Plex Files Unavailable but they’re not missing

It’s weird, I have over 6,000 movies and it doesn’t happen…

Maybe it’s because, to speed up the movie scans, I divided them into folders based on the letter they begin with.

For example:
Folder A: All movies starting with A
Folder B: All movies starting with B

This speeds up Plex scans a lot, which might be why it doesn’t happen to me.

do you really? you do that manually? seems like a great idea, but cant really picture how to set radarr/ sonarr and Sab to do that.

Yes, manually. I do not use radarr / sonarr.

Indeed, I agree with this assessment: improved, but not solved.

I ran the thrashing script (from the Feedback report I filed with Apple) on Tahoe over the last two days, and while Tahoe is definitely better, it isn’t perfect. It fails less often, but it still fails on occasion, especially if the Finder (and perhaps other processes) are also monitoring the folder. I can cause this failure condition by running the thrashing script while having Finder open to the same folder. It’ll almost always fail in that case. With the Finder closed, though, it’ll often pass the test.

With the nsmb.conf file in place, though, it never fails, even with the Finder open to that folder. So they still have some kind of issue to address.

Fortunately (?), Apple hasn’t asked me to verify the bug on Tahoe as a result of my report. That would normally be the case if they thought it was fixed in this release…at least based on my years of experience with bugs and Apple.

2 Likes

OS26 beta seemed to the be the fix at first. It ran for a month without any issue but I didn’t post here because I didn’t want to suggest people using beta software, as it was buggy as hell, but didn’t bother me since my Mac mini is headless and not a daily driver. Before OS26 I couldn’t get things to work for more than 24 hours with the conf files, automounter, etc. Disappointed to say that after updating to the official NON beta released last week, the problem came back this morning.

I am now going to try the Synology SMB setting changes.

For what it’s worth, I gave up on this problem a long time ago, and just installed Plex on my Synology. To my surprise, it actually transcodes everything ok, with 2 caveats. 1. It does WEB-DL 4K fine, but buffers with 4K Remux and CPU usage is a constant 90%. 2. single stream only.

Mods to the Synology are 32GB RAM and Plex is installed on an nVME volume.

That is interesting it was fine on Beta but not on the Public.

I’m curious if they use some extra settings for beta that help keep things alive, reporting/logging, that they turn off for public. hopefully the upcoming .1 beta will bring that fix back?

Re Synology, I think I’ll personally begin migrating away from synology, as their lockdown on drives is getting annoying, either a DIY or I’m also looking to switch to SSD, but getting affordable ssds for 90TB is a bit much. (I want less noise and size)

1 Like

Has anyone seen improvements with the latest version of Macos Tahoe (26.1) ?

I have a related issue, with music files. In many folders i had both .mp3 and .FLAC files for the same music files, I deleted the .mp3 files and now the folders in Plex show the trashcan icon, even though the .FLAC files are still in the folder and accessible. I have scanned the library and for some reason it is still picking up the deleted .mp3 files. I can delete them manually in Plex, and that removes the trash can icon, but seems there must be a better way to remove these ghost files?

this does sound like a different issue, your issue sounds like doing the plex dance may be your better option. Or trying the empty library trash, as they will stay there until trash is emptied, either as the schedule task or manually if you have that turned off.

the issue on this thread is related to SMB mounts basically not being kept alive or being woken back up by Mac for Plex.

Came here to ask the same question….

I have noticed my server connections on my laptop have been dropping less. I do not have it installed on my server/Mac mini that runs plex/roon yet.

Issue persists with macOS 26.1. Most all my movies have a red trash can post library scan for the 3rd time in a row (restored from backup twice). It’s driving my nuts..

I agree. If anything, it feels like it’s gotten worse. And I have the recommended nsmbd.conf and Synology settings from earlier in the thread in place.

The etc/nsmb.conf mods were having a detrimental effect on my Chronosync jobs, so had to reverse any changes made. In particular the setting dir_cache_off=yes was causing very slow backups. One thing I have noticed, is that automatic Plex library updates always seem to run without issue. It’s the manual library scans that cause the trashcan icons to appear for me.

I wonder it turning automatic scans back on (while leaving empty trash off) will fix the red trash cans? Tempted to try..

any luck with that?

I’m having this same issue on a Windows 11 system, not running Synology. I’ve tried several suggestions and it will always recognize the missing shows, then the next time I check the library is back down to 2/3 of the shows. Naming and changing directories doesn’t seem to make a difference, and I found a very long event log that might add some hints on what’s happening.

