Order of "Actions" makes using the app harder

Plex Players Streaming Devices
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Player Version#: 6.6.16.6715

I know not everyone does this, but when I get done watching a show/movie, I usually delete it from my server. The latest update has relegated the “Delete” button to possibly the “furthest” location from the starting spot. After I’m done watching something, I have 3 (TV) or 4 (Movie) buttons on the info screen. There’s plenty of room to add another button there, but I have to go to the “… (More)” button and select that to see a list of additional Actions. And then I have to move down through several Action buttons that I can’t believe are used very often to get to Delete. For movies, these Actions are Playback Settings, Watch Together, More Info, and Delete is at the bottom. For TV, it’s Playback Settings, Go to Show, Watch Together, Shuffle Season, More Info, and then Delete at the bottom.

I manage a team of UX designers for mobile, desktop, and web apps in my job, and I’m not going to claim top be a UX designer myself, but we do analytics on usage to make sure the most used features/options are easiest to get to. I understand “Watch Together” is something that Plex wants to promote, but surely people aren’t regularly trying to “Shuffle Season” or change their “Playback Settings”, right? Even if you don’t delete shows often, I doubt you’re doing any of those other actions much. I have nothing to back this up, but surely the most used of these “More” actions is “Delete”.

This just seems like Plex paid attention to UI (which looks nice), but not UX (which is incredibly flawed). I’m very aware that people are biased against change in general, but I’ve given this update a while to grow on me, and I still get annoyed at how inconvenient it is every single time I go to delete a show.

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I use “Shuffle” (background noise, sleeping) and “Settings” (subtitles, version selection) quite frequently. :slight_smile:

I’m horrified that you “Delete” via Plex. You monster!

But I agree that the order is “wrong”, and that more buttons could be displayed on the main screen.

I’d love the ability to customize the order of these. If the order could be configured via the web, it could be preserved per user and represented in the set-top box players.

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There are two main groups of Plex subscribers, firstly there are Collectors that share and I found reading the forums there are many. Secondly there are consumers that watch and delete as yourself.

I fall in between in that I will wait till it’s a season finished then delete server side. This for me only occurs with TV shows. I’m a collector of Movies as my family have been know to watch a Film a few times. I find using your server as Admin far easier than using a client that already marks shows played and as default commences in Library view the next unwatched episode.

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I do delete on the server directly sometimes, if I happen to be at a computer. But I have multiple episodes of multiple shows usually sitting on the server, and there’s no indication on the server what I’ve already watched and is ready to be deleted, so I tend to delete from the Plex client as I go.

I also frequently change Settings to turn on subtitles, but maybe 1/4 as often as I delete. But this is another gripe. It would be nice to have a setting to allow me to “Always Use Default Subtitles (When Available)” or something. The occasion where I would want to turn it off because the default is Portuguese or something is far fewer than the occasions where I want to turn the default on. They already have the code to decide what the “default” is when you go to the subtitle page (there’s usually one listed, and it’s usually the right one). Shouldn’t be hard to re-use that code to know which subtitle file to use if the setting is turned on.

I agree that the most sensible approach is to make the order (or hide/show) of the Actions into user settings.

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I delete both ways, through plex and the server hard drives. that said, I don’t mind the button in a menu. A good way to prevent accidental deletions.

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My favorite thing is when the “Shuffle” button is the only thing nested under the “More” button… which, makes zero sense at all.

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What I wouldn’t give to be able to reorder the buttons… they definitely feel unintuitive to me.

My biggest annoyance (Apple TV) is in TV, when you select a show… the order is Play Mark as Played Shuffle More… i like to shuffle often… and muscle memory always has be pressing Mark as Played as it’s the 2nd option… I swear Shuffle used to be where Mark as Played is now. How many people honestly need to toggle whether/not they’ve played something, that it needs to be 2nd highest priority?

Also, on iPad and in the web client… Shuffle is under a secondary menu… why?

To make matters worse… In Movies, when you choose a movie, the order is Play Play Trailer Mark as Played More. Why on Earth would these not be consistent?

It’s like nobody ever thought through how the UI/UX. That’s really unfortunate, because many frustrations like this seem to have come up in recent months… I get they want a consistent UI across devices, but form over function is really frustrating to users.

If anyone knows of a way (not afraid to get in there and update the DB if i absolutely have to) to rearrange icons as I like, I’d love to hear that it can be done.

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