Before the above - I had 28.
Plex just doesn’t realize how much people hate ‘Drilling For Genre’ - so much so they’ll do almost anything to prevent it…
(their ‘internal logistics’ doesn’t reveal little gems like that - but asking, or listening to users would)
I don’t seem to have a problem sorting by genre…
My users and myself do it a lot…
I might not mind doing it ONCE - but I’m NOT doing it every single time I need Genre Separation. One click on ‘Westerns’ is way better than 20 to Drill For Genre - IMO.
I just tried that it took 4 clicks to get to 'Westerns"
3 too many - considering how often I watch one of my Genre Separated Movies - or TV Shows, Constant Drilling is something I AM NOT going to do. I found the Work-Around. For me, it works just fine.
Think your work around takes about the same amount of clicks…
but what ever makes one happy…
Drilling for Genre on my Roku App - takes 31 clicks to get to Westerns.
Yea, a Western Collection is 6 - and that’s WAY LESS than 31 - all day, every day - and twice on Sunday.
My 4 clicks is less then your 6…
I don’t watch media from Plexweb - Roku is my weapon of choice and there is no way in Blue Hell I can get to my Westerns collection from Home in less than 6, or Drill For Genre in less than 31 - and I took the shortcut.
We are done here, Buddy. Or at least I am.
I use the Roku also, But I use the phone app to control it, saves a lot of steps,
Just an FYI…
How about smart playlists? Create once, very few clicks to access on any client which supports them, pinned by default, and you still only need to manage one movie library.
I have a ‘Smart Playlist for Westerns’ - It’s always visible as a collection in my Movie Library, ALL clients support it, I can shuffle all 218 movies in it (if I went stark raving mad - or had a reason to shuffle 218 Westerns) very easy to create, maintain and update (by simply adding the next Western to the collection when I add the Western).
It can’t get any easier than that.
I have never used a Playlist - and never will (unless I happen to find a need for one - haven’t yet).
That’s interesting I would like to know more about how to do that.
So how do I make collections? I make 1 HUGE folder with all my movies? Then I somehow add 1,600+ Horror movies one by one to a collection? And every few months when I add 300 more movies I gotta individually add 300 movies to different collections? That sounds like more work than it’s worth.
maybe you should slow down, then your workload wouldn’t be so bad, eh ?
While not a perfect solution, you could also use a smart playlist. Assuming your movies are appropriately tagged with genres (they should be if they were matched correctly by an agent), you can create a custom filter which looks like this:
To create a smart playlist from this, you would click that icon in the upper-right with the plus and horizontal lines. Name it and click Create. Then whenever you add a new horror movie it will automatically be added to this playlist.
Collections are arguably more flexible as they allow arbitrary tags to be used (Marvel Cinematic Universe, for example). But if your primary goal is to group movies by genre easily, a smart playlist would be a very simple to setup and maintain.
You may have to go a ‘page’ at a time, but you’d use Genre Drilling (that seems to be a big hit) to bring up a million Horror Movies, for instance, then you ‘Select’ the first one, hold Shift and Select another one way down the page - then click ‘The Pencil’ and add all of those to a Collection (under the ‘Tags’ item in the Edit Window):
You may also, at this time want to ‘Edit’ the Collection, go to ‘Advanced’ and ‘Hide Movies in Collections’ - I found it less confusing - you may find something else. From this Advanced Edit page you can also adjust the ‘Sort Title’ to put ‘Sequels’ into line <— and you’ll edit the ‘List’ from Date to Alphabetical in order to facilitate this change - if it suits you.
Note:
Having more than say, 250 movies or shows in a Collection may become somewhat ‘Tedious’ without a ‘Letter Stack’ to help you browse The Collection. This is a shortcoming not immediately apparent to developers - it took a ‘User’ to invent a way to Abuse the original intent of the Collection Feature to find this shortcoming, but now it’s up to Plex to do something about it… or not. You created The Monster - now it’s slipped it’s chain and is on the loose.
Note to Plex:
Not ALL users are as deeply in love with ‘Drilling For Genre’ as others (the aforementioned 31 clicks is a pretty dam good reason to want a ‘work-around’) - and have found a work-around. Will you help them out, or will you ignore them?
Note to Plex 2:
Aunt Gladys (Born: 4/17/1921) is NOT going to take her Roku on a 31 Click Ride Drilling For Genre - GUARANTEED! She loves the “Genre Collection” however and uses it all the time now that it’s been ‘invented’.
The Other problem with the pinned Library page is there’s no link to your server for Admin purposes. So if a user just wanted to login to do Library updates and do a quick “Scan Library Files” they’d have to scroll all the way down to the bottom and select “More>” to do so which is a major pain in the butt. I always though of the “Web App” as more of a Managerial way of using Plex…so why stick Casual Features such as Pinning on the main page? I would think more users are using the Web App to manage Plex primarily. Do any other forms of plex even allow you to do Library updates and such? It just seems counter intuitive to what the Web App is actually used for. It’s shoving too many features in one place. As a Manager or Admin of any program simple is better you’re not looking for frilly user experiences in such a place that’s why Pinned items seems way out of place as the Main thing when you login.
The ultimate solution and I think we can end this whole conversation and just let this be the last word…is…
Plex should remember whether you’re on the Pinned or More page and load to that page when you login.
Such a simple solution, please include this in the next update.
You can go directly to your server by link, avoiding “more”.
