When signing into the app it will take you to a separate auth web browser page like Plex Web, Plexamp or this forum does. After sign in close the web page to return to Plex Photos app.
The Timeline tab takes a really long time to loads (spinning circle icon) and locks up the app while waiting. The app doesn’t respond and requires force closing from the app switcher. If I wait long enough the Timeline does eventually load. Plex Web is a able to load the Timeline very quickly.
Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra
Android 14
Plex Photos v0.2.0
Plex Media Server 1.41.0.8992
Thanks for trying out the new beta and chiming in so quickly. I’ve got a fix for this in the works that unfortunately narrowly missed the first beta release. Keep your eyes peeled for an update soon!
I am very excited for this feature! I had to create a photos library and add an image to it before the photos app would stop the infinite loading. It is very bare bones right now but I am hoping that i can use this for family photo sharing.
Features I would love:
Give us tools for user access control so that we may maintain a photo library with people while only showing them the folders i want them to see.
Allow client users to create their own folders and upload their own images.
Add the ability to have photos automatically upload to the plex photos library.
Give users access to meta data control and tagging so that family members can leave little memos about the photos they upload, and enable sorting by tagged individuals/items/locations/years.
Great work so far!
Dream plex feature: file sharing to maintain a family data cloud that i control without having to use own/nextcloud
Is the intention for this app to replace photo availability within Plex itself? If so, will there be a slideshow option added and will this be made available on AndroidTV? Currently, slideshows frequently get stuck in the Plex app on AndroidTV and Roku, though historically they’ve worked (or sometimes just work for a few hours and then stop again).
I like the app and really enjoy the direction you are headed with this. One request would be to allow for the auto-backup that was previously avaliable.
My photo library is only about 640 but I have tried to use Plex functionality in the past…mainly for slideshow setting during family gatherings, where photos automatically transition and randomize to play on a big screen as a background…in addition to a manually trigger slideshow in a more formal presentation mode.
After 5-10mins with the app…I dont see how to trigger or start a slideshow of a certain group of photos. Not sure I would want to create a playlist of photos and then slideshow that…but I would recommend on the folder view…the ability to kickoff an automated, or even manual photo slideshow for all photos in a folder would be EPIC. Another thought would be how to integrate the slideshow with a music playlist from plexamp.
I’m a 10year Plex veteran and I words cant express how excited I was when I saw the blog post and I immediately downloaded the beta to my iphone while sitting at an airport gate. Great job on this first beta version…looking forward to providing more specific feedback.
Downloaded and tinkered for a bit and have a few comments:
Is there a way to adjust the video quality settings? Right now it seems all my video is transcoded to 1080p. Plex server settings are set to allow for Maximum/Original and any other videos played through standard Plex play properly
Are there ways to auto-detect (or manually adjust) the orientation of pictures and videos? Landscape pictures/videos display only in portrait mode
When navigating in landscape mode, it’d be great to adjust the controls as the thumbnail navigation takes up half the screen and the info bar up top takes up a lot of real estate so you don’t see much of the image
With the possibility that I may be misunderstanding what you mean by “mobile videos” there is video playback in the app for personal videos that exist in photo libraries. If you are referring to something else then possibly no, but without conformation this is more of a guess than a straight answer.
Very excited about the potential for this app. I always thought the Photo portion of Plex just needed some polish and it would then be a better option than Google/Apple spy. However, I too ran into the Timeline view not loading and crashing the app.
Otherwise, the speed and loading of the photos in Recommended and Library is quite fast and smooth. Also, the ability to see the thumbnail bar is great while viewing a photo; no hopping in and out.
Will there be sharing from the app? In setting this up it immediately unearthed many old photos that I wanted to share with my spouse via a messaging app, but was disappointed to find I could not.
Would love to use this app for all the family photos and videos.
Issues currently…Live Photos don’t appear to be supported, they show up as 2 second long video clips rather than just a photo (am assuming you still have not supported the format). Consider supporting Live Photo (which option of showing photo or the clip), or offer conversion.
Similar to “shot on iPhone videos” many of my photos (not just Live Photo but all) are mis rotated. My other devices all show correctly, but the Plex photos shows them at 90 or 180 degrees. Again I assume Plex photos isn’t reading the embedded metadata with orientation.
I tried Plex Photos, and the experience was very poor. It is not nearly as good as the built-in photo library in the Plex app, and many features are missing. For example:
The positioning slider on the right side of the timeline mode is gone, and it no longer shows the year or brief information about the period to which the currently viewed photos belong.
It is no longer possible to add descriptions or tags to photos in the photo details, and there is basically no function to edit photo information.
There is no multilingual support; it only supports English.
I like having all my media integrated into one app, Plex, whether it’s movies, TV shows, audio, or photos. I really appreciate this feature.
However, Plex’s current plan is to remove music and photos from Plex and make them into separate apps. I completely dislike this direction. If they are going to make separate apps, they should at least make them better. Plexamp has some merits, so I opened Plex Photos with similar expectations, but I was very disappointed. Although it is just a beta version, the fact that they released it at this stage makes me feel that Plex might gradually abandon the photo functionality.
Plex will focus on video content. The Plex app already has many issues that need to be resolved, and now there is another app to manage and maintain. I don’t think this is a good decision. If photos and music are removed from Plex and made into separate apps in the future, as has already been done on mobile, what about the desktop version? Will the photo feature also be removed from the Plex app on the desktop?
I really love Plex because it allows me to fulfill various needs within a single app. I don’t want to be forced to install different applications for different functions. I just don’t like it that way.