Preview of that here:

Dec 09, 2025 02:06:27.253 [17356] INFO - Plex Media Scanner v1.42.2.10156-f737b826c - Micro-Star International Co., Ltd. MS-7C92 x64-x64 - build: windows-x86_64 - GMT -05:00
Dec 09, 2025 02:06:27.253 [17356] INFO - Windows version: 10.0 (Build 26200), language en-US
Dec 09, 2025 02:06:27.253 [17356] INFO - 12 3893 MHz processor(s): Architecture=9, Level=25, Revision=20480 Processor Identifier=AMD64 Family 25 Model 80 Stepping 0, AuthenticAMD
Dec 09, 2025 02:06:27.253 [17356] DEBUG - “C:\Program Files\Plex\Plex Media Server\Plex Media Scanner.exe” --analyze --item 7677,7581,7429,7637,7580,7566,7629,1228,3423,7631 --log-file-suffix " Analysis"
Dec 09, 2025 02:06:27.253 [15620] DEBUG - Opening 20 database sessions to library (com.plexapp.plugins.library), SQLite 3.39.4, threadsafe=1
Dec 09, 2025 02:06:27.326 [15620] DEBUG - Analyzing media parts for item 7677 (Episode 13): 12076,12089
Dec 09, 2025 02:06:27.350 [15620] DEBUG - [ID 12076] Media part analysis: G:\Media\TV Shows\Mad Men\Mad Men S01-S07 br 10bit ddp hevc-d3g (remux @ 765GB)\Mad Men S01\Mad.Men.S01E13.The.Wheel.1080p.BluRay.10Bit.DDP5.1.H265-d3g.mkv
Dec 09, 2025 02:06:27.350 [15620] DEBUG - [MI] Opening input file: “G:\Media\TV Shows\Mad Men\Mad Men S01-S07 br 10bit ddp hevc-d3g (remux @ 765GB)\Mad Men S01\Mad.Men.S01E13.The.Wheel.1080p.BluRay.10Bit.DDP5.1.H265-d3g.mkv”
Dec 09, 2025 02:06:27.350 [15620] DEBUG - [FFMPEG] - Opening ‘G:\Media\TV Shows\Mad Men\Mad Men S01-S07 br 10bit ddp hevc-d3g (remux @ 765GB)\Mad Men S01\Mad.Men.S01E13.The.Wheel.1080p.BluRay.10Bit.DDP5.1.H265-d3g.mkv’ for reading
Dec 09, 2025 02:06:27.350 [15620] DEBUG - [FFMPEG] - Setting default whitelist ‘file,crypto,data’
Dec 09, 2025 02:06:27.351 [15620] DEBUG - [FFMPEG] - Format matroska,webm probed with size=2048 and score=100
Dec 09, 2025 02:06:27.351 [15620] DEBUG - [FFMPEG] - st:0 removing common factor 1000000 from timebase
Dec 09, 2025 02:06:27.351 [15620] DEBUG - [FFMPEG] - st:1 removing common factor 1000000 from timebase
Dec 09, 2025 02:06:27.351 [15620] DEBUG - [FFMPEG] - st:2 removing common factor 1000000 from timebase
Dec 09, 2025 02:06:27.351 [15620] DEBUG - [FFMPEG] - Before avformat_find_stream_info() pos: 6117 bytes read:87634 seeks:4 nb_streams:3
Dec 09, 2025 02:06:27.352 [15620] DEBUG - [FFMPEG] - nal_unit_type: 32(VPS), nuh_layer_id: 0, temporal_id: 0
Dec 09, 2025 02:06:27.352 [15620] DEBUG - [FFMPEG] - Decoding VPS
Dec 09, 2025 02:06:27.352 [15620] DEBUG - [FFMPEG] - Main 10 profile bitstream
Dec 09, 2025 02:06:27.352 [15620] DEBUG - [FFMPEG] - nal_unit_type: 33(SPS), nuh_layer_id: 0, temporal_id: 0
Dec 09, 2025 02:06:27.352 [15620] DEBUG - [FFMPEG] - Decoding SPS
Dec 09, 2025 02:06:27.352 [15620] DEBUG - [FFMPEG] - Main 10 profile bitstream
Dec 09, 2025 02:06:27.352 [15620] DEBUG - [FFMPEG] - Decoding VUI
Dec 09, 2025 02:06:27.352 [15620] DEBUG - [FFMPEG] - nal_unit_type: 34(PPS), nuh_layer_id: 0, temporal_id: 0
Dec 09, 2025 02:06:27.352 [15620] DEBUG - [FFMPEG] - Decoding PPS
Dec 09, 2025 02:06:27.413 [15620] WARN - [FFMPEG] - Could not find codec parameters for stream 2 (Subtitle: hdmv_pgs_subtitle (pgssub)): unspecified size

This is a different issue, this thread issue is specifically related to macOS and network drives.

You’ll have better luck with support in a new thread.