Hi one and all,
I am a recent purchaser of a Plex Pass lifetime membership and I love plex for all it is and hope that with future development it can be made into something really amazing. Now, I know for myself and many others, they get the Plex Pass for the multi-user features (and sadly from what I have seen many of them turn out to be disappointed with what it provides once they get to use it). Although I too bought with multi-user in mind, I knew not to expect too much and had read online of other's disappointment with what it provided. I hope that mine and other people's support for this project help make Plex the amazing software it could be.
The main feature that this post is for is for a full multi-user support on all platforms however this does have some other features, dependencies and considerations that would have to be made for it to be possible.
Multi-User client
tl;dr: I would like to see all of the official clients supporting multi-user. Not in the fashion they currently do, but in a way that would allow multiple users on the same device. At the moment, multi-user makes the assumption (and a far to big one for that matter) that every device has one user. In most households this is not the case, although there may be many "private" devices with only one users, any household with more than one occupant will have more than one "user" and it is the devices that more people use that will actually account for more of the viewing time. I feel that the idea of every person, having an account should not just be the norm but be promoted. What I want to see is for clients (where configured) when the application is opened, you are presented with a screen with multiple users. What I think would look great is if each user could have an avatar (it doesn't even have to be a real picture of the person, just something to distinguish but if it were to be, this could be stored on the PMS), then when you open the app they are displayed in a line like album art that you can scroll through. Something that might make this even more user friendly might be to organise it by last access on that device (making it quick for the regular/recent users).
Users want a personal experience and although provision for this begins with the current multi-user features that allow user-specific tracking this breaks down as soon as two people use the same device. In a family living room, as soon as another user goes to use the TV, they will not be shown their recently watched programs, or where they were in that TV series they were watching on their tablet, or allow you to continue that film you started in your bedroom on a bigger screen, because the on-deck section is not yours. It's another users and without manually logging out and back in again which can be a hassle this would not be possible to do. These are the features that make me love Plex media server over any other alternative such as a simple DLNA server but if this cannot be shared with the whole family and provide a household wide media experience I feel that this is a real let down and that it does not take advantage of all that multi-user data that is being stored.
Sharing vs. "Sub-Accounts"
One of the little things that bugs me, now having the household set-up in a somewhat multi-user way is the fact that my content appears on the devices that have another account as "shared". I feel that for accounts in the same household, there needs to be another concept other than just sharing. Sharing works great between friends and non-immediate family but in the household, the content on the PMS is the content of every user within that household. I feel that you should be able to link accounts as sub accounts (where you have PlexPass) where the media server will appear in the clients as if they own it (but enforcing any sharing restrictions that have been imposed). Obviously this would also need some limitations to avoid abuse such as possibly a limit of sub accounts (4 should be reasonable for the general household) and make it impossible for a sub-account to register their own server. I feel this would work best in the household environment and provide a distinction between users in the household and users outside the household.
Plex Pass per Server
The other annoyance with the current structure is that where you get the Plex apps for free as a Plex Pass member and you get features like mobile upload of content, this is not available for those people within your household if you chose to make one account per person in order to take advantage of the current multi-user features. Unless you log all devices in with the main account that has the Plex Pass that hosts the server then the other features cannot be enjoyed creating a catch 22, you want multi-user you can't have the other features, you want the other features you can't have multi-user. What I would like to see is that plex pass was per server, and that all users of the server could login as a Plex Pass member. This could be further restricted to "sub-accounts" or at least the same limitations recommended for sub accounts, and even require "checking-in" with the PMS where for it to remain active your device must have been on the same LAN as the PMS - this would restrict people being able to give these kinds of privileges to friends/family.
To be honest I wouldn't even mind paying a small fee for each user as long as it was one off (and before you say why don't you just buy the apps, it would not provide Camera Upload or Plex Sync to those devices within my household). Since most of the Plex Pass features impact how the server runs and handles things, I do not feel this is too much to ask.
Personal/Private Libraries for User
The main reason for this would be for each persons own private media on the server if a server was used in a multi-user environment. I would love to see the ability for every "sub-account" their own user space (possibly with set quotas) so that with features such as camera upload, they can have a private personal space to store and organise their photos and videos that they capture on their mobile devices and organise and filter before being able to click a button and have this sent to a designated household share for viewing by the whole family. In a family setup this would be great! Say you took a family holiday and you all took pictures on your mobile devices, it would be lovely if each person could compile an album of their best shots then share this and have it compiles into a family holiday album that can be shared and viewed on the big screen. It would also be great for providing a private backup for everyone in the house. You want your photos to be backed up but you don't want some system where you have to filter the photos before you upload in-case another family member sees your embarrassing moment. Giving this personal space to each user would allow this and provide privacy.
This would be quite an advanced feature to make it as full a feature as I have described here but at the heart of it, it would need a way to deal with multiple users.
Other follow up features
With multi-user implemented in such a way this would make implementing other features such as age restricting content, pin protecting accounts/content and a few other feature requests that I have seen about on here come to fruition. I have also seen a lot of concerned parents and this could lead to adding further restrictions per account including even viewing times that they can be viewing content.
Conclusion
Remember that the feature I requesting in this post is the multi-user log-in for the client and that the rest of my ideas would all require this as the foundations for it to be worth while doing but I have mentioned them to show what the possibilities could be with a sound multi-user system. I would love to hear your thoughts and ideas on this.
