It seems the method for inviting friends to your Plex server has changed again. Seems more hidden to me and the flow is different. It seems the only way to get there is to go to <your picture> > View Profile > scroll down for My Friends and click on that. There you have two buttons, one named Add Friend and another labeled Grant Library Access. Seems the process of adding a friend and then having to grant library access have been separated for some strange reason.
So I click Add Friend and put in the email address (e.g. user@gmail.com). It regurgitates the email address for me and then I can click Add Friend. Now the first time it did it the dialog box simply went away. In the past the invite friend flow would show you some sort of invite link but this is no longer the case.
Unsure if I did that right I tried again, entered user@gmail.com and clicked Add Friend. This time it says Already Invited. Hmmm… So let’s say this user never gets the invite email, goes to their spam folder or otherwise the remote user cannot locate the invite email. How do I resend it?
Secondly, does just being invited and accepting the invite mean they can now see all my libraries? Or do I need to go through (a needless) additional step of granting them access to my libraries? Because if I click on Grant Library Access now, before the user has accepted the invite, I get This user is already invited. I know they’re invited. I just invited them. But what libraries do they have access to?
This new invite system seems very clumsy to me. Most of my “friends” are tech-neophytes at best! IMHO whenever you invite somebody by email address that invite should remain on my PMS. I should be able to go to it and see if the user has accepted the invite, or, if they haven’t, I should be able to get a clickable link that I could text to them to say “Click here and accept my invite”. And I should be able to designate which libraries they have access to during invite time.
Suggestion: Make a separate plex.tv account using a free e-mail from Google/Yahoo/AOL/etc. Use it as a test account. Invite the test account to your server and go through the steps of accepting the invite. That will show you the steps your friends/family have to follow when accepting the invite to your server.
You decide to which libraries they have access when sending the invitation.
On the Manage Library Access page, click Grant Library Access → enter their e-mail or plex userid → Continue
You should see a list of libraries on your server(s). Choose the libraries to which they should have access.
Next you’ll see options about inviting them to your Plex Home, age restrictions, etc. Set as desired and click Send. You’ll see a confirmation screen. Click Finish to close it.
Accepting the Invitation
The e-mail is not needed to accept the invitation.
Login to their Plex account at https://app.plex.tv/desktop/. There will be a notification on their username/picture.
Click on their username.
In the dropdown menu, click on their username/picture.
As I said the flow has changed. For some reason the actions of inviting a friend and granting them access to libraries seems to be separated now. When I get to My Friends page I can see both a Grant Library Access button and a separate Add Friend button.
When click Grant Library Access I now see my friend lacks library access. Is that because I used the Add Friend button? Or does it mean that she has accepted the invite but currently has access to no libraries? I don’t recall the Add Friend button prompting me for which libraries she has access to.
OK, adding a new friend today. I should have come here and re-read it. Instead, I used the same path I did before - going to my profile, click on My Friends then Add a Friend, and entering their email address. Again Plex just went back to the friend list after clicking OK. There was no screen for picking which libraries were shared, etc. No indication that the friend was added. I don’t know if the email was sent nor if they’ll have any problems receiving it.
Trying the other method of going to Settings and Manage LIbrary Access then entering the email address again only elicits the Already Invited response. So what now? I can’t re-add this person and I don’t have that handy Copy Link button either.
