Hi all. A few questions as I’m trying to live the “Plex Photos” experience, especially as Google Photos is no longer having the free storage option in June.
I migrated all my photos to Plex. I set up NextCloud as a Camera Upload alternative given the unfortunate outcome of the Camera Upload threads.
Now, here is a brief description of what I went through, with the single use case of sharing some photos with my family members:
- On Plex Web, I can’t add photos to Photo Albums, but rather to Photo Playlists. As this naming exists on the mobile apps, I expect it to be just a small delay on the web version.
- As I can’t share groups of photos without adding them to an album, I add them to an album/playlist and then share them. Ok, it’s a reasonable concession, but requires some manual organization.
- I then try to share items with my family. Apparently they need to already be Plex users. Ask them to create Plex accounts. Wait for confirmation. Help my elderly mother to create an account over the phone. Sorted.
- Now I add them as my friends, and share a playlist. They receive an email asking them to accept being my “friend”. They do so, but then get no notifications when I share a new playlist with them nor add new items to a playlist. I suppose I can send them an email informing them when there are new pictures of their grandkids to watch.
- On the mobile they can’t watch the videos I shared unless they’re smaller than 1 min. That was unexpected, but now I do remember the times before I had a Plex Pass or had activated my phone. I need to tell them that they’ll need to open it on the computer, or alternatively I can purchase the activation for them.
So, the questions:
- Is this really it, or am I making things too difficult?
- I notice that my mother had a small “X” on the bottom left of each photo/video in the playlist. Thankfully when she clicked it she god an “unexpected error removing item from playlist” even though on her UI id did disappear. I expect that people I share items with will not be able to delete actual photos/videos, or items from my playlists, correct? Can someone confirm if it was a temporary error on her side, or if indeed they’re not supposed to be able to do so?
- Navigating through photos on the Web is significantly slower than on the mobile apps. Even though I seem to trigger a “load” every two pictures, on the mobile it’s a split second, whereas on the web it can take a few seconds. Same network, this was me trying to access them on my computer from my account, to see the experience. I’m on the latest Server version - 1.22.1.4275 - and 4.54.5 on the Web. Is there anything I’m missing on the Web, or a setting I can/should adjust?
- Finally, a bug: if I start a playlist playback from a video, when moving to a picture as the next item it won’t load the picture. I need to exit playback completely and then click the picture. This does not happen if playlist playback starts from a picture - I can browse to - and through - the video and continue as intended.
I’d appreciate some help and feedback here, as I’d really like to have Plex work for the Photos use case, and between a few small bugs, inconsistencies and awkward processes I’d love to get this as right as possible.
Best.
