Authentication issue on plex.tv this evening has highlighted for all plex users that to watch our own stuff, on our own networks, it needs a connection to the plex.tv api to authenticate users (and possibly other stuff too).
Request is that this mechanism be enabled locally so that a closed LAN could carry out every function currently available on plex (except stream, of course). I want to be able to watch my own stuff without relying on internet uptime.
Seconded. Plex used to work perfectly fine years ago before they changed the authentication, and the downtime has been growing increasingly frequent over the last month or two.
I didn’t realise they changed the authentication - I had noticed that a while back the authentication got slightly slower and less stable, but assumed it was my internet connection!
Even easier to implement then if they’ve already got a copy of the old code 
In fairness, my memory is sometimes…well, crap, but yeah I definitely remember they changed it a few years back (someone correct me if I’m wrong of course). I seem to remember the authentication change caused a pretty big fuss on Reddit (for these obvious reasons.)
Yes pls as well - much prefer local authentication to prevent all these outages, embarrassing really.
Count me in to. Local content on the LAN should always be available.
First time post here 
I totally agree, planning on watching a movie and finding out that it’s not gonna happen is no fun at all. Even worse is that the content of a friend who I share libraries with IS available. My own movie collection is inaccessible, and his is online and fully accessible. Looks like the external content doesn’t need authentication? This is really strange behaviour for an authentication setup, I can’t wrap my mind around this.
Authentication is a good thing, even when it’s happening online, but please PLEX ppl, get something else in play, and let us watch out local content.
Suggestion: if this way of authentication is really something you need to have in place, put local play on a timeout, I think you can make sure that the authentication server is online within the next 24 hours, so put that as a liimit on the local LAN access?
This is my main reason for loading Emby onto my NAS this week. I have it on a months trial but so far I’m impressed by it.
I’m a Plex Pass LifeTime member but can afford to switch to Emby Lifetime if I feel it would make things easier to maintain and run. Explaining to remote family users that my Plex is down because Plex HQ servers are down is tiresome, afterall its my server they are connecting to not Plex’s.
I used to love Plex but lately its starting to annoy the hell out of me.
Well Plex does https encryption for you (which is/was affected by the outage) while emby leaves this all to you. So I hope you know how to generate certificates and securing your connection yourself. I also hope that all your clients have the right devices, because emby suppports much less than Plex does. And be sure to get either a dyn-dns or domain name, since the direct connect of emby needs that.
This is btw. no emby rant, just a reality check.
I use NO-IP and their SSL service, straight forward.
A request for the same feature exists already, and it has more votes.
Therefore this one is closed, to prevent spreading the votes across several threads, even though they vote for the same (or at least very similar thing).
Votes are given back to the users who voted on this request. Please think of re-voting in the other thread if you still want it.
Rules for the Feature Suggestions forum section:
See existing feature suggestions, sorted by most popular first
https://forums.plex.tv/c/general/feature-suggestions/l/votes
