Setting up Plex Media Server on Mac OS Monterey

Plex Media Server
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1

Server Version#: 1.25.0.5282-2edd3c44d
Player Version#: 4.66.1

I recently did a clean install of Plex Media Server on my M1 Mac Mini. I’ve heard that the M1 Mac Mini works great as a Plex Server. However, I’m experiencing some issues.

  1. When loading the Plex Web site for the first time, it takes 10 to 20 seconds to load. Is this normal?

The M1 Mac Mini is connected to the network via 1gb ethernet cable.

  1. After the Plex Web does load, requests are made to 127.0.0.1, even though I’m not on the Plex Server… obviously, these requests fail.

Is there a configuration out of whack?

  1. Similar to the first issue, some pages are slow to load or timeout altogether. For example, the General preferences won’t load because the request times out.

I’ve already done a complete reinstall, by deleting everything in the
~/Library/Application Support/Plex Media Server/ and removing the Plex Media Server from the Applications directory, but the issues still persist. Are the Plex Media Server settings stored elsewhere?

Inspector Image 1
Inspector Image 2

Does anyone have insights into what might be the issue?

2

Allo. I haven’t moved to Apple Silicon yet, but do run a Mac for my server. Can you provide some more information about your bullet point [1] - “when loading the plex web site…” Are you going to https://app.plex.tv to see your server? Are you using the Plex Media Server “round” icon on the Mac that launches a browser and seems to start with localhost/127.0.0.1? For question [2], let’s pretend the host name for your Mac Mini is “plexserver”. When you are attempting to access your Plex server from a different machine, are you trying this in your browser like this https://plexserver.local:32400/web/index.html#!/

3

@modkiefer Thank you for your answer. I’ve put more time into the issue and discovered it was a number of issues. Below is a write up of my findings. I hope you and others find it helpful:

I moved my Plex Media Server from an Intel chip to Apple Silicon ( Mac M1 Mini). Unfortunately, there isn’t native support for Apple Silicon with Plex Media Server, but it still runs well on Apple Silicon through Apple’s translation layer called Rosetta.

My setup consists of an Apple M1 Mac Mini, 16 gigs of RAM, a 2 terabyte drive, and connected to my network via an Ethernet cable. I have Network Attached Storage (NAS) with 18 terabytes of storage. All my media files reside on my NAS. Lastly, I have a Silicon Dust HDHomerun 4k TV tuner; this is a network Over-The-Air TV tuner that works surprisingly well.

I ran into some challenges; I followed these steps to get Plex Media Server running on Mac OS. These instructions aren’t Apple Silicon specific.

Turn on user auto-login

Turning on user auto-login allows users to automatically log into Mac OS when it boots up. This could be a security issue if your Plex Server is not in a safe place.

Launch Plex Media Server on user login

Enable Plex Media Server to start upon user login. This ensures your Plex Media Server starts when your Mac starts up or restarts.

Mount the Network Share on User Login

It’s important to add the Network Share via the finder, especially if it has a username and password. Initially, I navigated to my Network Share via the network under the Finder Location. To access my Share, I entered my username and password. Doing it this way will access your files, but it doesn’t save your username and password. So the next time you log in, the Network Share won’t be added.

The only way to save your username and password is to mount your Network Share via Finder.

After loading a ton of new media, your site will be slllllloooooowww.

After scanning your files, Plex Media Server loads very slowly, or maybe not at all. The cause might be your database isn’t optimized. Go to the troubleshooting menu item on the settings page and optimize your database.

If your site is so slow that it won’t load the settings page, restart your Plex Media Server and try again.

Disable Mac OS sleep when monitors go to sleep

By default, Mac OS goes to sleep when the monitors do, even when there are no monitors attached, it appears Mac OS goes to sleep after 15 minutes of inactivity.

Make sure to Mac OS does not go to sleep when the monitors time out. There is an option under in System Preferences > Energy Saver > “Prevent your Mac from automatically sleeping when the display is off”

4

If you need it, there was a few months or maybe a year or more where macOS did not like dealing with Firewire drives that had gone to sleep or the machine had gone to sleep. I had a script start on boot up that used the terminal command caffeinate which has a bunch of options for dealing with sleeping which has only gotten more complex with battery saving features like App Nap and other things.

5

That’s normal. The Web Client (and other Plex apps) do that to see if there’s another instance of Plex running there.

6

I just upgraded from a MacPro 4,1 running Mojave to a Mac Mini M1 which is fabulous. We were watching a Frasier episode and it would rebuffer every so often. Then I found out my Mini was automatically going to sleep when monitors sleep. So thanks for your tip on that as it fixed it.