That’s great news! Thank you Craig for the prompt reply, and for the heads up. Much appreciated.
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Hi Craig,
I had a few minutes to do some external output testing and here’s what I’m seeing:
- Cannot turn off the device screen without causing the external display to lose video as well (I’m actually seeing similar issues with the current Airplay implementation as well). Legacy client can have the device screen asleep for both HDMI and Airplay. This seems to be the issue that Th3irdEye is referring to.
- The display mode sizing cause pillar and letterboxing when outputting over lighting to HDMI, regardless of Zoom, Letterbox, Original, Stretch. All have various issues.
- Playback Controls on iPhone stop functioning when outputting to external display. Swiping up to hide the app and then re-opening will bring them back for a few moments.
- Audio seems to play through both the external device and the iPhone, rather then just the external display.
Thanks!
I still can’t play a lot of content in 4k with DoVi/HDR in my iphone 13 pro max. Sometimes i convert my content to h265 with handbrake in my macbook with VideoToolbox and for some reason app crashes all the time i try to play this content. This didn’t happened in the old app, and i never has this problem in any other plex app (windows, android tv, apple tv, browser)
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Hello Plex Devs,
Plex for iOS Client Version 2025.13.0 (1025) and Platform Version 18.4.1 with iPhone 16 Pro Max and the experience with this new app is not that great yet.
I have movies, TV shows and sports libraries. Sports and TV shows opens up correctly, but movies does not. Browse tab in Movies library ends up showing “Uh Oh… Something’s Not Right” with Retry and Back buttons. Recommended tab seems to work with movies and Categories opens up normally, but some categories seems to work just as poorly as the Browse tab. Movies library worked normally with the previous version of the application which included music and photo libraries.
Live TV usually also does not work. It just opens “Uh Oh… Something’s Not Right.” “Sorry, that didn’t work. We are actively monitoring for issues. Try restaring the app or come back later.” This error view is really bad since you have to kill the app and start the app again.
One big missing thing also is the lack of localizations. The new app includes only 8 languages and it’s really suprising. Hopefully you will soon include all the languages which used to be included in the old version of the application.
Regards,
Jaakko
Will the ability to go edge to edge fullscreen return in a future update for iPhone?
In 2025.13 there is a new Display Mode setting under the Playback Options menu when playing content that affects aspect ratio. Currently they work as so:
Letterbox: Scale video to letterbox with black bars where necessary
Original: The exact source dimensions of the media
Stretch: Fill the entire screen ignoring aspect ratio
Zoom: Fill the entire screen respecting aspect ratio
Gotcha. Yeah that works but you used to be able to just use your fingers and swipe out or pinch to zoom video to the edge or back to orginal aspect
Yeah, they haven’t said as much, but I think a lot of the “put things in menus” vs having either on screen shortcuts or gesture controls is due to trying to make this a shared code base across all platforms. Unfortunately, so far it’s making navigation more cumbersome for what used to be quick swipe or single click options. Craig had mentioned they are looking at their options though for improvements so hopefully we can see some of those shortcuts return once the main functionality is stable.
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I have an iPhone with a USB-C port and I get pillar and letterboxing over that connection as well.
I can no longer play files that are a hybrid of DoVi and HDR. I made sure to hybridize all my DoVi profile 5 files due to the recent issues on so many platforms BEFORE the new UI rollout…That issue got fixed after I combed through my whole library, but now this… jeeze! I get message saying “Not enough CPU for this conversion” but I’ve narrowed it down to only those files and what remaining DoVi profile 5 files I have. 4k DoVi/HDR Remux plays no problem, but a 6 Gb file does? Yea…
There’s a bug in 2025.13 that is causing all HEVC HDR media to transcode. The error you see can occur if transcoding is disabled on the server side, or the processor isn’t powerful enough to transcode the file. They’re working on a fix.
Downloaded new update, all my settings got reset. Thanks 
Also apparently this shouldve fixed live tv showing up on the bottom even if it’s off everyehere but mine still shows up and I have it disabled 
Even the bug fixes need bug fixes. Do you not see how this new experience is a nightmare? I haven’t been able to watch my content normally. Release the old app again please
This is regarding to TV shows theme music.
Many thanks, @Craig_Holliday! Looking forward to it.
Just remember to apply it to Movies too 
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Yes and collections too (albeit editing the db is required for this one).
Hi all,
I’ll try to keep this constructive, but this update is a complete mess. As a developer myself, I genuinely can’t understand how this version was deemed ready for release — it feels like it was signed off by an inexperienced team or rushed without proper QA.
I primarily use Plex to upload videos from my phone and camera to a self-hosted server, and the new “experience” has introduced a number of frustrating regressions:
- Forcing landscape mode when starting a video is incredibly disruptive. Why remove the choice from users? The old version handled this perfectly.
- There’s no longer any visible information about video duration in the library view. Why was this removed?
