I’m looking to use Plex as a Tivo replacement, and the one thing I really miss is the ability to sort grouped shows by last aired. So whatever show most recently had an aired episode would be listed at the top. It would be even better if I could filter out shows that have no unwatched episodes. The issue is that I don’t want to see individual episodes listed, I want to see shows. Also, On Deck does seem to display the oldest unwatched episode, but if I have an old series it can show up first in that list. Since the list has limited space, I won’t see other, more recently aired series. I would like a sort that isn’t trying to outhink me; just a list of series (Simpsons, Family Guy, etc) ordered by most recently aired episode. Even better if it can sort by most recently aired unwatched episode.
In other words, what I would really like to do is prioritize shows (not episodes) that have recently aired, unwatched episodes. Once I watch the episode, the show would either drop off the list or fall to the bottom. That would make it much easier to keep up with shows that are currently airing.
Use a custom filter to see ‘unwatched episodes’.
then sort the view ‘By Last Episode Date Added’
A click on the tv show poster will start playback with the oldest unwatched episode.
I also recreated the result in the mobile Android app.
The filter ‘Unwatched’ and the sorting method “Episode Last Added” is there available as well.
My understanding is that “By Last Episode Date Added” refers to the date the episode was added to Plex, not the date that it aired. So adding an old series would cause it to show up at the top of the list.
I have played around with this, and while it doesn’t exactly accomplish what I was hoping for, it is close enough. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work on the Apple TV app, since there are no custom filters. Adding to a playlist through the web app gives me a long list of episodes instead of groups.
@nemanTV said:
My understanding is that “By Last Episode Date Added” refers to the date the episode was added to Plex, not the date that it aired. So adding an old series would cause it to show up at the top of the list.
There is also sort ‘By Airdate’ which will achieve what you’re after, I think.
Adding to a playlist through the web app gives me a long list of episodes instead of groups.
Yes, unfortunately the playlists don’t know the concept of groups, or series, or seasons, or albums.
By Airdate definitely doesn’t do what I’m after. Unfortunately, “Airdate” is interpreted as the first date that the show ever aired. So while it correctly sorts old, no longer running shows from new, current shows, a show that just started in 2017 but hasn’t had a new episode since April will be sorted ahead of a show that started in 2016 but had a new episode last night.
Would it really be that hard to give us a “By Last Episode Aired” option?
By that same token… I really need to have a way to filter on my Apple TV. It would be great if we could just save filters (rather than having to create a smart playlist); then we could use the web interface to create the filters and select them on the apple tv without having to add more UI elements to the apple tv interface.
+1
I know this is kinda old but this feature is sadly still missing. It seems sort of trivial to implement and really useful in a number of scenarios. I usually just sort by date added, but since moving my library to a new location date added is is reflecting the date when indexing took place in the new location instead of when I originally added it to my library.
I think being able to sort tv shows based on last episode aired would be lovely. In my case I’m using the Plex Media Player on MacOS, but adding it to the web client would totally suffice.
Note: I realize it’s possible to sort episodes this way, but as the OP suggested, I’d like to be able to sort shows by last episode aired as well.
You can sort episodes by Last Aired Date. You can sort shows by Air Date (being the Air date of the FIRST episode). You can sort shows by Last Episode Date Added. But you cannot sort shows by Last Episode Aired Date. At least still not as at 18th September 2020 in web client Version 4.42.1.
The objective here is to see what shows are ‘most current’. The first air date of a show is actually a hell of a lot less useful than the last air date. Doing this at an episode level gives you walls of shows that were added or aired a season at a time, and doing it via date added only correlates if you’re adding shows as they air, otherwise a much older show added in bulk superseeds a newly aired one.
I want to start off by saying this is a gigantically useful request and trivially easy to code. It should have been added over 4 years ago after this request received its first vote. The coding could have been done in less than 10 minutes by an amateur programmer. I could have programed the code necessary to implement this feature many times over, with the time I have put into this post so far. And I am by no means a professional programmer.
I do not want to nitpick, but this is not a solution to the request, and should never have been offered as a solution. Perhaps it would be OK to offer it as the only alternative available until a solution is added, but this is most definitely NOT a solution.
I too would very much like to see this added. But, considering there are a million other just as easy things to add, that seemingly never do get added, unfortunately my hopes are not high.
And why would such a trivially easy to code inclusion even require voting on to get added? This incredibly simple request was requested OVER FOUR YEARS AGO! I tell you, the Plex forums just seem maddening, in comparison to most other development forums I have come across.
I also purchased a lifetime Plex pass. It would be nice if that meant anything on these forums. If I could even get this trivially easy thing to be implemented, I would be very happy. There are just SO many other things that need to be improved, but can we at least get something as incredibly easy to implement as this added?
It would be nice if there was an active addon community for this project, so that the community could come together to solve trivially easy things like this, until the developers eventually (OVER FOUR YEARS LATER) get around to them.
I too would like to see this added. This would allow you to create a smart collection that shows newly aired tv shows but rather then showing all episodes (which is a pain for the shows that drop all episodes at once) it would organize the episodes into one poster for Recently Released Episodes category. Cleaning up the Home Screen a little.
I believe this worked. Thank you very much for this trick to make smart collections with the desired sort filter. Now if only they would add this sort option to the UI without requiring this trick to get it to work.
