This is spot on. As soon as I saw the new layout I knew what the angle was. But even so, they really couldn’t have found a way to feature those moneymakers without tanking the entire UI? Simply inexcusable and reflects poorly on every single person involved in this debacle as well as everyone at the top of the food chain. For that reason alone it’s worth considering jumping ship, as it feels like it would only be a matter of time before the next bomb goes off.
19 Likes
I have been a Plex Pass user since Plex first came out.
Why do you keep improving what isn’t broken? The new UI is unusable using Roku where all my media is on Synology NAS.
What doesn’t work now: using Roku
1.. Skip intro- does not recognize ok button to skip
- Pause does not work at all. Cannot pause or go back or forward using the arrow keys on my Roku
- Menu bar on left not visible/accessoble
- Bunch of stuff on Home Screen I do not want … same as what others have said already. This latest update is a totally unwanted disaster.
Like many others allow us to revert to prior version.Please give us the option to go back to prior versions.
18 Likes
My mom is almost as bad and the first thought I had after seeing the new layout was “Nope, I’m out. Not even going to try and explain this one. Zero hope here.”
13 Likes
If you set up your Plex media yourself, Jellyfin is pretty easy. You do have to set up a reverse-proxy service (like Apache/http ot nginx) if you want to share your media outside. I haven’t tried that yet.
But to try Jellyfin out a year ago, I just installed it on my (same) Ubuntu Server, pointed it to my exiting Plex Media libraries (in the filesystem) and it worked. Its interface is very sparse and takes up a lot of room on Roku, but I hadn’t investigated Jellyfin plug-ins I hear exist. I will surely begin to look at that too now since clearly Plex Media is for the trash bin.
If you want to see my quick-start experience, it’s detailed at Jellyfin Media Server .
8 Likes
My disappointment is immeasurable and my night is ruined.
Revert this change or at least give an option to use the old app. Now is not the time in history to be pulling this crap. Fire whomever approved this.
22 Likes
Well unless you formatted your media for TVDB standards in order to play nicely with Plex. Jellyfin fights with me constantly over this. Also the lack of intro skip is ass
1 Like
The inability to scroll through the letters on the right column is a massive downgrade, especially for large libraries. Horizontal scroll to pick libraries is far less convenient, and the entire top of the screen is now dead space while trying to navigate. It’s just plain awful.
12 Likes
Oh and apparently it can no longer remember which tab (recommended, browse, etc.) the libraries were on, and there’s no option to enable it. So every time you change you have to navigate to what you wanted, even of you’d selected it 30 seconds before and had a quick glance at another area.
8 Likes
They are actually opening up the API. Look at https://www.plex.tv/pro-week/
Edit: https://www.plex.tv/blog/plex-pro-week-25-api-unlocked/
4 Likes
Completely agree. I can’t use this new UI, it never shows the selection cursor movement. The library access is horrendous. If I wasn’t a life subscriber I would cancel my monthly Subscription. Please stop forcing the platform to “favor” play on demand and pay for service integration over locallay stored content.
I have been using roku plex app for years and the previous UI was far superior to this useless junk. Roll back the roku version. It feels like it was never tested and functionally seems like alpha software. TERRIBLE USELESS JUNK! 
17 Likes
The general redesign is terrible from a UX perspective. Anything that could be pointed out already has. I’ll just add my voice to the many posts by saying “This is bad.” PMs pushing the SaaS side of the product have ruined a beloved app. For reference: New Coke, Jaguar, Cracker Barrel.
As far as the quality issues that many are having, you can’t rely on SDETs to do all of the testing. Automation just isn’t going to cover everything. It will only cover what they thought to write a case for, and validation of something isn’t testing it. You still need “hands-on” people testing the product.
26 Likes
ALL HOPE IS LOST
I just disabled my server so i dont have to try and explain this mess to any older family members that use my server.
this new UI + trying to explain to older people how to use it = no more plex
this update isnt useful on any level
16 Likes
I guess we know where Patrick Spence went after sonos
14 Likes
It’s almost as if Plex’s no.1 priority right now is to pish off their customer base. Mission successful!
It’s all going to pot in the way of a magnificent flustercuck. Fireworks and all. iOS app broken and nowhere near functional parity to before the “new (carp) experience”, and someone thought that before sorting that mess out, it would be a good idea to do the same to Roku! 
