I’ve been using Plex Media Server for the last 6+ - ish years now. I’ve been a Plex Pass Lifetime subscriber for about the last 2. I’ve been trying to consolidate all my personal (purchased and own legally) media (movies, music, photos, etc) I really don’t take advantage of many of the Lifetime Pass perks such as sharing my media with others however, nor am I too upset with the channels/addons going away (although some of the channels were great to have. i.e, Plex truly being my whole home media solution). I use the HD Homerun 4 tuner DVR feature and it is really good and I hope it only gets better. What I would just LOVE to see is a way to make Plex for Android the default media (I’m more interested in music for this application) player. I have synced over 400 GB of songs to my S9. Awesome right? Well sort of… I have no way to utilize/access hands free by either Google Assistant or Amazon Alex or (insert other option here).
What would be great would be to say "Ask Plex to play <artist, album, song, radio station, etc> directly from the phone I have synced for offline access while… driving down the road… on my motorcycle… “hands free” like I can with any other stand alone music player I have installed on my phone. What makes this even more frustrating is that the enormous amount of music I have synced to the phone is not accessible by any of the other players in its current Plex synced format (library_sections, media_parts, metadata_items) so I need to have the actual original mp3 files stored on the SD card as well in order to access them by the stand alone players that support hands free playback via voice command. I realize that I could potentially use hands free via say, Alexa to the Plex smart skill, but now I am in streaming mode which gives my data a hit, can at times be a little slow to respond or not work at all because I am driving in an area with little to no data coverage.
I know this is a bit lengthy and I do apologize. This is my first attempt at actually putting my request/thoughts/suggestions/recommendations down in a forum. I am trying follow the forum guidelines and give as much information as possible as I feel (based on other forums posts and internet searches I’ve done that this is an ongoing request/need of others using Plex as their “one stop shop” for personal media access/use.
Hopefully I am doing this correctly and I’m eager to assist with testing or suggestions or any type of positive or forward thinking feedback.
Hear, hear. Android Auto would be a much more viable solution, if we could have Plex as our default.
Just checking in to see if there has been any movement on this. Specifically PlexAmp (which I just love by the way). I’ve tried "tell plex to play… as well ask tell PlexAmp to play… with no luck. I’ve tried using Google as well as Alexa. Hopefully this will be something looked into? The ability to ask plex (PlexAmp) to play and Android will know what to do?
The ability to command PlexAmp from Android Auto does work. I’ve been using it for a while. The only way I’ve found this to work is by not having a default music provider setup in Google Assistant. The only real pain is Android keeps reverting back to YouTube music whenever it feels like and because I don’t pay for that garbage I get back an error from the Assistant. I’ll then have to go back into GA and set it again to No default provider. Would be amazing if PlexAmp could be in the list of recognized music services so this could just work.
To find the menu I’m referring to you can open the Google Home app, settings and then music or ask GA “Change default music provider”.
Of course I’m trying to remember what I then ask in order for a specific song to play through Android Auto and PlexAmp but I’m not in my car at the moment. Anything I try now seems to still just open YouTube, however as video is block in AA I’m thinking it works differently. I seem to think I just ask for a song by artist using Plex or PlexAmp.
Hope this makes sense and helps. Again, would love Plex to be available in the list of music providers as well to simplify everything.
