Setting up additional family accounts, including remote access and downloading

General Discussions
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I have a lifetime plex pass and am running my plex server on a NAS. Everything runs fine in the home and remotely, using my admin account and one home account I set up. I now want to set up my 2 college age kids to be able to play and download content remotely from my server to their iPhones and/or computers. I have 3 questions that I need help with:

1) Should I set them up as “FRIENDS” or “HOME USERS”? My impression after searching around a bit, is that HOME USERS can only access the content in the local network, unless I first put my admin account on their devices and then have them “pin” into their home account. If that’s the case, then I need to sign them up with their own Plex accounts so I don’t have to mess around with my account on all their devices.

2) If I set up my kids as FRIENDS, will my NAS continue to use the hardware transcoding to send them the content remotely and/or to allow them to download the content? Since I don’t plan on signing them up for paid accounts, I assume that my server will still transcode their streams/downloads, given that I have a Plex Pass, despite them not having one. But the info I have found is not clear on this.

3) Can FRIENDS and HOME USERS both stream and download content remotely for offline viewing on iOS devices and PCs?

Thanks in advance for any insights folks can share!

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Home User is not the same as a Managed User. You are a home user. as you are in your Home. both regular and managed user accounts can be in your home ( a total of 14 not including yourself)

  1. this is false. managed users can access remotely, you (or someone else in the home with regular account) do need to authorize them the first time on devices though. it is meant for children and folks you do not trust to give their password out basically. in this manner it manages the devices they can use.

  2. yes if you have hardware transcoding enabled it will do this regardless of if the account is in Home User or not.

  3. if you allow their accounts to do so in restriction settings with the plex Mobile apps for iOS and Android and the Window/Mac desktop player app. to be clear these are versions of Sync not a direct download like you might download a file from website.

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From experience, I would highly recommend have them create their own plex accounts (or create them for them), and then invite them to your home.

Using managed users (like a sub user of the admin), will always be tied to YOUR plex account.

As far as I am aware, there is no way to convert a managed user to a separate plex account.

This means that all play history/view state for managed users will also be tied to your account.

So, start out with separate plex users > invite them to home.

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Thanks Technojunky. This is exactly what I needed to know. BTW, I didn’t even notice the distinction within “HOME USERS” that there is a category called “MANAGED USERS”. Plex makes these distinctions awfully confusing.

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Thanks Bigwheel. I am going to set them up with their own plex accounts. This discussion has been most helpful.

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all home users will have a profile picker, so you should put PIN’s on at least the admin account, to prevent anyone from intentionally or inadvertently switching to your admin account (even from a separate account).

if you/they don’t like/need the profile/user picker (it’s like netflix with multiple profiles), be sure they have ‘always log in’ enabled in the client settings, and the player will stay logged in to the last user chosen.

going from memory, all users can be allowed ‘sync’ access, but only home users can use live tv/dvr (if you have a plex compatible tv tuner setup).

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