I’m a little fuzzy on the home user vs managed user vs friend concept.
I’m a long time user, Plex Pass for life, etc etc. But I don’t often get into the nuts and bolts. I just use it!
And I want my aging mother to use it too. She does NOT live in my house, and I would prefer if she does her thing and me and my fam to ours, and we don’t interfere with each other (in terms of watched status, on deck, etc).
It’d be NICE, but not required, if I don’t have to see shows I’m not interested in (ie. Downton Abbey) and she doesn’t see shows she’s not interested in (or that I’m embarrassed to have my mom knowing I watch!)
One more option I have available to me besides home/managed/friends… I currently run Plex on my Linux server but the media files are all stored on a Synology DS718+. That Synology is a very capable PMS in its own right! So I could, theoretically, have both servers running and accessing the same /movie and /tv folders but maintaining their own databases, right? Or does that present some everything-will-blow-up issue I’m not appreciating?
Anyway, what would you do?
Things I don’t want to do:
set up her own plex machine in her house. She’s just not that techie, so nope.
maintain two sets of /movie and /tv folders. That’s just yucky.
have to put in a pin every time I use the TV. Or even choose a user. I’m assuming I can choose a default?
Hi aR3SA4Ry,
The best way I’ve found to achieve what you need is to make a free basic Plex account for your Mum.
Then add her as a friend under Users & Sharing and select which libraries to share with her.
On her player/client she should only see the shared libraries and will have her own algorithms to show her own on deck etc. and your algorithms shouldn’t be affected.
Good luck.
I do sort of recall trying that with my neighbour a few years ago, and it had issues because we’d still see each other’s tv shows that the other wasn’t interested in cluttering up the page. Not a huge deal. I think I can probably achieve what I want by going into labels, but unless there’s a mass editor yet (there wasn’t last time I wanted it, despite it being like the most requested feature ever) that’s too tedious.
I have two regular users… One is set up as a managed user, one has their own Plex account and I’ve shared my libraries with them. I’ve never had an issue with seeing any content in Continue Watching or On Deck other than my own. I’m on server version 1.19.4.2935 (Windows 10 Pro).
For the record, with managed users, you can remove the PIN on your account. You can set a default user in the Android phone app (Settings -> Account -> Sign In Automatically). You can also do this on the Web app, so I imagine most player apps have a similar option as well.
I don’t mean “continue” or “on deck”. I figure that would be separate. I just mean I don’t necessarily want to wade through a bunch of shows I have zero interest in ever watching.
But I think I’ve figured it out with labels/tags. Its a bit of a pain, but not terrible. Basically I have her setup to exclude anything with the tag “no_mom” and I’ll exclude myself (if I can, I haven’t tried yet) from seeing “mom_only” or “no_steve” or something to that effect. That way the default is that everyone sees everything except for those things that certain people don’t want to see. If it turns out that we have very little in common, then I can do the inverse, and include “mom_only” for her as well as “everyone” for the few items in common, etc.
I’ve also finally noticed that I can “mass edit” right through the GUI! I never noticed that before (ie. select multiple items and edit tags for all).
