No Music or Photos?

Plex Experience Preview
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Preposting Edit: Before I submitted this I did find the article saying Photos and Music are not going to be part of the Plex app. That’s sad. As I say below, Plex is my gateway to my media and I would prefer it all in one app. I won’t be using the Plex app on any devices other than my Apple TV so I’m not sure any of this matters to me. Please, before you break everything, release a PlexAmp app and a usable PlexPhotos app for AppleTV :pray:

To be honest, I rarely use Plex on a mobile device. I use it mostly through my Apple TV, the web interface, and PlexAmp. However, I feel that my input on this beta is still valid as it may impact the other platforms.

Having only now just installed the normal Plex app on my iPhone, I can say that the tabs on the bottom are better in the beta. Trending, Activity, Find Friends are one thousand percent useless to me.
I could possibly use the tabs on the bottom of the beta (My Libraries, Live TV, On Demand, Discover) two or three times over the course of a year.

It’s tough for me to determine being that it doesn’t have any of my music libraries but the menu on the top left of the beta is not an improvement.
From a UX perspective, it makes no sense to tap something on the top for a drawer to slide up from the bottom.
The Home screen and the Libraries screen are basically identical. The difference is that when you select Libraries, you still need to tap the Favorite Libraries menu to show your Libraries.
I think the regular “hamburger” version is vastly superior. Oh - I see you can double tap Libraries to access your Libraries. That’s redundant / confusing.

I’m not sure who your demographic is these days. I’ve been a Plex user for over ten years. I have several terabytes of media. I use Plex all day every day to listen to my music and watch my movies a few nights a week. I share some home movies and family photos with family.
I might watch the streaming or on demand options if Plex were comparable to Pluto or Tubi. The quantity and quality of programming just isn’t up to par. If this portion of the experience improves, I’d be happy to spend more time with Plex.

Plex is my gateway to my server. The app should first and foremost give me access to all my media – including music and photos. I only use the PlexAmp app because it’s superior to the Plex app but I’d prefer they were all in one. The newly released Plex Photos app is not good at all.

Also, I’m trying to remove apps from my phone, not add more. I’m more likely to not use something at all if it requires that I have to have two or more apps to access its core functions. The whole beauty of Plex is having everything in one place. Please don’t continue this path of making it harder to use things which have been working perfectly fine.

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agreed, I don’t really mind so much on the phone, its fine for the mobile version to have a separate place for music, but the PC apps really need to have all the media in one place, thats why I use plex, and so it would suck to have to use an old version of Plex to keep that feature

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I was also thinking that having to tell family they need to download one app to watch family movies and another app to look at photos just isn’t feasible.

There’s no way around it really, I need to find another platform for sharing with family.

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I agree with the above. I use plex as a portal for myself as well as my parents and kids. Keeping it self contained access point in ONE location. If my parents (in their 80s and not tech savvy) want to listen to some of the old audio radio show libraries after watching a box set of a tv show (and review a “JUST IN CASE” set of instructions I made into jpeg files in a photo library )… or for my kids - having it serve as a simple safe sandbox for their TV shows, Disney flicks, and anything they might like under their specific access under user account. Use it on the TV - use it on a phone - use it on a tablet - use it in a browser. functionality should be the same across platforms. This is why I invested time and bought into the plex ecosystem and server.

Removing functionality only seems like a good design idea for functionality based around a single use case (eg - “a toaster makes toast.” - plexAmp plays audio… and audio alone) - BUT plex isn’t a single use case. By building a platform/portal design, legacy/loyal users have been creative in curating and building entry points for a long time. To remove functionality is insulting to those who have invested in the service/server AS A PORTAL - leaving them (and myself ) annoyed at myself for having spent time and trusting controlled consistency.

Instead of being able to toggle features on/off - which would allow plex teams to push for different products for those interested or for those who want to take the base functionality a bit further (use this for … blah… but use plexAmp for zazz and some other fancy that the base app doesn’t do as well") - while still supporting those who would rather keep core abilities present in the master app… it was decided to negate something I/others have worked hard to build and have my/other communities depend on.

unfortunately, plex’s new design strategy may not meet my needs any longer, which is sad. i guess you can’t please them all?

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The abscence of on going support for music in the Plex App or at Plex.tv, and the requirement to use Plexamp is a major issue for me and curious what others think. I use Plex almost exclusivly for music management.

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On the topic of music: not to bring up my favorite decade old request, but could plex finally be devoting resources to fix how music library management is handled? Music via the main plex app was (seemed anyways) like it was barely working with duct-tape and bubblegum, especially with various artists.

