Plex on ARM 64 update?

Plex Players
1

Hi, I’m writing to see if there’s any update on the Plex player for Windows ARM (especially with the popularity with the new SD Plus and Elite processors on many machines nowadays). It’s quite slow to navigate the application as is in its emulation.
Is there any update?
Thanks!

1 Like
2

Bump.

I am also wondering since I have an ARM laptop with the Snapdragon Elite CPU and Qualcomm Adreno GPU.

3

I too am interested in this. We know PLEX already supports ARM in its embedded/tv clients, why not also the windows client? A great way to do that is to throw an alternate installer in the windows store that seamlessly chooses ARM if the host is ARM.

1 Like
4

BUMP! It shouldnt be hard to cross compile to arm64. what is the hold up?

5

The search function on these forums does work. I’ve already answered this question several times before. Here is the first result from the search: Request for Plex Development Team to Add Native Support for Windows on ARM - #3 by gbooker02

6

The response provided a year and a half ago indicates some challenges with Qt.

More info: Qt for Windows on ARM (this is dated a bit… 2023)

I think the underlying questions that Plex customers would like to hear an answer to are:

  1. Is it on any form of a development roadmap?
  2. What is the current progress and expected timeline?
  3. Can we help test any early builds?

Windows on ARM is amazing - incredible battery life, and performance when running ARM native applications is fantastic.

The x64 Plex client on WoA is very sluggish, definitely not an acceptable experience (Snapdragon X Elite X1E-78-100, 16GB RAM).

Thanks!

8 Likes
7

That’s the kind of empty spin you get only when you’re paying. If there’s nothing to say, say exactly that—instead of hiding behind a dusty, dead thread that’s already six feet under.

Let’s keep it simple: either announce what’s actually happening—or don’t pretend this service demands glowing loyalty. I’m watching this thread too, waiting for a response that actually makes sense.

3 Likes
8

As far as I know the issues with Qt 6 on Arm have mostly been resolved. Also, referring to a thread that is over a year old is not really an “update”.

Will you be supporting Arm or not?

10

Oh damn, sorry to hear that. Thanks for the honest reply, and that’s really too bad.

I mean realistically I don’t think many people are using a server on ARM hardware yet, but the player I am sure gets used quite a bit. I’ve been kind of getting around this by enabling DLNA and using Screen Box (which as a great native ARM version for Windows) for playback.

11

I had posted this prior to the last comment in this thread and then accidentally hit the delete button on the post. No confirmation, no “are you sure you want to delete this post,” no warning, just gone. I did have a button to un-delete it but I just got an unknown error and there seemed to be no recourse to recover it. Wonderful forum software here.

So I’m posting it again so others don’t wonder what the last comment was talking about:

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news:

  1. I no longer work for Plex (so you shouldn’t reply to me asking questions any longer). Plex has now laid off everyone that worked on the native side of Plex for * and Plex HTPC (I was the last). Additionally this now means they laid off everyone who advocated for these apps existence in the first place. There is serious question if you will ever get any update.
  2. Qt 6 is unusable for Windows in these apps.
    1. The fundamental issue with newer Qt 6 is the fact that they updated to a newer Chromium in Qt 6.3 which breaks offscreen rendering with transparency. This mechanism is required by the way these apps work. So with any Qt version 6.3 or later, you would either get the UI or playback but not both. This is not exclusively a Qt problem because CEF (Chromium Embedded Framework) has similar issues.
    2. Qt 6 to 6.2 and earlier does not render correctly on Windows because the Qt folk inexplicably removed the ANGLE library from the rendering pipeline. They seem to be completely oblivious to the fact that Google created this library because OpenGL rendering on Windows is not good enough for rendering Chrome and that situation hasn’t gone away. So in Qt 6-6.2 (at least), the rendering in Chromium is done directly using Windows implementation of OpenGL which is terrible.
  3. I had plans for how to integrate the MPV engine with the next generation UI but I expect that after the last round of layoffs, they will not be expending the necessary resources to actually see it fulfilled. I suspect that if there ever is a next generation of these apps, it’ll be an Electron app which means no MPV playback engine. Personally I wouldn’t use such an app.
3 Likes
12

sad to hear that,hope you find a better job soon.