Plex for Desktop is not usable for many people after the advertise as player feature was removed.
But this discussion is about mouse support. Why would you need mouse support if you are going to be controlling which ever app with another device via advertise as player. If you are using a mouse why do you need advertise as player? These are two different use cases in my mind.
( to be clear I am just trying to understand the need for mouse support when there is another option that has mouse support. so I can pass along feedback to those who will ultimately make decision to bring it back or not)
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As someone who uses advertise as player extensively in Plex for Desktop, I (and many others) were told to use Plex HTPC if we want to continue using that feature. But many of us are using desks with mice attached and not a 10-foot UI environment. It’s confusing and frustrating simply trying to keep the features we have been using for so long but getting stuck in a feedback loop by staff and mods pointing at each other as a solution while neither are viable.
In my case I’m often working on my computer with Plex for Windows playing in the background (because Plexamp does not scale well on a large landscape screen). I’m able to control my music playback when away from my desk while wearing bluetooth headphones, or when I’m working on a second machine via KVM. And other times I use my big screen panel with my phone to control it as a loud speaker. In this scenario HTPC makes sense — but not when Plex Desktop is already in use. Plex used to excel at user convenience but now we are reduced to playing Plex client bingo every time we move around and it isn’t something I am willing to do when it was working just fine previously.
“Am I changing screens? Do I need to change my media player too?” is not something customers of competing streaming services ask themselves and the design goal of Plex is to be simpler and more user friendly than them, which this is in stark contrast of.
I also want to mention the lack of visual information with the HTPC client which is why I avoid it for music in most circumstances. On a “10-foot” screen you only see 4 or 5 tracks in a list as opposed to the whole album. You don’t see ratings for your songs unless you play them, and you can’t update that rating anywhere in the HTPC UI! It’s also very difficult visually identifying songs without the album art preview on the side. I use Plex for Desktop for music because the HTPC UI is unusable in comparison.
Thank you for asking for feedback and sorry if I came off as rude. I use Plex HTPC as much as Plex for Windows so I really hope these UI improvements are considered so I can abandon Plex for Windows entirely.
- Basic mouse support (this is a Windows program ran on a Windows machine)
- Album art on the left side of the track list item
- Track rating on the right side of the track list item
- The ability to update track rating from the HTPC UI
But until then Plex for Desktop is a much better experience than HTPC and it would be ideal to enable advertise as player so mouse users are not alienated. Simply adding a warning popup to the checkbox telling the user about it being an unsupported and deprecated feature would be enough to allow us to continue using Plex for Desktop without being permanently downgraded (like mine is) and stop users from filing bug reports which are not on the roadmap to be fixed.
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So, having one app with mouse support, and a completely different app to be used as streaming target is the way to go? Where’s the logic in here? And what if I wanna use Alexa in between to control the player, because… mouse battery is empty, or I’ve got my hands full with popcorn? Why would you like to be limited to a specific input device?
Imagine whatsapp and others: They are now offering desktop apps because people don’t want to reach for their mobile just to read a message or to reply. I can check the weather in a browser or by asking a voice assistant. The world is no longer limited to one method. Everything everywhere is the current call.
To sum this up: Using Plex Web in a browser or as an electron app called plex for windows is no solution for any home-theatre-like setup. I’m not talking about screen-sizes or 12-foot-interfaces, I’m simply talking about things like Audio passthrough when I have an AVR available. Yes, Plex Web can play media, and has mouse support. But many formats need to be transcoded to be played in a browser, which costs energy and quality. At least until browsers start adding proper support for home cinema hardware, and that will take a while. That’s why netflix delivers a full app instead of wrapping their web-app into electron.
The htpc-app solves this issue by supporting all common video formats, audio passthrough, framerate adaption, and it even runs on a desktop machine similar to plex for windows. But it’s missing mouse support, and the interface is not optimized for desktop use. Yes, it’s for htpc, and that’s fine (for me).
I understand, packing plex web into electron gives you a “desktop app” basically for free. The question is: Is it worth it?
In my opinion: Nope. Plex web is far away from being the main tool in a home theatre setup. Lack of features, layout, not a streaming target. And it seems like you got to the same conclusion, since you brought up a second desktop app called plex htpc. Which delivers the home theatre experience, but lacks control possibilities and requires a big screen.
Being a system engineer, I see one good solution (currently). First, get rid of plex for windows, and advertise plex web as a PWA. All major browsers support this and it works great, I’m using youtube and other webapps as pwas every day. It reduces your overhead since you don’t have to take care about keeping electron up2date and so on. Second, extend plex htpc. Make the design a bit more responsive, like adding an option to switch between 2 size settings, maybe automated if in fullscreen or not, just an example. Add proper control possibilities. Treat it as the plex app on windows/linux/osx. Not an easy task, I know.
Please, take this as pure feedback. This is no rant, I’m not mad or angry. Just my own personal view about the situation. I’m happy to elaborate deeper into this if you want me to, it’s just getting late here.