If fixing the music handling means rewriting the music database from scratch to divorce music from the plex app and (in a positive way) forcing users onto Plexamp, this is a win-win overall. This is assuming a plexamp app for shieldtv/appletv/etc.

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Just to add: The Plexamp app doesn’t support music videos. Now with music getting removed from the Plex app, there will be no way to watch music videos on mobile anymore?

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This affects people who followed the Plex instructions to add music videos inline within their Music libraries. I however and others who decided not to do this, rely on a standard OTHER video library and added our music videos with a separate music video directory, which seems to be unaffected and leaves our music videos alone.

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While I don’t have a problem with using separate apps for each kind of media (Phones may have limited storage, but it isn’t that limited. Besides, I only use Plex and PlexAmp), I don’t think its fair to keep a paywall up for apps like PlexAmp. I found it justifiable when the free Plex app contained music playing features too (making PlexAmp a pay-to-improve app), but now users will be forced to purchase the app or Plex Pass just to listen to music on mobile.

The team’s decision won’t be affecting my stay since I love Plex and already payed for app access a while ago, but it may affect the position of newer users.

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Plexamp used to be limited to Plex Pass users, that’s no longer the case (for quite some time , actually).
You only pay (for a Plex Pass) for the premium music features of Plexamp.

https://support.plex.tv/articles/202526943-plex-free-vs-paid/

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It’s a bit worse than that. As I understand it, music videos won’t be available on any of the video apps. My use case is that I access music quite often via my Roku connected to my TV, and I browse artists with access to in-line music videos. I have no interest in having to browse music videos in a separate video app that doesn’t contain any linked information for them.

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PlexPhotos is not a solid implementation yet, I hope in time it gets better, 100% agree… Tons of odd headspace, it’s slow and a bit clunky.

However, multiple apps is a much cleaner solution to an app that would need to have either a restrictive UI for some media types or a UX nightmare with design changes depending if you are in music, photos or videos. These are clear as day 3 different tasks and it makes sense, to me anyways to have them separate.

I didn’t even use Plex for photos because of how bad the old experience was with it (been using plex for over 10 years). And music I always stored but never really used until PlexAmp came about because Plex on mobile wasn’t really meant for music, clearly.

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Why isn’t that feasible? If they can configure one app they can configure two, chances are if you had to configure the first one you’d need to do both now. It’s not like one is more daunting than the other, actually, Plex would be harder than Photos or Amp for setup.

I understand the fear of change and I get some design elements not working with everyone (I don’t love the new beta app currently but I think it will get better and I don’t like photos at all in its current state), however I can see the need for better development efficiencies with the splitting of the apps and I wholeheartedly appreciate that. Photos have always felt out of place in Plex and never received love. It might finally get some.

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Sure. And if they can configure two they can configure ten. The point is that it’s one resource. This is the thing for family photos and movies.

It’s not at all about fear of change. It’s about the user experience. Necessitating and learning how to navigate multiple apps to do one thing is not feasible. At this point, Dropbox folder makes more sense than the direction Plex is going.

Again, Plex is my primary method of navigating my content on my server. That’s its job.

I don’t mind the option to have different apps as long as they’re hyper-optimized for the thing they do (ie PlexAmp). But there still needs to be one app to do it all.

From some of the comments I’ve read, the Plex user base is unreasonably demanding. There are some niche features that belong in a hyper-optimized application that otherwise get in the way of making a reasonably good everything-application.

What Plex should be looking at is a sister app to PlexAmp and PlexPhotos called “PlexScreen”. This app should be just as customized for video watching as Amp is for music listening and Photos is for picture browsing.

The regular Plex app should remain as an all-in-one portal to the users’ server. It should have some niche content features stripped out and better management features added in (cover art, tags, etc).

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Can’t that just be Plex Web in your scenario? While it does seem they are removing some functionality from Plex Web (which is odd to me if what I have read is true), wouldn’t that suffice the issue your have? I disagree with niche features driving this. Plex and Photos have never been a good experience in the main plex app and that makes sense. The design and experience is centered around videos, not personal photos, at least to me. For them to make it all work in a mobile app would be clunky at best (which is what we have now). If they want more users using Photos separating it out is the way. I assume they learned this with how successful PlexAmp is. They started this journey awhile ago to be honest with PlexDash and PlexAmp, they just seem to finally commit to it for 2025. Photos made the most sense to build out. We don’t have any good options on the market for one app that does videos, music, photos and administrator tasks and their is a reason for that, they don’t go together. Plex/Jellyfin/Emby, none of them have a solid photo offering. Music finally became a lot better when Plex separated it out. I think that’s the goal they have with moving Photos out.

