"Keep" episodes (auto deletion options)

General Discussions
1

So, I stumble on to the advanced tab today on a show, and was completely floored that plex added auto-deleting episodes at some point when I wasn’t looking. So I start running some tests right away, and I got to say…

…wut?

Ok so you got your keep X episodes option. If I pick “Keep 5 episodes”, it only sets it for “Set the maximum number of unwatched episodes to keep for the show.”

Why? Why is it specifically unwatched, and why isn’t there a option to turn it to watched or unwatched? Am I completely missing something? I want to keep a rolling 5 episodes of something like, the Daily Show, or SNL. I don’t want to have it so if I watch them each day/week, now they never get deleted.

I know, I know “but FrostyWolf, there is clearly a option to handle removing “episodes after watching”” Yes there is, but, let’s take SNL as a example, a wildly popular show that tends to be topical and has a million episodes, a prime option for auto deleting.

I set SNL to keep 5 episodes. If I don’t watch them, then it’s perfect! I always have the latest 5 episodes. Hurray!

Let’s say I watch them each sat. Oh-no! episodes aren’t getting deleted anymore cause I don’t have 5 unwatched episodes!

But wait, remove episodes after watching is here to save the day! My options are daily, or weekly. Well…crap. Now If I am watching them as they come out, I only have 1 episode. If I have it set to daily its gone right after I watch it. If I have it set to weekly, its gone a week after I watch it…just in time for the next episode. Not only am I unable to keep the last 5 if I want to watch them again or show them to someone that is over, but other users that might not be watching them as they come out and take a while to watch them, will be SOL because its based entirely on the admin.

Please tell me I’m missing something here? I don’t understand why this would be the intended behavior. It really only makes sense if you a “watch it once and never again” kind of watcher, with no other users on the server. If you:

A Like to re-watch the past few episodes now and then, or show them to a friend or family member when you find a chance to (which could be more then a week with a weekly show) or

B Have multiple users that aren’t on the same watch schedule as you

This has been a much requested option in, well, literally any program that has anything to do with media. I see it in Sonarr, Radarr, Sickrage, nzbget, sab, etc. I see custom scripts and work arounds everywhere, each in their own state of disrepair. I was super excited to see it officially added to something finally, only to find it doesn’t actually keep a rolling snapshot of recent episodes, and has no way to make it do so.

The only work around I currently see is if you make a separate admin account for Plex different then your “watching” account, then they will always be marked as unwatched.

2

I don’t really get your question. If you want to delete the whole series, Plex has a delete option (or you can just delete from the server). If you want to delete it after a certain amount of days, you can do that as well. If you want to delete it after you watch it, that is also an option.

3

Plex doesn’t have a way to delete after a certain amount of days. That’s the entire point I explain in my first post. It only works on unwatched episodes.

4

It does have an option to delete episodes after a certain amount of days. If you go in to Edit, and then Advanced, at the top you will see “Keep [Option]”. [Option] is what you have chosen, “All episodes” is the default option. Then you have the option to keep 5 episodes, 3 episodes, or 1 episode, presumably it will keep the episodes that have just aired (starting with the latest episode to air). After that you have another 3 options, keep episodes from the last 3 days, 7 days, or 30 days. Below the “Keep” setting, you also have the “Delete episodes after watching [Option]” setting. That setting has 3 options, “Never”, “After a day”, or “After a week” and it defaults to “Never”.

I still don’t know exactly what you’re asking, but if you want to delete episodes a certain number of days after they air, there is an option for that. Or if you want to delete episodes a certain number of days after the server admin has watched them, there is also an option for that. Unfortunately, there does not seem to be an setting to set these options for a certain user, so you cannot bypass the server admin requirement for deleting episodes after watching.

5

If you read my first post, you will see a example of why that doesn’t do what you says it does.

That option, once again, only works on “UNWATCHED EPISODES.” It says it, right there under the option.

Which means, if the server admin watches any of those episodes, they no longer will be getting auto-deleted. I’m not trying to be a jerk here, but I don’t know how else to explain it to you. That option does NOT automatically delete episodes so you only have what ever you set. It only does it if the episodes are UNWATCHED.

