Plex for Android doesn't use server's custom access URLs

Plex Players Mobile Devices
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Server Version: 1.41.8.9834
Player Version: Plex for Android 2025.18.0

The new Android app doesn’t seem to use the custom URLs configured on the server. Looking at the logs, it seems like it only tries to connect using the server’s IPv4 address which won’t work outside my local network since I’m behind CGNAT. I set up a reverse proxy to try to fight this and set it on the server’s custom access URLs, but now it turns out the app ignores it apparently.

Android debug logs, for whatever they are worth
290440091998912.zip (1.7 KB)

1 Like
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Sadly, same for me. This used to always be a problem on iOS for a while, but android was fine. But now with the new App, everything is terrible and broken. Hopefully they will fix all the bugs of the new release or just roll it back to when everything looked good and everything worked :frowning:

3

You need a remote Watch Pass or a Plex Pass for the server.

4

I know I need Remote Watch or Plex Pass to actually watch stuff, but the server is straight up unavailable on the app, libraries show up as offline when it very much isn’t.

Still, just in case, I bought Remote Pass since I’d need it anyways… and it still doesn’t work.

5

Do you have a fitting security certificate for your domain name? The new apps don’t connect over an unsecured connection.

6

Yep, got a certificate through Let’s Encrypt and I can access the server through https just fine using a browser. No dice with the android app though

7

Did you actually insert the certificate into the Plex configuration, or did you just insert it into your proxy? The latter may allow you to load the local web app, but not much more.

https://support.plex.tv/articles/200430283-network/

8

Okay, seems like that was it. For anyone else that might find it useful, this is what I did:

  1. On the VPS where I have the reverse proxy running, I exported the Let’s Encrypt certificate to a pfx file. In my case, it was on /etc/letsencrypt/live/my.domain, and I used the command openssl pkcs12 -export -in cert.pem -inkey private_key.pem -out cert.pfx.
  2. Choose the password for encrypting the certificate and keep it in mind.
  3. Get the resulting certificate and put it somewhere your Plex server can see it.
  4. Log into the server and go into Settings, Network.
  5. On Custom certificate location, put the path to the certificate you just exported, on Custom certificate encryption key, the password you used to encrypt it, and on Custom certificate domain, the domain the certificate is for (like plex.something.com).
  6. Apply the changes. I restarted the server for good measure.
  7. Hopefully success!

Thanks for the help, and sorry if I sounded a bit snappy at times. Been fighting remote access problems for way too long, either from ISP, Tailscale, Plex, or whatever

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Providing a custom certificate might not be necessary. I have Caddy set up with LetsEncrypt and what worked for me was using https://plex.mydomain.com:443.

The instructions for the custom server URLs are unclear; they are worded as though you need to include the port when using raw IPv6 addresses only.