How to switch Google Account to activate Plex?

Hello everyone,

I have encountered an issue trying to activate my Pixel 2 XL to watch anything on this device.
When I try to activate the phone, I get a prompt to add a payment method for my secondary Google account; I want to activate it with my primary one but it doesn’t let me change the Google account at all. Is there a way to change it? I am already signed in with my primary one so this confused me…

Thanks for reading!

If you bought the app activation, it is tied to the app store account, not the Plex account.
Which means you need to sign in the app store app of that device into the Google account under which the app was bought.

I have downloaded the app with my main account on the Google app store for free. Now I want to activate the app, doesn’t that mean it should refer me to the account it was downloaded from? I feel like I am missing something…

https://support.plex.tv/articles/203868088-unlocking-or-activating-plex-for-android/

Thanks for sharing, I already saw the article but it doesn’t point to the solution to my problem. Here’ a screenshot of what I get when I click “Buy”. The account that is circled in red is wrong and I want to change it; is there a way to get a prompt that let’s ne switch to my primary Google Store account?

Thanks for the support!

Use the Google account which you used to buy the activation.
i.e. sign out of the Google account which is currently used in the Google play store app and use the other one.
Maybe completely uninstall the plex app and re-downlopad it from th eapp stoire, this time using the Google account which previously bought the activation.

I haven’t bought the activation yet, this is what I am trying to do via the Plex App itself. I tried uninstalling the Plex App, restarting my phone and redownloading the app with my main account yet again…it still only shows me the secondary account to buy the activation with. Is this a bug?

I can only give you this canned response, which is given out by support in cases like this:

If you have more than one Google Play account on the device: Uninstall the Plex app.
Open the Google Play Store and select the correct account (i.e. the one which has the payment method already added to it).
Go to “My Apps and Games” in the settings menu and select the Library tab. If Plex appears in the list there, click the “X” to remove it from that library.
Repeat for each secondary Google Play account.
Finally, install the Plex app from the correct Google Play account (the address noted above).

Tried it and still nothing. I think the problem is that I don’t know how to specifically download from the Google play store via my main account. I honestly can’t explain it otherwise. I thought when there is my avatar shown on the top right corner, I have that account active. Here’s a screenshot of what I mean. I guess there must be another way to sign in and download via the Google play store that I don’t know of…

https://support.google.com/accounts/thread/8353791/in-app-payment-defaults-to-wrong-google-account-how-to-change-this?hl=en

Might take a look at that

yea i had the same issue. but its resolved.
here are the steps.

  1. uninstall the app
  2. use a web browser to log into play.google.com. this step you may want to use a PC, using the browser in the tablet i had to authenticate multiple times. Important that you ensure that you have logged into the correct google account.
  3. find the plex app.
  4. when you choose to install it’ll ask you which device to install.
    it also asks if you require authenticate to make in app purchases. for me anything dealing with purchases i enable authentication.
  5. the plex app should be installed on your device.
  6. it is automatically linked to the google account that installed it.
  7. when you make the activation you can double check that its going to the correct account. before pressing buy.

i suspect that the plex app is using an older version of the android(maybe google pay) API as i recently bought an app through the in-app function and had no such issue.

anyway, if the mod can assist in getting this topic into the plex support page i think it’s going to help android users. i had basically given up on purchasing this app when i saw this topic on the forum. once i saw that people was saying it’s google’s fault. i was able to locate a workaround.

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You are a lifesaver! Thank you so much! This worked for me. I didn’t even know you could buy/download Apps on PC to your phone!

I bet a lot of people give up on this because the workaround is not obvious and the app should just prompt you to choose the account anyway… Cheers!

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