Plex for Mac - playback issues and Fullscreen UX

Plex Players Desktop Players
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Server Version#: Latest
Player Version#: 1.1.0.831-e1ae73b1

I’ve given the Plex Mac app a go, and like some of the premises it provides - particularly the managed offline/download features. However, I’ve had to revert to the old Plex Theatre app, for two reasons:

  1. The playback is just not as good as the fullscreen Media Player app. It’s jerkier, and not as smooth. Presumably this is an initial glitch, and will be bugfixed, but couldn’t see any other mention so wanted to report it. The same show plays perfectly on Plex Media Player

  2. The Fullscreen UX is painful and clunky. When I watch stuff on my Mac, I just want to watch it full-screen. I get that the app for show navigation etc doesn’t have to be full-screen, but there really needs to be an option to automatically go full-screen when playing. We use a mac as a TV when we’re not in the lounge, and it’s really annoying to have to hit play, then pause, then mouse over to the full-screen icon, then hit play again. It’s a rubbish UX. Can you please add a fullscreen/immersive option either for the entire app, or just for whenever a movie is being played?

I get that you want to slim down the product range, and whacking the existing web app in a (presumably) electron container and then using that as the main Mac app is a maintenance saver for you, but if the UX of the Plex app is worse, you need to make some improvements to it.

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You may want to stick with PMP which Plex plans to continue to support now.

Also the new desktop player is not the web app wrapped in a container; it has the same UI (called UNO) but backend video engine (mpv) is the same as PMP.

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It might use the same back-end video as PMP, but on the Mac playback is noticeably juddery and not smooth, when switching directly to PMP and continuing to watch the same file, give no such issues.

And yes, I’m sticking with PMP for now. I just wanted to highlight these issues to ensure they’re on your radar to fix, given that it’ll no longer be supported after mid-2020 - at which point the lack of automatic Full-Screen is going to be a bit annoying. :slight_smile:

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I’ll also have to stick with PMP for now due to the lacking fullscreen support. My home theatre is powered by a Mac mini, so anything but fullscreen is pretty much useless in my case.

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