When can we expect a preview build of the new Plex Experience for Roku?
I’m really hoping it preserves or carries over the feature on the Plex Roku app that allows users to view the cast inline while watching a video… I use this function all the time to discover actor names, biographies and see what else they have acted in and available for me to watch.
Fingers crossed🤞 that Roku and other devices won’t be far behind the Apple TV so we can all experience the new interface and all it has to offer.
Thanks, so many people are commenting on the Apple TV preview and I just want to give my “valuable” feedback and see myself how much is missing/broken - or just as importantly, what working and exciting!
Hopefully the Experienced Preview team will have time to port the previous to Roku soon.
Are you able to share information for how the beta\review\feedback will be managed for directing the public release? Not really the exact “Agile Epic” but just in general intention of timeline vs experience? Just hoping to set some expectations.
Despite my occasional frustration expressed here in the forums, overall, Plex’s Roku client has been consistently reliable for several years. I’d like to avoid the experience AppleTV users seem to be dealing with on their Experience release which may have gone public too early. The AppleTV client has had a rockier history than the Roku client with other issues to address outside of the Experience changes so I’m hoping it’ll go smoother for us.
Not yet. We have a group focused on the TV clients and hope to have some answers around getting it out in some form for initial review soon. Apologies that I am not more specific here, but it isn’t hiding anything, just that the conversations and decisions haven’t been made yet.
I am not 100% sure I understand the question here - apologies if I am just being dense. I will answer one aspect of this from a timeline perspective for the Roku client. For the mobile clients we chose to release and continually update a separate app that we called an “experience preview”. This was different than our main app and beta apps. For Roku we are going straight to the beta channel with the changes. There are a couple of reasons for this. First - Roku is not a ground-up rewrite of the entire codebase. Second, quite a bit of the Roku work has been focused on implementing the new UI design. Because many of the underlying foundation isn’t changing and due to the often challenging nature of the Roku apps and how they are loaded, we have chosen to use the existing Roku beta channel for initial distribution.
This means that next week we will launch the new UI in the beta channel. We will both be reading and evaluating forum feedback while we continue to iterate on the app and smooth out rough edges prior to general release. I do not have a date target for general release yet. It will most likely happen alongside or very near some of our other TV clients like Android TV and Apple TV.
Thanks, I appreciate the considered response and I think that answers my questions well enough for the most part. I realize there are limits on what folks can say on this stuff.
Glad to hear that the solid existing Roku setup should help the change go smoothly.
One additional follow up though please:
This does confuse me though because I thought the “New Plex Experience” was already the current public release for AppleTV; done the same as the mobile apps. The primary complaint with AppleTV release seemed to be that it was released out of TVOS TestFlight to public with too many reported bugs still unaddressed. I know there was another TestFlight build unrelated to the New Experience going on around the same time so maybe that’s adding to my confusion. I also see lots of mixed uses of terms associated to this release with “preview” being used differently depending on context so apologies as I may have misunderstood because of that too (context isn’t always clear). Could you help clarify the current state of the AppleTV release branches for us non-AppleTV folks who are watching that from the sidelines with a bit of trepidation?
I agree, the Roku app has been very stable and still has features that don’t exist on other Plex TV platforms - which is why I returned my Android TV for a Roku Pro TV.
In addition to losing features existing Roku exclusive features, I’m even more concerned that the tens of thousands of videos I have added via agents or by manually adding the metadata directly to MP4 files will no longer be useful to me or my family and friends!
I can’t even count how many actors/cast members, directors etc that I have entered and now, using the new Plex Experience on my Android phone, can no longer search for these actors - poof! Gone!!
This is a huge problem for the new Experience going forward.
Nope. The Apple TV version of the new experience app is still in TestFlight. The “standard” Plex app is still what you get if you install from the App Store.
Yes, exactly. If you’re not in TF, on the Apple TV you still only get the legacy app. I have them installed side-by-side on my ATV4K right now so I can follow the progress of the new app.
Maaaan, that really puts a different spin on those posts. The new won’t-stutter playback engine is on the Test Flight builds though, isn’t it? That might be why some people are running it.
I was under the same impression as @nx6 that New Experience was pushed to public like the mobile apps were. The mobile folks being upset I get - no choice and the release was definitely bug ridden - so I thought it was the same scenario for AppleTV since it was all announced together… definitely some confused messaging around all that then. People are definitely reacting to the AppleTV preview very vehemently for a beta. Thanks for clarifying that for us.
That was some of my confusion as well since the AppleTV public app hasn’t been getting updates anymore waiting for the “new client” with fixes that was started before the Experience betas. Looking at release announcement threads and such it’s hard to see what’s what for the state of AppleTV client options. Looks like maybe 3 options? 2 TestFlight and a public? 1 TestFlight for the updated client engine and 1 TestFlight for the New Experience with is or isn’t using the new engine?
I can see why AppleTV folks might be frustrated… and sticking with Infuse.
As of now for me there is the App store Plex 8.45 and Testflight Plex Experience Preview 2025.16.0. Those are the only two available (8.46 which was the old layout with the new player is gone.)
The 2025.16.0 is pretty much the same as the mobile iOS app.
