After rebuilding my Plex server, “Recently Added” shows all of my albums in reverse alphabetical order, rather than the order of albums based on file timestamps. Adding new albums to my library works as expected (they show up as most recently added), but I lost all functionality of this after the library migration to a new device.
TL;DR - “Recently Added” should be based on file creation/modification date - not based on the date the object was added to the database.
To use this behaviour in general, is a bad idea.
You can get what you aim for, if you add all your music folders during the course of creating the music library.
If you add folders to an already existing library, they will indeed get an “Added at” date of the current date.
Thanks, Otto. Adding my collection folder by folder to my library after moving to a different NAS would be tremendously slow and tedious, as I have thousands of albums.
Is there a reason they’re not sorted by creation/modified date? Are there plans to add this functionality?
Err, you add the parent folder which holds all your music. Not each album (nor artist) individually.
https://support.plex.tv/articles/200265296-adding-music-media-from-folders/
Then you leave the server to its own devices until it has chewed through it all.
In order to do this, I’d add the parent folder, then manually move each album to that folder and refresh the library one by one - that’s not feasible.
Is there any effort underway to make Plex use the file date creation or modified date? This is the only way the server would chew through the library and sort recently added accurately.
I don’t think I agree with this idea. The file timestamps reflect when the files were created, not when they are added to the library, which isn’t necessarily the same date. If I acquire files that were created years ago, maybe from a friend, or an old hard drive, and add them to my library, those files would not show up at the top of “Recently Added” as I would expect. This may not be the most common scenario, but it would be a surprising result, and I think it would look like a bug.
I can see that. But I feel like it should be a setting that’s available for when a library gets corrupted or if someone migrates to a different NAS, server, etc…
You can migrate the Plex server database from one computer to another. This would allow you to retain the “added at” date. Plex also backs up the database occasionally in case of corruption, which would also keep this timestamp.
Unfortunately, it sounds like it might be too late in this case.
Thanks, divide - yeah… I set up a Synology NAS and copied all media files from my old Windows server, so there was no migration path that I was aware of. Perhaps there was, but even my old server had this issue after a random library corruption or two.
I think that’s the biggest pain point - random library corruption can cause this, as I’ve found a few times. Entire library has rebuilt itself several times over the years.
No. Plex Media Server will use the file/folder date on it’s initial scan when creating a library. If that’s the date you want, remove your current music library. Organize your files first, so that everything is under a single “Music” folder. Create a new music library and point it to “Music”. Now everything that exists in that folder on this initial scan will be added using it’s file/folder date.
Why would you do it that way? Have the folder with all your music ready, create the library and point it to this folder – where all music is already waiting.
Not sure what I’m missing here. This is exactly how I created my library. And all the “Recently Added” albums show up in reverse alphabetical order.
As stated in the initial post - this isn’t how it works. All music is in one folder. Upon creation of the library, the scan simply adds all the music in alphabetical order, so the “Recently Added” music appears in reverse alphabetical order. It’s not based on file/folder date - that’s exactly the feature I’m hoping for here.
That’s the way it should work. Can you try:
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