I’ve been a Plex user since 2010 and have LOVED the platform over the years, but I just can’t get past all the extra content that is now shown and offered. I miss the days when plex was just MY content.
These days, trying to explain to friends and family how to navigate the UI and “No I actually don’t have that movie” is just getting old. And with no way to turn off all the extra “Noise” that Plex now shows, it’s just time to move on. I’ve had 2 lifetime memberships for many years and would happily pay to hide the extra content and just show my personal files.
I’d like to thank the Plex team for the last 13 years for an amazing app that has been used countless hours in my home. I am sad to leave, but I think its time.
This looks exactly like what i’ve been looking for…originally this was not able to be hidden, does this hide it for all my users or will each one have to go in and turn them off?
It’s an account-based setting. If your users have their own accounts and you share the media to them as a friend (they log in using their own email/password) then I think it is something that THEY have to disable in their account settings.
Since you can have plex accounts without owning (or having access to a server), it makes a bit of sense that access to “online media sources” such as Plex’s own free movie offerings is an account-based, not server based setting.
Unfortunately it’s still a dealbreaker for me…Say I wanted to share home videos of the kids with grandma, it’s too complicated to tell her to login on a browser, and turn off all these settings so that these random scary/inappropriate movies don’t show up next to our home videos.
While I’m not leaving or even thinking about it - I TOTALLY agree with the points made. None of my users/friends are tech savvy. Without me going to someone’s house to do it for them, it’s impossible to have the average person setup a plex client, connect to my server and just see what we want to use. It’s a hot mess for many people, unless you are near expert level. The biggest problem is things being ON by default.
While I am not going to leave Plex over it, the new user experience when invited to a server is genuinely pretty bad. Grandma wanting to see only the kid videos is a great example of where Plex’s complexity makes it hard on users.
The differences between clients also make it hard for server admins to walk people through changes, if those people are even up for the work.
No one asked but here’s how I would improve things if I could get things into the Plex backlog.
When inviting a new user, the server admin gets to choose exactly what sources from their server are shared, and of those, which are pinned.
When that user logs in, they see the pre-pinned sources and no other startup nags… Nothing about Discover Together. Nothing. They just have immediate access to the home movies they were told about.
Features like Plex’s own streaming content and Discover Together are introduced to that user, one thing at a time, on later logins, in the simplest way possible. (“We hope you’re enjoying #admin_name’s Plex server. Did you know that Plex has lots of other great free movies and TV shows? We pinned a new source to your Home screen so you can check it out.”)
Any feature that is temporarily hidden or source that is un-pinned can still be configured immediately if the user cares to dig into the settings.
If it were totally up to me I would go even farther, and when inviting a user I’d allow the admin to specify things like “never bother this user with Discover Together.” We know our users better than Plex does.
Maybe this user case requires more of managed accounts which give admins more granular control over what users do than fully fledged accounts which assume a significant level of user independence.
Good idea for PC support as well. FOr PLEX, I set up my mother’s account myself and turned all that stuff off. Everyone else is an adult and can decide for themselves what to do. It is ther account and I shouldn’t have any control over it.
You can invite regular accounts into a Plex Home as well.
That way Fast User Switching is available when you need it, without you sharing your credentials.
Of course you still should only do so with immediate family.
I would never want my users to see other users, or have to use pins, or complicate it any more than it is. Ideally there would be a third type - their own completely separate account, but with an option for another to control everything. Most users are just…simple. And if something can be screwed up, they will find it.
