Hi,
I’m running into the following issue and I’m a bit puzzled.
Situation before
I’m running a home plex server with a lifetime plex subscription. I have invited my GF and other people to use my plex server. My GF uses plex for android. This has worked for years without issue.
Problem
Now whenever my GF watches something on plex for android, after a minute, she gets the popup below. She can click it away but then after another minute, it comes back again. Repeat forever. This was not the case before and IMO a change in behaviour. If i create a new linked account and try to reproduce the behaviour in plex for android, it doesn’t even go that far. It just blocks me from viewing anything and tells me to subscribe, then throws an error which just states “error” and nothing else (this is already different behaviour). If I view with both accounts in a browser, it works.
Screenshot of her plex for android.
Screenshot of my account management.
What have I done already to resolve it
I’ve created dummy accounts to test the behaviour. I’ve looked at other threads such as Plex Pass sharing with android son's android device but that seems to suggest creating a managed account under my own account which is not what I want nor was that the behaviour before. The problem there would be that everybody would use the same credentials (?), which is bad security imo.
Expected solution
I bought a lifetime subscription so I could share it with friends and family, this always worked before but now it does not. I expect them to be able to view my content under my lifetime subscription. The functionality was there before as my GF did watch my content under my lifetime subscription on plex for android, I expect it to keep functioning like that under the “lifetime” subscription in a reasonable manner.
Edit: added detail to the delta in behaviour between my GF’s plex for android and my own with similar test accounts.
In short, mobile apps/clients (i.e. Android and iOS) are not free - you have two options to remove the 1min play limit:
- One time payment to activate the app
- Subscribe to PlexPass
This has always been the case - was your girlfriend previously using your credentials when logging into the app, thus giving the illusion of it “working in the past”?
Hi, the behaviour is correct. If your girlfriend is not part of your Home, and she doesn’t have a Plex Pass, the activation pop up will be shown when viewing content on a mobile app. You can resolve this by adding her to your Plex Home https://support.plex.tv/articles/203815766-what-is-plex-home/
Hi, thanks for the quick reply.
No, I never share my credentials and always use 2fa. She has always had her own account, nor has she signed out and signed back in with her own credentials. She has indicated that the last time she watched something in December, it still worked.
If it has always been the case that the mobile required a separate subscription, then I’m as puzzled as you how it has work for years until now. On the other hand, seeing that when recreating the situation with a identical new account just gives me different behaviour (different error screen and no playback at all), there might be a ghost in the machine somewhere.
Thank you for your quick reply. That is the conclusion I came to as well.
Is there any way to add her to plex home but that she and others use their own credentials?
I don’t think shared credentials on devices owned by different individuals are a good approach in terms of security. Regardless of trust, if an attacker on her device would hijack her session or something, it would compromise everybody in my home setup.
EDIT: Ah, I think I understand now. So I can just invite “friends” with their account and they would get under my plex home subscription? This might have been the case in the past then and somehow disappeared? I did update my plex server in the mean time so maybe during the jail migration it changed some settings somewhere?
EDIT 2: Can confirm, this works. So the way forward is to invite “friends” under plex home. Thx for your feedback. My guess is that this used to be the case and that this somehow change, possibly during an update.
EDIT 3: There is no way to prevent users from switching profile it seems unfortunately. 
EDIT 4: It is a common basic security pattern to prompt for credentials / 2fa when viewing and changing privileged sections. Perhaps PLEX could add a setting where when enabled, when home users try to view/update the settings and such, the user gets a credentials prompt? It makes sense that home users can switch profile on a TV to watch content but does it really make sense that home users with different accounts can on any device basically act as the super admin and do real damage? I’ve seen plex’s security notice regarding this but that seems a cop out instead of delivering the same functionality but with more robust security.
Thanks for the help!