I have a feeling you don’t use the option yourself, or you would understand the first post, which explains why this isn’t doing anything helpful at all.

If you still aren’t getting it, explain how you can keep the 5 newest episodes of a Daily/Weekly show, regardless of who has or hasn’t watched it. There is no way with the current (super odd) auto-delete options to do so. The options are all completely based off of what the server admin has or hasn’t watched. Meaning the only way to get this to actually keep a rolling 5 newest episodes of a show, would be for the server admin not to watch the show at all.

If you need more help understanding this, it lays it out here: https://support.plex.tv/articles/226074728-setting-up-recordings/

“If you choose “3 episodes” and you currently have 3 unwatched episodes, then when a new episode gets recorded, the oldest existing episode will automatically be removed.”

6

I get what you’re saying. Yeah, I don’t think Plex supports that unfortunately.

7

I’m actually having issues getting it to even work as it says it does work, just started a separate thread about that though, as this is more of a rant about why are the options even like that in the first place.

Provided I can get it to work at ALL, what I was trying to point out is even with in the limited scope the options cover now (very limited selections on amount of episodes/days, etc) these options don’t make a lot of sense.

Both options are based on Server Admin only. Plex isn’t Kodi. One of it’s biggest selling points is multiple users. Why do these options seem centered around only a one user experience?

And even within that scope, that one user experience…they don’t make sense. If I’m setting a limit on amount of unwatched episodes to keep, why would the default behavior then be to keep episodes forever if I watched them?

IMHO, this option should be more like:

Keep a maximum of [NumberFillForm] [DropDown](Watched/Unwatched/Watched or Unwatched) [DropDown](Episodes/Days Worth of Episodes)

Examples could then be:

Keep a maximum of 11 Watched Episodes
Keep a maximum of 60 Unwatched Days Worth of Episodes
Keep a maximum of 3 Watched or Unwatched Episodes

This would satisfy pretty much all situations of keeping X amount of episodes in one simple sentence with 3 options.

You can then of course still have the (currently very limited) option to delete episodes after watching as well.

1 Like
8

So the “Unwatched” word is the reason I’ve been confused by the Keep episodes option. I’m not sure I see the utility in the current iteration of this feature. It would be nice to have an option to simply keep the latest x shows or x days worth of shows regardless of watched status like MythTV had. I like to keep a week or two’s worth of topical content like late night shows around. Once they get older than that, the monologues get outdated regardless whether I watched them or not.

9

I know this thread is old, but don’t forgot “season” … Like I only want to keep the current season of a show. Or I want to keep the current season plus X episodes back (so that in the beginning you could rewatch the last few from the previous season). Again, ignoring watched status or tying the watched status to a user other than server admin.

2 Likes
10

This may be off topic, but I was searching around for an option to lock certain episodes from auto delete altogether. i.e., Vice would have special reports in addition to their regular programming that I’ve found interesting and would want to keep.

As of currently, there is no option do do that.

I guess a work around to have your cake and to be able to eat it too, would be a separate archive library in which you move the content into.

See also: Lock Specific Episodes from Auto Delete

11

I found this topic while searching for an option to keep shows in the library, even without having any episodes.
I find that my settings such as share labels or custom collections disappear when the last episode disappears from the library and the show disappears. Once the next episode comes in, I have to add those things again. Unless there is something I’ve missed here.

But I agree with a lot of this. I was under the impression that the Keep option was to keep a specified amount of watched episodes of a show. so when I activated it, suddenly the whole season got deleted, except the very latest episodes. Which was not at all what I wanted. So I had another read, and found it deletes unwatched episodes.
I see how that is useful for daily shows, but I would like to keep watched episodes of a normal episodic show like family guy or something, so that there is always at least 1 episode in the library of that show. and so that my other users have some more time to watch it before it goes away.

I’ve had to resort to only using Delete after playing, but that still leaves me with the issue of all episodes being deleted once I reach the end of the season, and the show disappears entirely from my library.

12

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