- The “date added” field is also missing. This is basic and critical metadata. At least for personal videos.
- Accessing a personal video library now takes 3–4 extra taps. This adds needless friction.
- Key functionality is hidden behind layered (sub)menus, often with only a single toggle buried deep. This feels like bad UX.
This feels like a downgrade in nearly every way. Please reconsider these changes or at least give users the option to revert to the previous layout or behavior.
Edit: I also can’t delete media anymore. Why remove something like this?
Edit 2: There is also no way anymore to refresh libraries?! I really start considering Jellyfin right now.
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The functionality I mention below is available as of version 2025.13.0 of the apps.
This is no longer the case, at least in the latest release. During video playback, tap the screen and select the vertical ellipsis menu (low-right). The tap Playback Options; there’ll be a setting for “Lock to landscape.” If you uncheck it, you’ll be able to rotate to portrait. This setting is persistent. For subsequent video playback, you can start in portrait view (and rotate to change views.
Accessing any (favorited) library is exactly two taps/actions: One long-press on the “Libraries” nav bar and then a tap to select the desired library. That’s similar to the flow for the previous app where you had to tap the hamburger menu at the top-left and then select the library. Though, it does take a little longer now owing to the long-press.
This is sometimes true. An example being the “Lock to landscape” mentioned above or the “Display Mode” setting located in the same playback options menu. However, some of these settings are persistent and need only be configured once, and they’re consistent with how the old (Android) app presented them. I’d rather see at least some of these types of settings in the main settings for the app.
Plex addressed this in the announcement post, in the “What’s coming soon” section. It’s in the bullet-point with the plan to add functionality to scan libraries (that’s already been added).
I’m not sure if you mean refreshing metadata or scanning a libraries for new content. As far as I know the former is still not available but the latter is available as of v2025.13.0. To do so, long-press a library and select “Scan Library Files.”
In my opinion you absolutely should have a second media server set up. Jellyfin is ok, that’s what I use myself. My use case for a second media server is having it as a backup for Internet outages.
But I wouldn’t recommend it as your pathway to a better client experience (which you absolutely will not have, at leas in my experience). If you use primarily Apple devices Infuse arguably offers the best experience with Jellyfin. The second best client would likely be their web app.
I also wouldn’t recommend Jellyfin for folks who take advantage of Plex’s more-or-less turnkey secure remote access feature. With Jellyfin you’ll have to handle that yourself. It’s not overly complex for somewhat technically-inclined users, but it is something to consider when making the choice.
Back to the new Plex app, I don’t point out any of the above to suggest that it’s a great experience yet. Only that they’re chipping away at the missing features and making it more usable, if a bit more slowly than many of us would like. I’m also not trying to sway your opinion of it. My own opinion is that it was released into the wild too soon and that much of the pushback was warranted.
I think in the final analysis it will likely turn out that the new apps were released about a month early. We’ve likely got two more releases coming before we hit the one month mark, so we’ll see.
This isn’t what people want though. Unchecking this box, at least on my iPhone 16 Pro Max just locks it to portrait. It should auto rotate to landscape or portrait depending on how the phone is being held, as that’s the expected user experience using a mobile device.
Now if it’s supposed to autorotate, then I have a bug to report.
Hi,
I have searched the forums, and have not found any reference to the Google TV app feedback. I have the version 2025.12.0 , which rendered the Plex app on it almost unsable.
Browsing thorough libraries is very very slow. I press arrow down several times, nothing happens, I wait for 30 seconds to a minute, then the menu moves down. Then when finally arriving at the episode I want to watch, I click it, it opens, then to reach the watch button, requires me to press down 3 times, then up one time, and only then the Watch button will be highlighted. Then the playback works, and here another issue. Before I pressed OK to see the playback menu, and select different options ( subtitles, resolution, etc ) Now I ahve to press down 2 times, it takes me to chapters, and then press one time up, and only now I am in the menu I need…
Next, Live TV does not open any DVR channel , at all, no matter how much I wait for it to load, or do anything. Nothing. Live TV is dead now for me. Which is a feature I really liked and I still need and want to use.
One of the TVs in the house has not updated yet, and that is working very well with the old app. They are the same series, only the diagonal is different.
The new Google TV app looks better, but is very very very very very slow, plus the fact that it broke completly the Live TV DVR for me…
Mihail
Yep, I tested on Android where it works. I should probably have tested on my iPhone as well. Another user let me know that the fix for iDevices is planned for the next release (it should auto-rotate). Apologies for the confusion.
Interesting. I wasn’t aware the beta had been made available on Android for anything other than mobile devices. I’m in the beta but my Onn Android TV device hasn’t been offered the new app yet. So, I can’t really provide any relevant feedback.
How did you install the new app on your Google TV device, and what device is it? Did you side load it or get it from a 3rd-party app store? However it was done you’re not on the current version (2025.13.0) which has several improvements, in particular around live TV.