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Audio passthrough is available in Plex for Windows. You configure it in Settings → Player (Show Advanced); you only need to set Audio Device and Audio Device Kind to something other than “Auto select device” and “Basic,” respectively, for the passthrough options to appear:
Plex for Windows (and Mac and Linux) support refresh rate switching as well (on the same settings page, toward the bottom):
These screenshots are from Plex for Windows version 1.47.1, but these features have been supported for a while. As far as I’m aware, it uses the same underlying player engine (mpv) as Plex HTPC, so video codec support should be identical.
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Someone please tell me where I left that deep hole for hiding myself…
My apologies, I wasn’t aware of the added support …
Mouse touch support would be great too.
I know that is for a 10ft interface, but the web/app client sucks for tablet or touch laptop use.
mouse support on a Mac would be a picnic … in the pit of sarlacc
In an effort to bring some sanity to this discussion which has gone way out of control, I’ll try to summarize the intent of the two apps, Plex for Mac/Windows/Linux (sometimes called Desktop for brevity) and Plex HTPC.
First both apps use MPV for the playback engine. We wouldn’t entertain the disservice of putting out an app with the poor media stack you find in electron apps and dare to expect users to accept it as an application for the desktop. While the UI in both apps is rendered using a web interface, it is done through Chromium which is running inside the Qt framework.
Second, and related to the first, the two apps are very similar. In fact, they are built from the same codebase. Some features are enabled in one and disabled in the other but this is primarily in support of the difference in the UI. These UIs do come from different codebases and are very different in design and intent.
The Desktop app is intended to be used by the user sitting in front of a computer. It has the same look and feel as Plex Web because that’s where the UI comes from. It has several additions which are not present in the generic Plex Web such as the aforementioned audio/video preferences. The biggest addition by far is the support for downloading media for offline playback.
HTPC is intended to be used as a 10 foot interface (you sit 10 feet away from the TV). It uses the UI from TV apps (the apps that run in several smart TVs). The nature of this intent requires that text sizes be bigger (so it can be read/used from a distance) and by extension the UI be simpler. While it does have some minimal mouse support, it is never intended to be driven by a mouse but instead by the basic up/down/left/right/enter/back command-set.
To put it simply:
If you wish to drive the app via a mouse and keyboard and you sit close enough to the TV to be able to read potentially small text, then the Desktop app is the more appropriate for you.
If you wish to drive the app via a remote or other device with a similarly smaller command set, then the HTPC app is more appropriate for you.
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I am sorry 
Honestly I want 1 app that does support mouse and companion, please consider adding mouse support to plex HTPC so I can drop plex for windows, most of the time I do use a mouse and sometimes I do use my phone mostly with music, now I have to use 2 apps instead of 1, if you guys could add mouse support to Plex HTPC I could finally use 1 app again.
“We aren’t wrong, it’s the users who are wrong! They don’t know what they want!” 
While I understand the design intent, your company is working against it by removing features from Plex Desktop and telling users to use HTPC instead. And then we’re told to not use HTPC because it’s not designed for mouse input. So which is it? “You need to use HTPC! But HTPC is not the app for you” is what the last few moderator and employee comments surmise to.
I also want to point out that adding mouse support is a no-brainier for accessibility devices and not just a feature requested by our darn users asking for software improvements. If the block is selling it to your product owners or whomever controls the roadmap then there’s a million ways to do it.
It’s very concerning that the recent behavior from Plex is a pattern of arbitrarily removing features, providing conflicting support for those users (whose only workaround is permanently downgrading their client to keep using advertise as player), and refusing to listen to feedback for simple feature requests like mouse input. Newsflash: HTPC devices can use air mice, and those are a remote and mouse in one device! Which doesn’t work nearly as well as it could because of nonsensical design decisions like not allowing mouse input on a Windows program.
If you want to improve Plex then your company needs to look at more successful companies like Apple for design motifs: when you pick up an iOS device, there’s no confusion on what software it will run. It’s deliberately designed that way so users of any skill level know what it does after using any one of their devices. And this is where Plex falls short — and has fallen short — for a long time. Plex is infamous for churn and burning clients and moving features around so nobody knows which client does what. How do I use track radio? “Use Plexamp!” Music visualizations? “Plexamp again.” Advertise as player? “Not Plex Desktop.” Which client can I update my metadata with? Or my track ratings? “… Plex Desktop.” It’s so confusing for the users and it must make the backend a nightmare to develop. And I don’t understand why after creating and killing off so many app revisions that Plex hasn’t just created one ecosystem where users aren’t left playing guess who with their Plex clients.
Sigh. 
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I understand the differences between the two apps, but I am one of the users who rely on the companion app’s functionality. This was working fine with the Plex Windows app, but that feature was removed. Now the only application I can use which supports this is the HTPC app, which is fine, but I don’t need a 10 ft interface.
I’ve been pushed into a corner by Plex, and now it seems like I’m being told I’m using the apps incorrectly when it wasn’t my choice to begin with.
I’d gladly go back to using the Plex windows app if the companion feature worked again.
I also vote for full mouse control in Plex HTPC as I no longer use Plex for mac (or Plex web) since it doesn’t have grid layout while in Folders view (contrary to Plex HTPC). So, as long as one of those is not implemented, I’ll stick with the discontinued and old PMP (sigh).
No staff responses in 5 days and counting … Are our issues not going to be acknowledged?
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