Hi everyone,
I’m new to Plex Pass and this is my first post. 
I tried my hands on the Mobile Sync feature today on my Android phone. I noticed that the progress I made on a video on my phone was not synced with the same video that was on my Plex Media Server.
I was under the impression that Plex Mobile Sync would work like this. I have a 60 minute video on my Plex Media Server on my PC and I have synced the same video on my Android phone. Now if I watch the first 20 minutes of this video at home through my Plex Media Server (either on PC or my Fire TV Stick enabled TV), I assumed I could watch the remainder of the video on my phone starting from Minute 21. But on my Android phone, I had to start the video from the beginning and then manually move to the 21st minute.
Is this how it is supposed to work? Both my Plex Server and my Android Phone are considered two distinct devices and syncing progress between the two is not possible?
From my experience, if you initiate a Sync, ‘watched’ status will also be synced back to your server.
Unfortunately this sometimes doesn’t work reliably.
I am also not aware if this covers half-watched items. Probably not.
It would surely be a helpful feature if Plex implements this. I’m sure it won’t be a difficult job for it since Plex can keep track of my watching history on both my PC/TV and my phone and since Plex knows which videos I have synced/copied from my server to my phone.
Keeping track of this would provide a seamless viewing experience. Otherwise, syncing is no different than manually copying a video from my PC to my phone. It doesn’t take much effort to do that with or without Plex. What value does Plex provide in this space then?
@KoolSIM said:
Keeping track of this would provide a seamless viewing experience. Otherwise, syncing is no different than manually copying a video from my PC to my phone. It doesn’t take much effort to do that with or without Plex. What value does Plex provide in this space then?
Actually, a lot. I am using this regularly. It only takes a click and my phone gets a version of the video file which is only as big as necessary for its screen size and which is in a fileformat which the phone is guaranteed to play back successfully. If you count in all the extra effort you’d have to take for converting the file, you’ll see that it is quite differently from manually copying the file.
And it transfers metadata as well, so you still have a pretty poster and some description for it.
I actually tested this:
I played a file which I synced to my Android phone already a few weeks before. I never played the file in any other Plex client.
After watching the file for over a minute (this is the threshold from where on Plex actually considers a file as ‘in-progress’) I stopped playback on the phone and started a Sync.
The playback progress from the phone was transferred to my server and the video in question appears under ‘Continue Watching’ in my other Plex clients.
Thanks @OttoKerner . I guess I didn’t notice this option of syncing my phone back to the Plex Server this way. It worked for me too.
