managed User Type 2’s…

22

is this what you wanted to see?

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23

Thanks, yeah. Looks almost identical to a Managed User "Restrictions panel, except there is no “Restriction Profile” option, likely because it is a full account and capable of restricting the content it sees and not needing to be done that by the “Home” admin. I appreciate you taking the time to satisfy my curiosity.

Check your two children’s accounts like this, see if “Allow Downloads” is enabled or not.

24

they were disabled for some reason, even though I clicked on “Allow Downloads” during the creation of the managed account… :thinking:

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25

Did that fix it? Can your managed users now download?

26

Nope… Unfortunately, I’m getting really annoyed with this… I can’t even lot onto to pleaxamp on their device with my email… It won’t let me.

:triumph:

27

Did you ever figure this out?

28

Not really. I just kinda given up. It’s very badly made, or explanation are not clear enough in my opinion.

It’s like if every family members needs a Plex pass to work for everyone and I’m not paying 500$ LOL.

I should be able to specify people that live with me with their emails. No matter how they log in, they should get the same benefits as me. I don’t need 15, 5-6 would be good enough for the average family.

My 2 cents.

29

It seems to me the long post by @Divideby0 explains what you need to do. Forget about these managed users for your kids, delete those “accounts”. Invite to your Home your kids, who will all need to create an account with their own email address, they will then be in your Home again but as their accounts and have access to Plex Pass features. You did it right with your wife.

Maybe someone else can confirm that this is right.

Maybe you already tried all this and it didn’t work out though.

30

I might give it another shot this weekend. But I am not to confident.

31

I’m curious what you mean by this. What is preventing you from logging into your account on their phone? I hoped you would elaborate on it before, but I plum forgot to check back afterwards.

One of the most frustrating things about remote troubleshooting is that I cannot see what you are seeing without a load of effort and time. I believe it’s probably a simple fix, but this software is pretty complex and there are all kinds of possible causes. We might just have to play 20 questions for me to figure out your setup so we can work to a solution.

But @Cor1001001101 has an idea, which might be to simply “start over” with new accounts for everyone but your primary (plex pass) account. Either go all in on managed users (some restrictions, such as not being able to view anyone else’s server contents), or go all in on separate accounts for each family member. If anyone has an account that can log in at app.plex.tv OTHER THAN YOUR PLEX PASS ACCOUNT, then keep them. Delete all managed users, uninvite all users from your home, unfriend any users, revoke all invited users. This might be as clean as we can get without deleting the server itself.

Once you do that, make sure each member of your household has a plex account. They can log in at app.plex.tv, but notably it will likely bug you to “get a plex server”, but they can still watch Plex’s own free streaming content. Once we are here, then we can go to your Plex Pass server account, and invite them to your “Home”, under Settings > Plex Home > Invite Plex User. Once done, as admin, double check all permissions about Downloads, as seen above.

32

Inviting a completely separate plex.tv account into your Plex home will not get them any Plex pass benefits – except the ability to use the mobile Plex apps without the 1-minute playback restriction.

This is different to an old Plex.tv account which has been added to your Plex home years ago.
https://support.plex.tv/articles/downloads-sync-faq/

To pass on at least a few of your Plex pass benefits, “managed users” are the way to go.

33

Do you have any other proof of your claim? I will take your word for it, but that link mentions nothing about Home Users, only that Managed Users gain this specific benefit.

I only ask, because I’ve seen some other Plex Pass benefits are bestowed upon invited Home Users, such as intro skip. I guess I kind of assumed that all Pass benefits are bestowed upon anyone in the same Home, what with the login integration that happens when you “merge” accounts (so to speak).

Well, when I got some time, I will make a managed user account and test things out. I had planned to offload my and my family’s managed users to real full accounts invited to my admin account because of the strange restrictions that managed users have. But not if I lose out on ANY of the Pass benefits.

34

It’s all about the age of the account. Old ones are grandfathered some of the benefits, newer ones aren’t.
The cutoff date is mentioned in the link.

35

This changes things quite a bit and so my earlier advice wouldn’t be good.

But if that’s the case, how does Geelow’s wife account have access to plex pass benefits when the account was created in 2023? That’s what Geelow says at least, based on the fact that his wife has access to plexamp’s Downloads and Sonic features but his kids don’t. I’m not exactly used to plexamp plex pass benefits, not sure if that’s accurate.

Edit: when looking at this page:

https://support.plex.tv/articles/201751006-plex-pass-feature-overview/

and then looking at individual pages linked there, such as " Skip TV Show Intros", it doesn’t seem to mention that you get no plex pass benefits when a plex account is in a plex home. In fact, the page here says:

" Tip! : The ability to skip through television show “intros” requires a Plex Pass subscription for Plex Media Server admin account, be in the Plex Home of a server admin that has Plex Pass, or a Plex Pass for the Plex account used in the player app."

Is it just the Downloads feature which requires the account to have been created before a certain date?

36

This is my wife’s Plex amp settings page

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This is when I got my Plex Pass

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37

Since I use my Google account to sign in, I would have to add my account on their phones. Logging in Plex amp, using my Gmail username and password when I choose to sign in with email, does not work.

38

Oh. I haven’t used “log in with google”, I use a full Plex account, not one tied to some other service.
Maybe someone has experience with logging in using google could assist with that…

39

That would require you to use the password of your Plex account, not the password of your Gmail account.
These two are completely separate. If you cannot remember the password of your plex account, reset it. (link “forgot password” when trying to sign in with Email)

40

Plex supports SSO signins using Google credentials, and I assume what the user is trying to say is that his Plex account is registered via Google. This thread is a minefield of a half dozen different baffling UX decisions causing problems for users :confused:

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