Option to remove / delete files from Plex without deleting it from disk

Feature Suggestions
1

One of the biggest annoyances I have with Plex currently is having to do the “Plex Dance” whenever I change a piece of data that Plex doesn’t change well on rescan; such as album art, certain pieces of metadata, folder reorganizing, etc. The option to simply remove the files without deleting from the disk would make the process SIGNIFICANTLY more simple and it would have less risk of accidentally deleting files.

2

If you click on the 3 dot the show poster and click “Unmatch”, does that do what you want without having to do the plex dance?

3

Thanks for the suggestion, but in 95% of the cases I personally need to do the Plex Dance it does not help.

4

I’m not sure what exactly won’t be picked up when changing the underlying information…

  • changes to local artwork or metadata should be picked up when refreshing an item’s metadata (no scan needed)
  • changes to the folder organization will require a file scan and should be picked up… if you’re doing massive changes, it might help to disable “automatically empty trash after scans” to avoid mishaps (e.g. Plex not recognizing a new structure and matching the item as something different, missing your previous edits / assignments…).
5

Sometimes refreshing metadata helps, sometimes it doesn’t. Right now I have an artist I changed the name of to match the artist’s name on a different album as an attempt to stop it from showing as 2 different artists. Refreshing metadata does not help. Matching does nothing. The Plex Dance fixes pretty much any metadata issue if the files themselves have the correct metadata.
If I add a .plexignore file for files already in Plex, it won’t remove the files from scanning or refreshing metadata.

Maybe the examples I provided weren’t detailed enough to describe scenarios for the Plex Dance, but the Plex Dance is a documented, autotagged term for a reason. Many times it feels like certain parts of metadata are just stuck. Simply being able to remove a file without deleting it would completely remove the risky convoluted process. The ability to remove files from the server without deleting is a basic, QoL tool for users that prefer local agents regardless, and something that has been asked for multiple times.