Some users start watching a TV series at night and when I get up in the morning are still watching the same show even tho i know they fell asleep many hours ago and just like to have background noise. Well i’d rather it not be from my server. I know there is a user option to play next episode or not but default is set to yes. If default was no then this would not be an issue as hardly anyone changes any options.
Could plex add a server side option like other steaming services have where it asks you if you are still watching after set amount of time. Maybe 4,6 or 8 hours? If no response then drop then stream. I don’t think it would be too hard to add but a coder i am not. If anyone here thinks its s good idea please upvote so this stays alive and plex guys see it.
There are already a couple of feature requests for this. Rather than splitting votes across multiple threads, it’s best to add your votes to a single thread.
I up-voted that post from 2 years ago. Thanks But plex seems content to have this as a user option and think it would be best for it to be a server side option with a few max_time_allowed hour options like 4 or 6 hours. Or maybe max_episodes_watched before are you still watching pops up.
Not the same as having it integrated into Plex? Well, yeah. Having it built into Plex would be far better.
I’m an advocate of using/creating community “solutions” to push Plex to add their own solution. There has been a couple instances where you could suggest that Plex is doing this. Votes on the forum matter but I’d assume that seeing all the API calls from community solutions would matter too.
Not just that. What OP is asking for is for it to prompt the user, and if they don’t respond to have it stop streaming. The scripts you posted will cut a user off without prompting and force them to restart if they want to continue. It’s a fundamentally different philosophy, though likely driven by the lack of ability to directly integrate, as you say.
And of course, not at all suggesting that community solutions aren’t a great thing to have. Just that for a lot of people it’s just not possible for the community to provide the solutions many are looking for here. i.e. Only cut someone off if they fail to respond to a prompt.
If this gets implemented, an option to make it less disruptive would be nice.
I.e. instead of asking after a fixed time, ask when the current movie/episode/song has finished.
I would love to see an “Are you still watching?” option that will pop up after a server specified number of items played / time passed. My family/roommates often turn something on before going to bed and find that its still playing at 3 am. Which would reduce unneeded streams on my server when users are unable to terminate the streams themselves.
I would like to see this implemented server side so that I could, set my users auto-play to a limited number of auto-plays before stopping playback. It could, for example, be set to 6 items played or 3 hours watched (Whichever came first + time to finish current playback). This way after 6 episodes of Rick & Morty, the server wouldn’t play a 7th unless i told it to, starting he cycle over again. Alternatively, the time limit could be used so that if i was instead watching full hour long shows (Or a movie), they would stop after 3-4 episodes. If the time limit passed in the middle of playback it would wait until playback finished to ask about continuing.
I think this would be more useful for live TV. Ability to set number of hours to have client ask “Are you still watching?”. Live TV is worse as it just plays and plays and plays and plays…you get the point.
I agree with @cydboone. This needs to be a server based setting, as opposed to, or in addition to a client setting, so that we can manage the playback from users that fall asleep or turn off ther TV but not their streaming device, resulting in a lot of unneeded streaming and bandwidth usage.
I’ve looked in the settings for Roku, Shield, FireTV, Android, and iOS (on iPad) and I cannot find any ability to customize the amount of content automatically played, only an on/off setting. The only documentation lists a hardcoded set of times of 2 hours + time to finish currently played item, and once reached it will stay on the next up screen until interacted with. Could you please list which client side apps allow for any customization of the “next up” features?
" Auto-advance refers to the countdown timer on the Up Next item, which plays automatically once exhausted. It will be shown whenever there’s an Up Next item, except in the following circumstances:
If the user has opted out of auto-advance in the client preferences.
If videos have been playing without user intervention for more than two hours, and the video that just completed is > 20 minutes in length. In this case, the Up Next item will still be shown and selected such that a single click plays it."
The client only has the toggle to use auto advance or not. The 2 hour limit is set and cannot be altered, at least not at this point.
I found this post because I’m interested in this feature as well. It would be very nice to be able to configure IF and WHEN the “Are you still watching?”-notification should be shown, preferably server side.
On Premise Media Server - Absolutely has to have this as a server-side option.
Simple comparison - Cloud services would never allow client to decide this behaviour.
Thing is - It doesn’t serve to harm the product if it’s disabled by default, and giving the server admins the power to enable it only enhances the product.
I wouldn’t over-engineer the mechanism either, simply add a text box next to :
Settings > Network > “Terminate Paused Sessions after …”
Labelled : "Query player after (X) autoplays : " {default: 0}
Playing with hours or trying to decide which comes first can only invite problems with synchronising people’s expectations vs. the outcome of their config.
N Autoplays is a clear and defined count and I have to stress again, this is a must for media server which allows autoplay in the first place. Otherwise the software sets up the server for hours of resource sapping.
Just trying to catch up on this suggestion.
I wonder if this is actually already covered by the Passout Protection feature introduced as part of the Player Experience update from late 2023?
I often stream random episodes from a playlist of comedy TV shows when going to bed. I can set a sleep timer to turn off the TV after 90 minutes but my Roku continues streaming episodes behind the scenes. If I forget to turn off the playlist in the morning, I will get in bed the next night to see that my server is still serving up (and in some cases transcoding) episodes. My sister has a connection to my account and is even worse about remembering to stop her playback.
I’d love to have a “Are You Still Watching” feature that I could set on the Plex server itself for anyone viewing my content. Basically, I would like to restrict playback to 3-4 TV episodes or 1 movie before forcing myself or the other user to press a button on their remote/phone/TV/computer before they will continue watching. This would free up my limited computer resources to be able to do more backend processing at during scheduled times, instead of devoting processing power to a transcode that no one is watching.
