Has anyone here successfully reset their Plex password recently?
I’ve held off because I host a shared server with two non-tech-savvy friends in my home. Resetting means I’d have to walk them through logging in, accessing the “admin” user, enabling automatic sign-in, and then switching back to their own profiles. It’s not rocket science, but it’s enough friction to make me pause.
Now I’m seeing scattered reports of users struggling to sign in after the reset, or having trouble reclaiming their server. I suspect some of this is user error—but without clear communication from Plex, it’s hard to know how widespread or serious these issues really are.
What I’d love to see:
- A transparent acknowledgment from Plex about what went wrong (without implying users are at fault)
- An updated, step-by-step guide for password changes—especially for multi-user households
- Reassurance that the process is stable and won’t result in lockouts or server orphaning
For those of us managing large libraries or hosting friends and family, this isn’t just a minor inconvenience—it’s a potential time-sink and source of anxiety.
Have you reset yet? Any hiccups? I’m still in ostrich mode (or emu, if you prefer ), but hoping for some clarity before I dive in.
I had trouble reclaiming my server (bare metal install on Asustor NAS, no Docker or such), because Server Settings didn’t appear on the local hosted Plex Web on my server (I presume maybe because forcing secure connections).
I needed to retrieve Plex Claim token and reclaim via SSH. That however at least worked flawless.
1. Open https://plex.tv/claim from your PC browser. You will get a Claim Code from Plex associated with your Plex account. This code is valid for 5 minutes
2. SSH to your Plex server and run the following:
sudo -i curl -X POST http://[YOURSERVERIP]:32400/myplex/claim?token=claim-[CLAIMCODE]
Further suggestion regarding your Plex Home operation: NEVER use your Admin user to logon any client devices. Add at least one other full plex account to your Plex Home and use that account to logon devices.
I reset my password on 9/13, ran the credentials script, reclaimed two docker servers, renewed the Arr’s tokens, logged 5 devices back in. All in, took me about a half an hour with the most annoying part being having to re-select my pinned libraries on a few devices.
I reset my account password, and the only issue for me was logging in to every device for my family. I use the same account as my server, because I have not gotten around to making separate accounts for each family member and inviting them to the home (at this point, the loss of watched status/history from converting is just too much of a pain for me to do it).
Claiming my server was easy. I have mine in a Linux docker with an IP in the same subnet as my main home network, so connecting to its hosted web app and claiming it was easy as pie.
That was my most annoying bit too, and it honestly confuses me. I do not know why changing an account password causes every single device to forget the customization of my pinned libraries.
Normally it doesn’t. Unless you did not only renew the server claim with a new password, but did also clear out the server’s identity – thus making it necessary to un-pin all the libraries from the old server and re-pin them from the new server.
If you for some reason lose the whole preferences.xml file, this is the result. Because it does not only contain the account token, but also the server ID.
Like you, I held off changing the password mainly until I had time to do it. Now I regret making the change. Since I reset the password (following Plex instructions and guidelines), I am not able to find my PMS on my NAS (it’s a WD My Cloud PR2100). However, I can reclaim the servers on all my osMac devices, but that doesn’t do me much good as all my home videos, photos and music resides on my NAS.
It’s been very stable since I installed Plex about 6 years ago. I purchased a lifetime Plex Pass too so now I lose out on multiple fronts. I’ve scoured the web for troubleshooting, tried them all and still no luck. I guess I will have to now do a full factory reset of my NAS which is a HUGE pain. I’ve got 16 TB of data to back-up, erase and restore.
Sooo, my recommendation is don’t do it unless you really think you have a security problem with severe consequences. Given that there have been 10 other posts on the same problem since yesterday, I believe someone at Plex will wake up and create a smoother way to reset a password which with anyone else is a very simple and painless process. Good luck whichever way you chose to go, but if it were me I’d wait. Wish I did.
If a data point helps, I just did a reset. The process to reclaim my Windows based server was a little convoluted. I visited http://localhost:32400/web and after signing into my plex.tv account, I was able to see my personal profile settings but the server wasn’t in the dropdown, not even listed as “offline”. (Aside: I use a System Tray service to run Plex in the background as a service-account user, so normally my profile shows two claimed servers, the regular one that runs under the service account and a second “empty” one that has a data directory under my regular user account. The “empty” one showed up but the regular one was missing.)
I skimmed through this post and one of the suggestions was to find the Plex Media Server data directory, and open the Setup Plex.html file there. When I did this, I was prompted to authorize against my plex.tv account again, then it took me back to the settings page and this time I could see my regular server in the list, already showing as claimed.
I don’t know if this works on other platforms, but at least on Windows you should try Setup Plex.html from the local filesystem, I think it basically runs the claim process described in the posts above (getting a token and passing it to your local webserver) automatically.
Ok everybody, thank you so much for sharing your experiences. I’m not much more confident about changing my password (God, changing passwords these days if so frequent, it’s shouldn’t be an issue) and will do so first thing Monday (my tomorrow)
I figure I can expect some minimum tidying up, a fresh email to my sister, Mom, etc on what to expect when they open Plex on their TV s.
If I get locked out of my server, I know who come to for help!
), but hoping for some clarity before I dive in.
and thanks again for your time and knowledge.