Hello all,
Since integrating Live TV into my Plex setup a few months ago, I’ve encountered a persistent issue. My mother often streams local TV channels throughout the day, resulting in the activity icon in the top-right corner of the dashboard continuously spinning. Previously, this animation appeared only during processes like library scans or intro detection. As a result, I never know when anything like that is happening since it basically never stops spinning.
This animation doesn’t occur when streaming non-live TV content. I’m curious why live TV streaming triggers this behavior. It would be nice to have an option to customize or disable this animation specifically for live TV viewing. While I understand its utility for indicating scheduled recordings, its relevance during regular live TV sessions seems limited.
Has anyone else experienced this? Are there existing solutions or workarounds?
Thank you for your insights.
You will see the same spinner during the recording of live tv content.
That’s because every live tv playback is in fact a recording. Because it needs to be able to react to the user pressing the Pause button.
Watching Live TV is keeping the server busy. Even busier than watching other videos, because what happens is that Plex is continuously recording the stream from the tuner and then chopping it up into bits and relay it to the client.
Often with additional transcoding taking place.
So, the activity indicator is more than justified.
I totally get what you’re saying, live TV playback being treated as a recording and needing the server to do all that extra work makes sense. I can see why the spinner is there if it’s showing the server is busy.
That said, I still feel like the constant spinning isn’t the best way to represent this kind of activity. Since live TV can run all day (as in my case), it makes the spinner lose its meaning. Before we added live TV, I’d glance at the dashboard to know when a library scan or something like that was happening, but now the spinner is on pretty much all the time, so it’s not as useful.
Would it make sense to consider a different kind of indicator? Like, maybe a small red dot or light specifically for recording? That way, it’s clear when the server is doing live TV stuff without the spinner blending all activity types together. It might make the dashboard easier to read overall.
Just throwing that out there as an idea! Curious what you or others think about it. Thanks again for taking the time to respond—really appreciate it.