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No. My 70+ year old family members aren’t going to use a website to watch movies and look at pictures. Nor am I. Nor should anyone.

From what I’m reading you saying, it seems like you (and Plex) are intent on making things harder to use for people, not easier. The Plex app has existed for how long now? Has anyone complained that it’s not capable of achieving its primary purpose of accessing a user’s media? I think it’s pretty fantastic (not clunky) as it is right now.

“Plex” should be one app to access all a user’s media. Period.

If it’s not doing that, what’s the actual point of using Plex? I could use any number of disconnected apps to access photos or music or movies on my server. The Plex experience is explicitly to bring it all together. If you’re no longer able to do what you have been doing for a decade, perhaps you should be looking at why that may be the case and solving that bug.

If they then want to offer more advanced apps for power users (they should), that should be wholly separate.

We don’t have any good options on the market for one app that does videos, music, photos

We do! It’s called Plex!!

If ten years ago, Plex looked like I assume it will one year from now, there is absolutely no chance I would have installed or subscribed to it. I could just use the software that comes free with my NAS.

It’s apparent that the developers have lost sight of, or have chosen to forgo, the core purpose of the product and are shifting towards a platform that benefits themselves more than the users. I can only hope that another developer out there will come out with what has made Plex so life changing for so many people.

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this isn’t what I meant. I meant for administrative tasks, the web should be the main driving force. Mobile is perfectly fine to have data specific apps for videos, photos and music. Sorry if I was confusing on that point. I fully agree the Web App isn’t for mainstream use.

Agree to disagree on the usability with the multiple app approach. I work in software design/development, whether you want it or not this is actually a pretty standard decision to do this and it makes complete sense. It’s completely fair to not like it, but it’s also fair for me to like it. It’s definitely easier to use, easier for my parents (74/75) to use and honestly my judgement comes from ease of use from non-tech people and they all seem (in my circle) to prefer the separation so far. Maybe they appreciate PlexPhotos since Plex (and photos) never worked for me at all (very large photo library).

If Plex’s single app was working they wouldn’t be doing it, pretty simple. Assumingely, people were ignoring music and are ignoring photos, and when they saw the success PlexAmp brought with music they figured it would help with Photos as well. Although I personally haven’t love the PlexPhotos experience so far, at least it works. Plex app for photo libraries that are large is terrible so I am happy for a change.

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Personally, I rarely find myself moving between movies/TV, music, and photos when using the Plex app.

When viewing video content, I generally do so on my TV with a via a connected streaming device (Apple TV, Android TV, Roku). I don’t tend to use my phone or tablet for this purpose nor do I use the Web/Desktop apps for anything other than server/library management on my computer.

Conversely, when I’m listening to audio I generally do so on my phone/tablet or my computer (and also a couple of Plexamp headless systems). I do this via Plexamp because, frankly, it is far superior to the regular Plex app for listening to audio in every way that matters to me. I’m thinking of its ability to compile interesting mixes (sonic adventure, for example).

(I’ve never used Plex Media Server and its apps for photos so I have no opinion on that count.)

I’m not even using the same devices for consumption of these different types of media; so using a different application is of no concern to me, especially if it provides an experience more tailored to consuming the content it is designed to.

My hope and expectation is that the new apps will provide the same type of excellence to their media domain as Plexamp has done for music. They’ve provided some pretty interesting features in Plexamp, particularly in the area of media discovery. Perhaps they can do something similar for movies and TV once they’re unshackled from having to support every type of media in one app. Hopefully bespoke applications will provide some development flexibility that allows them to innovate.

My further expectation (and belief) is that they won’t degrade the experience of consuming media from PMS in some fundamental way that alienates their users. I’m happy to see how this plays out.

Having said all that, I don’t discount any of the concerns raised here as they are all valid. I also understand that I may be in the minority here with my opinions. I just don’t think it’s quite time for hand-wringing yet.

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Curious about this and your pc experience. I find plexamp a complete piece of trash on pc and ALWAYS use the desktop plex client. Plexamp is fine on a mobile/tablet device, no argument there but it’s awful on a desktop and I dread the day they remove music.

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They’re actually Macs. But it’s got the same features as the mobile variants as far as media discovery is concerned; sonic adventure, mixes, etc… And those are the features I care about most. It’s also nice that I can start playing on one of my Macs and then send to one of my headless instances when I need to move to another room.

The DJs can be very useful as well, depending on what you’re in the mood for.

I have no opinion about audio quality; I’m no audiophile and I’m old enough that my hearing can’t really tell the difference between lossless formats and lossy in a lot of cases.