Remote Access - Not available outside your network

Plex Media Server Remote Access
1

Server Version#: 1.43.3.10896
Player Version#: 1.115.0.426-4e960a1d
Machine Identifier: 72ce5478789a7017c3a08d6f34d3490ef40718be
Platform: macOS (native install)

Summary: Remote Access shows Not Reachable. Server recently migrated from a Docker container (Orbstack) to a native macOS Plex install, settings copied over.

Preferences.xml shows the server’s current local certificate identity:
CertificateUUID=“2ef838a34f0746e780fe467ac06fe156”
CertificateVersion=“3”

But the reachability prober is testing a different, older UUID entirely:

HTTP error requesting GET https://[WAN-IP].19664b774adc4c108e7a1c39e12fd5d4.plex.direct:32400/identity (60, SSL peer certificate or SSH remote key was not OK) (SSL certificate problem: unable to get local issuer certificate)

Confirmed the port and network are fine:

  • Port 32400 verified open via third-party checker
  • Local /identity check on localhost:32400 works
  • System curl against the plex.direct URL above returns a fully valid cert (Let’s Encrypt, CN=YR1, expires Oct 30 2026, verify OK)
  • Only PMS’s own internal reachability check fails, and it’s checking a UUID that doesn’t match what’s in local Preferences.xml

No stale cache directory or leftover plist entries found, those were ruled out first. This looks like a mismatch between the local server identity and what’s cached on Plex’s side for this machine identifier. Could someone reset the server identity/certificate record for this machine identifier? Thanks.

2

Mac’s don’t use the preferences.xml file, that’s likely left over from your migration from your old server. Macs keep all the data that’s in the xml on Linux in a plist file on a Mac.

Since you’re on a Mac, I would suggest the steps below to see if forcing a new cert will help.

Stop plex, go to the folder in the path below and remove the certificate from the folder, *.p12, and restart plex so that it pulls down a new certificate. If that doesn’t fix it, may need someone from plex to refresh it on their end.

/Users/<username>/Library/Caches/PlexMediaServer

3

I was looking in the wrong place for the Cache directory. That fixed it. Thank you so much!