First off, I want to say I’m not trying to come across as negative—I’ve been a Plex user since the very beginning, and I genuinely love change and innovation. I’m also a developer for a global tech company, so I completely understand that platforms need to evolve.
That said, I’m curious about how the new UI/UX was tested before release. Was this rolled out to active user groups or power users in the community? If not, I’d strongly recommend sourcing feedback from engaged users here in the forums or even analyzing server stats to build representative test groups. I think that could really help ensure changes align with how the community actually uses Plex.
A couple of specific points:
The customizable home screen and side menu have been core features for years—why were these removed?
Why not provide an option to keep the old theme or a bridge between the old and new experiences? Even just a toggle or alternative layout could give users more flexibility.
Without these customizations, the home screen feels much less useful or just outright useless at this point. It would be amazing to see those personalization options return.
I say all this because Plex is an incredible product, and I’d love to see it continue improving without losing some of the features that made it so great from the start.
Thank you for listening and for building such a kick ass platform!
Besides Playlists taking longer to navigate to, they simply don’t work on my child profiles.
I have granted access to several playlists to my child profiles, and they could use them without issue before this update. When navigating to where the updated playlist location is now, it simply does not show the playlists option on their profiles. It shows without issue on my profile.
You guys should have tested this stuff out better before dropping such a large revamp with no option for people to revert or opt out.
For the Library Favorites at least give us an option to sync the states of the favorites across devices. I personally had different favorites depending if I was on my phone vs the tv’s.
Also please let us choose if we want the live tv, on demand and discover on the main screen.
With regards to the request for feedback on the favorites approach. My use case would require individual favorites because I have some players that are capable of 4K content in other players that are not. To facilitate this I have 4K libraries that I want favorited on 4K players and I have non 4K content favorited on the other players. Another aspect is I have child appropriate content I want in central viewing areas favored and I have non-child appropriate content that should only be favorited on certain players.
That’s the worst part, it’s been in beta with the community since MAY. We provided countless constructive feedback about the UI/UX and it was blatantly ignored all the way up to today.
Dig around a bit in the beta threads and you’ll see just how much they don’t care what the users want or say unless it’s a bug only related to the new experience.
Rollback? Absolutely not. Change the navigation, “we’re looking at it.” For whatever reason cough VC investors cough they are sticking with their streaming content first, personal media second, and absolutely not going backward.
Additionally if you look at the App Store listings for iOS/Android you will see the move to personal streaming second. It’s not in the screenshots and it’s literally a small bullet point at the end that says oh and you can stream personal media too. Give it a year and I’d be willing to bet the pms is retired.
The new UI is horrible. Sorry, you’ve lost me as a customer if you aren’t going to go back to a much nice, more useable UI. It’s completely stupid to have to go all the way to the top, then over to Libraries, then down to them. The old was right there to the left in easily viewed format with easily ordered lists. You’re just ignoring your customer base to do what you want. That’s never a good thing. There are other options out there.
This UI is disgusting, not intuitive and a huge step back from the previous one in functionality. The fact you can sit there and ignore all the complaints with the tone of not giving a crap about what actual users are saying is insane.
I absolutely have no need or want for this ■■■■ to have a top bar navigation, I have 7+ libraries I switch between and I can’t easily view them all anymore.
I don’t care about discover or live and now they are pinned at the top wasting space of things I actually care about.
Between this UI and the loss of watch together I can’t understand how you think any one wants to stick around and I regret using Plex, it was a waste of money.
@McWanke With playlists now being contained within a library, how do playlists that span across libraries work? I have some playlists that include both movies and shows (think franchises like Star Trek, Stargate, or the MCU) which I use. How would they work in this world where playlists are limited to a library?
@McWanke maybe you should listen to the people who actually use the app. If I want Netflix, I’ll go use that. This is not Netflix, it’s a tool to allow users to organize and manage their media. This version has gone backwards in a big way. Either revert it or make the option available to use the previous version. You’ll find that if given a choice NO ONE will use the new app.
Yeah well VC’s know best right. If they don’t watch what they do, they might just kill the platform before it really gets off the ground to go mainstream. It’s sad, since they have a great working platform to take on streaming services if they just got the integrations and UI right.
You hear that Plex VC’s, I got some real ideas for actual features that could help make money not some stupid UI that drives everyone away.
I want the old UI back. I did not ask for this, I do not want this, I do no like this. There was nothing wrong with the old UI. Plex is becoming more and more garbage, your decisions have NOT been good ones recently.
