Please correct me if I am wrong, but I see no way that a user can restrict access to “Movies & TV” or any other Online Media Source within the Plex app. You can only “unpin” it, which is not a restriction.
Plex has some excellent content controls through the server, but none in the app.
As Plex starts allowing access to media without visiting an actual Plex Media Server, those content controls need to move to the app as well.
This support article should get you going in the right direction:
Thank you for the quick response but this unfortunately does not address the issue (perhaps I wasn’t clear enough):
How does a user, who only has the Plex app (not the server), restrict their children from accessing the “Movies & TV?”
Let me say this another way to hopefully be more clear:
Plex is promoting streaming from non-plex media servers. These streams come from cloud based servers run by either Plex or Time Warner directly. A parent downloads the Plex app to access this great new content on their Roku or phone and they are enjoying the streams.
But, how does this parent restrict access to these streams if they never install a Plex Media Server?
If the parents in question have a Plex Pass and their kids are managed users in their server-less Plex environment, they can control what their kids can see based on the restriction profiles linked above by darcilicious.
If the parents have a regular non-Plex Pass account for their kids, the cannot restrict access.
Keep in mind that’s a use case not supported by Plex’ terms of service.
From https://www.plex.tv/about/privacy-legal/plex-terms-of-service/ :
- GENERAL USER OBLIGATIONS . You represent that you are at least eighteen (18) years of age (or the legal age of majority, whichever is greater) …
Also, there’s no restrictions if the parents have a regular non-Plex Pass account and share that account with their kids.
- ACCOUNT . … You acknowledge that Plex may not provide controls that restrict the maturity level of content available through the Plex Solution. If you allow your child (under the age of 18 or the legal age of majority, whichever is greater) to access your Plex account, you are solely responsible for monitoring your child’s use of the Plex Solution and determining what maturity level is appropriate for or accessible to your child. …
Oh, I didn’t realize a Plex app user was able to create managed users without a Plex Media Server. I assume this is only available via a web browser (not a problem).
Very cool, thank you. I will give it a try.
If the parents in question have a Plex Pass and their kids are managed users in their server-less Plex environment, they can control what their kids can see based on the restriction profiles linked above by darcilicious.
I now realize there is a problem with this situation. Once the parent sets up the managed users those managed users are unable to access outside servers. This makes the combination of a server-less (home) environment and managed users incompatible; there would be nothing the managed users could watch if you remove the ability to view Online Media Sources.
Dang. See, I really like how I can help my friends control their kids’ access to content on my server, which I share with them. It was great because the kids were free to browse my server without fear of getting into content inappropriate for them. I was using labels (not all PG movies are appropriate for their kids for example). However, the addition of Movies & TV gives them access to content I cannot control for them and there are no labels, so my friends wish their kids didn’t have access to Movies & TV at all but still keep access to my server.
If they were able to create managed users with the option to restrict access to Movies & TV, but keep the ability to access an outside PMS, we’d be set.
On that topic, I never have understood why managed users cannot access outside PMS. Aren’t they just a subset of the primary account? I mean, if I grant my friend’s account access to my server, I don’t care how they manage their access to my server on a per managed user level. I don’t see how this could be abused. Is there some sort of technical limitation in tracking watched lists?
You can look at this from 2 angles:
You don’t want your friends horror movie library which he happens to deliver as PG rated content to be automatically available to your kids…
Same but less extreme: your friend is sharing simply too much content while you want your kids not to spend all day watching videos.
Your friend is sharing his/her content with you… they simply might not want you to keep sharing their content with your entire home. While they even might be ok sharing with your kids, they simply cannot be sure whom else you’re sharing (and if you’re reading this forum you’ll find people have a very wide interpretation of what „their home“ is or for what reasons they add users as Managed Users“). Maybe they have a good reason and only want to share that embarrassing home movie library with you personally
Long story short… if you really want a friend’s content to be shared with your kids as well, best ask that friend to specifically share with them
If you give your kids full plex.tv accounts, invite them into your Plex Home nonetheless.
That way, you can ‘Switch User’ into their account and can disable the On-Demand library under Account - Online Media Sources.
Thanks for the reply…my thoughts below…
Managed User perspective (e.g. your kids)
You could have the option to disable specific outside PMS’s on managed accounts, just like you do with content ratings. That would solve those problems easily. (Plus, I hope you could talk with your friends about the problem)
Your friend’s perspective
There is nothing to stop someone from sharing their account with their entire household already so I don’t see how managed users would be any different. But, if it was a problem, why not include a option to disallow sub-managed users from accessing your PMS from a Friend’s account? Seems simple enough.
Honestly, I still think just allowing Managed Users to access outside PMS is a decent solution and just include the ability for the PMS admin to block them and the Primary account holder (linked to the Managed Users) to disable specific outside PMS’s and also Online Media Sources.
I would definitely like to see a way to restrict the “Movies & TV” content more than just disabling it. In my home, we don’t watch rated R/TV-MA content, regardless of if it is on the kids account or my admin account, and I really don’t like that I can restrict content that comes through “Movies & TV” beyond just disabling it. That is saying either you get all of the content or none of it. I don’t want some of that, and so sadly my option is to just disable this service for my household. I would like to see this change, but until it does, neither I or my family will be using this service.
See the very first response in this thread.
https://support.plex.tv/articles/parental-controls/
I did go through that before posting. Again, this is only applicable to restrict the content form “Movies” and from “TV” as shares, but the online service “Movies & TV”, the streaming service , can only be enabled or disabled. I can’t restrict what comes from the online content a part from “no online content for you”. I would like to use that streaming content, but I am resigned to just removing it (which I have already done) because I don’t want SOME of that content, i.e. the R and TV-MA content. I would like to see a way to filter the online streaming service content.
That is not true.
If you select e.g. the ‘Teen’ profile there, you won’t see anything rated “older” than PG-13 and TV-13 in the Movies & TV “library”.
Ah, now I see the phrase “as well as Video on Demand content.” I suppose this is better than nothing, but it still doesn’t filter the content on the admin account, and short of creating an admin and making myself a managed user, there is not way to filter it from all profiles under the same account, managed and admin. Thank you for the clarification.
Otto, is the profile and filtering you are referring to different from these Restrictions settings in the Manager User setup section? Because my Managed User that has those parental controls restrictions set is getting a filtered view when it comes to my libraries, but an unfiltered view for the “on plex” streaming libraries.
Yes. Close this by clicking on Cancel, then scroll upwards to the top.
You must be using the hosted web app app.plex.tv or you might not see it. (depending on your server version)
I’ve tried it both ways. Setting the restriction profile at the top to “younger kid”, and setting the restriction profile to “none” and setting allowed rating manually in the Movies and TV Shows sections. I get the same behavior both ways – my local libraries get filtered, but the “on plex” streaming libraries are unfiltered and include R-rated movies.
Is this behaviour perhaps restricted to a certain client type? Could you compare e.g. an Android client with the web app?
I’m seeing same behavior in Web App, on the Apple TV app, and on the iPhone app.
I can reproduce this. I will report it to the developers.
