The new experience is the worst update in modern history. Did you consult a human when designing this trash or just vibe coded with Claude?
How can I get the old experience back - you know the one that actually worked on a TV without having to hit up 1,000 times to get back to the menu or to be able to switch between library and collections with one click instead of 30. Oh, you accidentally clicked on recommendations when you wanted library? Well, you only have to click 5 more times to get back to it! This app sucks.
Seriously… this is such a horrid job. As an actual usability expert with 30 years experience - whoever approved this design needs to be fired.
I want my side menu back. I want to be able to swap between TV views with 1 press, and I want my player navigation buttons back. Give us the option to revert or customize it how we want - not how some idiot investor thinks we want it.
It’s so slow and unresponsive. Scrolling between titles and the “selection” lags by an entire second. Can’t find subtitles anymore since the menu pops up is only like 100 pixels and off to the side. Can’t easily toggle between streams. Can’t switch between library or playlists or collections. It’s seriously the worst change I’ve ever seen from an app.
I’m suggesting the option that doesn’t cost anything, because that’s generally what people want around here. I actually use Plezy more as my playback app now, but Plezy is $7 on the Amazon app store. You can get the apk from the Plezy GitHub and side load it for free, but that’s that same solution that’s “a bunch of extra work” for you. Skill up or pay out. Your choice.
My response was more to the fellow who wants to paint this weird narrative that people are just stuck with the Plex app as it is, like we’re on Rokus. Even the iOS crowd has figured out how to roll back the app and they don’t even have easy side loading.
This sucks so bad it is unusable! Tried to play a single episode of a TV show and the screen pauses/feezes every 20 seconds and then starts up again. Freaking ridiculous! The menu system is nighmarish - takes several clicks just to get to what used to be 2 clicks. WTH is wrong with the dev team and their overlords. I guess they want everyone to switch to Emby, etc. sigh
I don’t have a problem paying for apps I appreciate, I already bought it on Google Play. I kinda pause thinking of buying on the Amazon App Store since I don’t know how long that will be around (since Amazon is discontinuing FireOS and only making VegaOS devices moving forward).
But also the OP is asking how to get the old Plex interface back. The Plezy interface is not the same as the old Plex app.
It has a sidebar, but it’s not available at all times.
There are no episode-level pre-play screens. You can’t set audio track/subs before playback starts (but it will try and maintain settings between episodes).
There are no actor bios or full filmography list, two things I like in the Plex app.
No theme music.
No music library support.
There’s gonna be a small learning curve navigating any new app, so just installing the classic Plex app for now makes more sense. Not like you can’t do both anyway, and learning to side-load can have other benefits past right now, like bring able to roll back any app that puts out a bad update.
You can side load on a (FireOS) Fire Stick or an Android TV device just like you can an Android smartphone. It’s that thing people call “jailbreaking”. It is not illegal and does not make any permanent changes to the device OS, unlike rooting an Android phone. You’re just flipping a literal switch in the OS interface that says to allow app installs from somewhere besides the normal app store for the platform (which is how the same feature works on Android smartphones).
I think the recent activity we are seeing around more third-party enhancements to the Plex ecosystem is interesting and the direct result of the recent publishing of API documentation to allow that. That some of these enhancements are being slop vibecoded I’m not so happy with. But looking for an outside UI option has been around for awhile. I also have Kodi installed on my Fire Stick simply to run PM4K, which is a fork of the old official Plex plugin for Kodi, and there’s PlexKodiConnect so you can use any Kodi interface skin to talk with your Plex server.
I hate to say i am really disliking the forced new update on fire 4k. Menu is clunky, unresponsive and much of my library just crashes the app when the video starts. I don’t get it. I have cleared cache, signed out/in and it still does it. It has ruined the app and it’s now mostly unusable. Doesnt do this on my apple tv and server pc. We need an option to roll it back and give me back a working app. I have paid for a lifetime licence as well and am now not very happy with it at all.
Haha, thanks for referring to my add-on, but I think by now it being a fork is a little bit of an understatement. Even though the UI is a little dated, it’s probably the most advanced Plex client out there, as it pairs user driven UX decisions with the excellent Kodi playback engine.
