We have 4 users in our Plex Home setup (all signed up via email, mine as admin, other 3 invited as Plex Home users).
I’ve got a PIN set up on my admin user, and my wife’s user. The two kids don’t have PINs for their user accounts.
While using Plex home on our TVs at home, when we want to sign in to my admin user profile or my wife’s profile, the kids are able to see the on-screen numerical keypad as we enter our PINs and are able to eventually figure out our PINs, and open our profiles to gain access to content not shared to their user accounts.
My suggestion is to set up the Plex app for Android and iOS to have an optional ‘Approve sign-in via app’ feature instead of on-TV PIN entry, similar to the way Microsoft Authenticator has an approve sign-in feature for logging into a Microsoft account with added security. (See Sign in using Microsoft Authenticator - Microsoft Support for the type of approval behaviour I’m thinking of)
The way I would imagine it working is as follows:
Prerequisites:
- Plex app is installed on user’s smartphone (Android or iOS)
- A server setting is enabled for ‘approve smart TV sign-in via app’ or something along those lines
- Individual users enable ‘app sign-in approval’ as required, either instead of PIN, or in addition to keeping the PIN as a backup option (in case of trying to access while offline)
- Once enabled for a user, in their Plex smartphone app (Android or iOS), the approve-sign-in enabled user links that device to their approve sign-in prompt.
Operation:
- User opens the Plex app of choice on their TV / Chromecast / Roku / etc.
- Select user screen appears as normal
- User selects an app-sign-in enabled user
- Request is sent from the TV to Plex servers to request sign-in approval
- Plex server sends the sign-in approval request to the linked Plex app that the user set up in prerequisite step 4.
- Prompt appears on user’s linked smartphone, to ‘Approve’ or ‘Deny’ profile sign in attempt. (This can be set up with a push notification with Approve/Deny quick responses, and/or an in-app prompt)
8a.. If approved, approval is sent back to Plex servers, which then relays the approval back to the smart TV app, and allows the profile to login.
8b. If denied, Plex server relays a rejection back to the smart TV app.
8c. If no response received (user either doesn’t select anything in the app, or the approval request and response doesn’t reach it’s destination, e.g. if user’s smart TV or phone is offline), then after X amount of time without response, auto-reject the request.
8d. If the user still has a PIN set up in addition to the approve sign-in option, retain a separate option on the smart TV GUI to enter that instead as well, e.g. by default send the approve sign-in request, but have a clickable button that says ‘Use PIN instead’.
