I used to love using Plex Photo and relied on its auto-tagging feature, which was incredibly helpful and efficient. The feature saved me a lot of time and effort, and allowed me to easily organize my photos. However, for the past few weeks, none of my photos have been auto-tagged and I’ve tried everything I can think of to fix it. I’ve spent hours disabling firewalls, uninstalling and reinstalling the program, and searching for solutions online. Unfortunately, none of these attempts have been successful, and I’m left feeling frustrated and disappointed. The auto-tagging feature was such a key part of my workflow, and now that it’s not working, I have to manually tag all of my photos, which is a time-consuming and tedious process. I’m hoping that the issue can be fixed soon, as I really miss the convenience and ease of using the auto-tagging feature.
Starting May 31, Plex will no longer support automatic tagging (image content recognition and geolocation names) of new photos added to your library. You’re receiving this email because it looks like you may have added some photos recently that were automatically tagged.
We know many of you are avid users of Plex for photos, and auto tagging can be an important part of that experience. However, usage of auto tagging is at an all-time low having been in decline for some time, and we can no longer support the ongoing cost and complexity associated with maintaining the feature. We know this is a bummer, and we apologize for the inconvenience.
No action is required by you at this time. Manual tagging of photos is still supported, and any existing manual or automatic tags in your photo library will not be affected by this change.
“However, usage of auto tagging is at an all-time low having been in decline for some time, and we can no longer support the ongoing cost and complexity associated with maintaining the feature.”
I absolutely love this logic:
We ignored the photos library for years until it was barely useable and used the drop in user engagement with Photos as an excuse to justify removing auto-upload support for mobile devices, and now we’re using the further drop in user engagement from that decision to justify removing the AutoTag feature.
[Plex]: Spills water all over the floor.
[Also Plex]: Why is the floor wet?
I would to stress that for years we requested plex to use the tagging that is already inside the photo (exif and iptc). Instead they tried to develop something useless and unusable.
I can only reiterate: go ahead and remove the auto-tagging but make us happy and allow search and filtering on iptc and exif.
I think that everyone who has photos in their Plex library would welcome even basic support for reading EXIF/XMP/IPTC tags already present in their libraries. It seems such a simple thing to do, as they are already reading camera details, dates/geolocations from the files.
This has been on various feature requests for at least six years, if not longer.
The problem is that they show no interest in the feature requests from the Plex-Pass paying community. I have started to use other products alongside Plex for photos, many of which do a better job of tagging than the sunsetted auto-tagging feature, but still, I can’t see those tags in Plex.
A couple of community/open-source projects try to address the shortcomings, but it would be better if there were some support from Plex. For instance, give us the ability to apply People tags to the Plex database alongside the normal tags.
I think we are one step closer to the sunsetting of the Photo Library in Plex, which would be a shame as it is a great way of sharing photos with family on my TV.
Come on, Plex; it’s about time you gave the community stuff they want, instead of all these new integrations that nobody really asked for. At least meet us halfway so that the community can fill this hole in what is a great Media Server.
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