I hate to say it but I think Plex is truly going to the dogs. Whoever is making the strategic executive decisions should find a new job. The strain on the devs must be tremendous
Glad I’ve turned off my Shield updates.
Thanks for all the fish!
18 Likes
I hate it. It would be one thing if there was an option to revert, like where they had before, how you could change your user experience depending on how you liked it modern or whatever. I forget what they called it, but I had it where I wanted it!
I’m rather angry that this didn’t come as some kind of announcement to Plex pass or free users on servers. In fact, the last announcement that I show in my servers is from Plex Pro Week, September 19, 2024!
The new UI is ugly. It’s cumbersome. It’s not intuitive. You can’t scan your library from the player in Roku anymore, I can’t find or they have hidden it or they took it out altogether.
Discovery is a useless feature if it can’t directly integrate with those other services. They know this, right? I mean, they get it, don’t they? I’m sure they do just like I’m sure they know all about how much this new update is hated, but they probably will do anything about it.
14 Likes
Thank you for absolutely nothing. I am so happy you took a program that was working perfectly fine and decided to make it now a nightmare. I understand completely that you want to push your content on to us with most of us we never cared about your live TV and Rental options. I’ve lost complete faith and that you’re going to fix it and will be looking for an alternative. But don’t worry once I found one I will be sure to recommend it to all my friends. Release the old app as an optional Roku units and see how many people download it I understand don’t give the customer what they want give them what you want
16 Likes
The day I’ve long feared has come to pass - enshittification has reared its ugly head and vomited all over the Plex Roku experience.
I suspect this is an intentional move to draw in new users with an “upgraded” modern UI while driving out old Plex Lifetime Pass users. We don’t generate any subscription revenue now that we’ve paid our one-time fees, and I imagine an overwhelming majority of us manage our own local libraries, and so don’t feed into any other revenue streams. Even though we’re the ones who enabled Plex to become what it is today, from a cynical capitalist perspective, we’re now dead weight.
And this is only the beginning. There’s little to no chance things will improve for us. It’s time to start looking for alternatives.
25 Likes
Embarrassing disaster of a UI, and decision to force it on everyone. Please save yourselves further embarrassment and just roll it back.
17 Likes
I’m going to take a slightly different line on the update. I’ve not experienced any bugs thankfully: I’ve not had Live TV or Discover clutter up the header menu, I’ve been able to add my libraries and have them appear under Home largely as they did prior to the update, and play my media without any issues. So for me it’s been a relatively smooth update, though clearly that’s not the case for everyone.
I also, perhaps controversially, think that the updated layout looks a lot nicer: moving the menus helps keep the screen less cluttered, and the addition of proper logos for each film / TV series is great. I can see what they were going for with the redesign, and I hope once it matures it’ll be better than the previous version.
The issue, as so many people have pointed out - and which I completely agree with despite being less negative about some of the other changes - is the navigation. Even once you get used to where things are in the new layout, it takes so much longer than it should, or than it did with previous versions, to actually find and play the content you want.
Moving between libraries takes twice or three times as many button presses, with far fewer visual cues to aid navigation. Your content feels buried and inaccessible when previously it was immediate and obvious. For a piece of software built around easy and seamless access to your media, that kind of issue is critical, and getting it wrong can be terminal.
I think people comparing this to Sonos’ terrible 2023 update are absolutely 100% correct. It’s not about a new UI design being unfamiliar or coming with a few bugs - those issues can and do get ironed out with time. What really caused problems for Sonos was that the new version provided less functionality and was harder to use than before, even when working as intended, and that Sonos as a company were painfully slow to acknowledge this and offer a clear pathway to addressing it.
Plex really needs to learn from Sonos’ mistakes. Recognise that user feedback has been overwhelmingly negative, that mistakes have clearly been made with the UI, focus attention on tweaking the design so that accessing our content is made simpler & quicker (along with fixing bugs), and communicate all of the above clearly and proactively.
I really hope Plex does something like that, and this ends up being a brief mis-step. I am very worried about what might happen to the app as a whole if they don’t.
16 Likes
+1 Aweful, unusable, dumpster fire of an update!
Not a single positive reply, and broken for literally everyone. Can’t even navigate Settings, let alone have a “Classic Interface” option for those of us who actually want a functional player and UI.
One would hope for a prompt “Appologies and reverting” announcement from Plex before they lose 100% of their install base. Unconscionable; worse than Windows Millennium Edition, and I didn’t think that was even possible…
15 Likes
