Plex has repeatedly removed valuable features, most notably Watch Together and support for external players on Android and iOS. The justification often implied is that external players cannot track watch status. But if that is truly the reason, it reflects a short-sighted technical decision rather than a limitation of external players.
Plex could easily provide a simple, open tracking API and invite external player developers to integrate it. Open-source communities, especially projects like mpv and other widely used players, would be more than willing to add Plex watch-status callbacks. This would give Plex accurate tracking without forcing users into a less capable built-in player.
Instead, Plex has chosen the most restrictive path: removing external player support entirely. This helps no one. Plex’s own mobile player still lacks many basic quality-of-life features that other players have offered for years, such as intuitive swipe gestures for brightness or volume as seen in ReVanced, VLC, MX Player, and others. No matter how much users request these features, Plex has been slow or unwilling to implement them.
Rather than repeatedly asking Plex to add every missing playback feature, the better solution is simple:
Bring back official external player support.
Give users the freedom to use the player that works best for them while still maintaining Plex’s watch tracking, stats, and ecosystem reliability through a lightweight tracking API.
If you want Plex to stop removing features and start empowering user choice again, please vote for restoring external player support. The community wants it, external player developers want it, and Plex users unquestionably benefit from it.
Feature Rich External Player Example - GitHub - marlboro-advance/mpvEx: A beautiful media player for android, based on mpv-android and built with Jetpack Compose. Forked from mpvKt
