Here is my scenario.
I have a Mac Mini that I use to run my Plex Media Server, which is attached to a couple of 4TB External USB disks.
I also run Bootcamp and Windows 10 on this Mac Mini. I use it for work (I work from home) and some of my clients require Windows-only VPN software, so I boot into Windows 10 for that, and could be on Windows for a week or more.
I watch my Plex media on Roku.
I have PMS installed on both Mac and Windows, and it works perfectly fine except for:
Movies that I have partially watched do not sync status… I.e. if I am playing Casino Royale while my Mac is running, and I am an hour into it, then I boot into Windows, open Plex back up, it doesn’t know that I left off 1 hour into the movie.
I have a few Collections created (Bond, Bourne, DC, Marvel, etc.) that I created while on my Mac (using app.plex.tv/desktop in my browser), but those collections do now show up in the UI on my Roku if the Plex server is running on Windows 10.
Does anyone know how to remedy these two things? Besides those, I use the app for everything from syncing on-the-go media to DVR-ing shows from my over-the-air HD antenna, and it works excellently for all of those purposes.
It is not possible to sync all of Plex’s internal data across operating system borders.
It just doesn’t work.
You may be able to avoid the switching of operating systems by putting one of them inside of a ‘virtual machine’ thereby running both of them at the same time.
That way, your Plex server can keep running on one and the same OS, no matter which OS you currently need for work.
I can understand the play-state of the movies, but not the collections. To me, the collection should be stored in a platform agnostic markup file. XML, JSON, something that the server polls for periodically, and can be stored in a place of our own choosing.
It very well may already be in a file like that, but if so, it seems it might be stored in the install directory or somewhere that is inaccessible by another instance of the server. Technically there is no reason PMS couldn’t be updated to allow that file to be stored in a location of our choosing.
Plex is not Kodi
It doesn’t use sidecar files to store it’s data.
Most of these data are stuffed into the main Plex database file, which like all other things is located in the Plex data folder.
And this folder cannot be shared across operating system borders.
This explains the behavior. I don’t think that it is such a bad idea, though, to allow for the simple storage and movement of such a file for the singular purpose of keeping it alongside your media (in the case of movable/portable media storage) so your Plex Server had visibility to all of the metadata for your library.
