Hi all. I am trying to install the latest release of Plex Media Server on a Late 2014 Intel-based iMac running Big Sur. When I download it to my Mac, it downloads as a .app file, not as a .zip or .dmg. When I launch the .app file - whether from the downloads folder or by first dragging it to the applications folder - nothing happens. I don’t see the Plex icon in my menu bar at the top of the screen, it doesn’t launch the install wizard, nothing happens. I do see the Plex Media Server app in Activity Monitor, but that’s it. If I launch the Plex app (which also downloads as a .app), or go manually to the Plex web app, under “Your Media” I see the “Get Plex Media Server” button. Any idea what’s going on? It seems odd that it is downloading as a .app file and not an install file.
I did have a very old version of Plex Media Server on my Mac - from 2016 I think - but I deleted it from the Applications folder and deleted the ~/Library/Application Support/Plex Media Server/ folder as well.
When I attempt to launch the app, a new ~/Library/Application Support/Plex Media Server/ folder is created, and I noticed that there is a file in the Crash Reports folder. I’ve read about the Plex database becoming corrupted, but so far there is no database to become corrupt - the Database folder is empty.
If the Plex Media Server won’t start and doesn’t even get to the stage where it’ll be writing to the server logs, you can attempt the following procedure to see if there’s any error messages on the OS level:
Open Finder and navigate to /Applications
Select Show Content from the context menu of the Plex Media Server.app item
Navigate to Contents/MacOS
Open the Terminal app
Drag the Plex Media Server executable from the Finder window (#3) into the Terminal Window and press Return to execute it
This is no different from running the app, so it won’t succeed – but you should get a more specific error message about what’s causing it to fail starting.
Edit: from where are you downloading the server/app files?
I tried what you suggested, and the error message I see - repeated about 100 times - is
****** PLEX MEDIA SERVER CRASHED, CRASH REPORT WRITTEN: AD6FDDA8-2107-446B-9066-CE45209F04AB
libc++abi: terminating with uncaught exception of type boost::filesystem::filesystem_error: boost::filesystem::create_directories: Permission denied [system:13]: “/Users/jlevy/Library/Logs/Plex Media Server”, “/Users/jlevy/Library/Logs/Plex Media Server”
I changed the folder permissions on the Logs file from 755 to 777 just to see what would happen - and Plex Media Server started.
I am not sure what to do next though, to make sure I can start PMS reliably. I am going to try setting Plex to start at login, reboot, and see what happens. But something seems fishy here - shouldn’t I be able to double-click on Plex Media Server in the Applications folder to start Plex, rather than having to drill down into Contents/MacOS? And why would I need to change the folder permissions in the first place? Just for grins, I stopped PMS and then double clicked on PMS in the Applications folder, which yields the error “The application “Plex Media Server” is not open anymore” (I can still launch it if I drill down to the executable).
