At the moment, only the ‘Admin’ account can delete content from a Plex library. It would be great to have the option for a ‘User’ to have the ability to delete. But the Admin has to enable this per user.
Use case - I share my library with a few people. Some content is specific for them and other content for everyone. At the moment, I have to share the ‘Admin’ account for the user to delete their own content. On top of that, for shared content, the ‘Watched’ status get’s confusing as it’s a shared account. By giving the ‘User’ the delete option, the watched status is relevant to each person and they can delete their own content.
The current situation is a shared account or the end user contacting me each time they’ve watched something asking for me to delete it…
The fundamental problem is that Plex has no concept of ownership: the admin owns everything and the users only get content shared to them. An approach that doesn’t reflect the ownership of the files, either by logic (I don’t own countless episodes of Dora and Diego!) or the file ownership. So to make this possible, something more fundamental has to be changed first…
-1 I think this is a quite bad idea. I am not even sure that I like being able, even optionally, to delete media from within Plex.
I am of the strong belief that Plex should NEVER alter or delete the media it has access to.
Of course there is already an ability for the admin account to delete media but that is as far as it should go. I can see the why it might be attractive to some but it opens up so many possibilities of something going wrong that it is just a bad idea for Plex to even consider extending this functionality.
I guess it depends how you use Plex, how you want to keep the library and what users you have. As I share my library and provide some content just for other uses, without the option, I have to share the admin account or delete content myself once the user has told me they’ve watched it. Which is time consuming and frustrating. We also don’t keep much of our content, especially TV shows. We watch and delete, as how often to you go back and watch it again…?
I appreciate what you’re saying, but to not have the option to delete seems strange. The library will only ever grow and grow, and in my case, with content that’s never going to be viewed again and result it a cluttered, out of date library of content.
@Elijah_Baley said:
-1 I think this is a quite bad idea. I am not even sure that I like being able, even optionally, to delete media from within Plex.
I am of the strong belief that Plex should NEVER alter or delete the media it has access to.
I agree here: by definition Plex is an internet-exposed system, so when Plex has the right to delete stuff, it can turn nasty pretty quickly (and an admin-controlled switch isn’t much of a defense here). I rather reserve the right to delete media for a dedicated account in my OS, instead of an application.
@Jaap_van_Ekris said:
I agree here: by definition Plex is an internet-exposed system, so when Plex has the right to delete stuff, it can turn nasty pretty quickly (and an admin-controlled switch isn’t much of a defense here). I rather reserve the right to delete media for a dedicated account in my OS, instead of an application.
Appreciate what you’re saying, but aren’t email accounts, internet shopping, banking etc all internet exposed systems? With these and Plex, you need a username and password to access, so not sure how this is a concern?
@Jaap_van_Ekris said:
I agree here: by definition Plex is an internet-exposed system, so when Plex has the right to delete stuff, it can turn nasty pretty quickly (and an admin-controlled switch isn’t much of a defense here). I rather reserve the right to delete media for a dedicated account in my OS, instead of an application.
Appreciate what you’re saying, but aren’t email accounts, internet shopping, banking etc all internet exposed systems? With these and Plex, you need a username and password to access, so not sure how this is a concern?
I have a lot more trust in people like Microsoft, Google and Banks to keep my data safe than I trust Plex. And in all the above cases where you can really do something (stuff that can cause embarrassment or money) I have Two-Factor authentication turned on.
I really would like to see this implemented. It wouldn’t be too difficult to add a flag on a per user basis - perhaps per shared media type - to say if they can delete or not.
Then, it is up to the owner of the server whether they trust their users to use this properly or not. If you don’t, then don’t enable it.
+1 to the original request of allowing others to delete content, and perhaps do it on a per library basis. Not asking for it to be enabled by default for all users, so not sure why some get so uncomfortable about this request. Just give me the choice of doing it. Use cases vary I’m sure. In my case, I would simply like to make my wife a delegated admin, so that she can delete recorded TV shows after she watches them. Today, she has to log back in as me to do so, which isn’t that awful, but it would be nice if I could allow her to do it herself.
+1 to the original request of allowing others to delete SOME content, I would like clarify that I’d like the ability to specify that userX can only delete content from libraryX and libraryY and not from all the other libraries etc etc. I do this because I share content with my friends and family. Once I’ve finished watching content, I would manually move that content to libararyX for userX and they can delete it when they’ve finished watching. This way, I don’t need to retain content forever… I know it would be doubled up initially, but I’m OK with that, for me, it moves the content out of MY libraries.
I query the people that don’t want this feature because they are concerned about security… What highly confidential content are you keeping and/or sharing that you don’t want others to view? Is Plex the most appropriate place to be keeping this content? (Both rhetorical questions)
To the people that are concerned that Plex might accidently delete content due to errors - I trust that these features are adequately tested before release and if errors happen, re-download the content. If it’s home movies you’ve made, you should be backing them up anyway!!! Personally, I backup them up anyway - Disk is cheap.
To sum up. I really really want this feature to help manage my shared content with my friends and family.