Hey guys, I find plex very slow to respond, and maybe its just because I’m in Australia, but I have 100Mbps fibre to my house, and generally find apps and the web very snappy. I’ve come from using yatse on android and KODI on my TV to plex and the plex apps on android and the web I’m used to searches and such being a lot snappier. The plex websites and apps are generally very slow to load and respond, I’m wondering if anyone has any hints to speed it up, and if anyone has tried accelerating it with a local proxy or something like that?
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unless you are talking about the forums and plex website, your plex server is under your own control and performance is entirely based on your servers power and internet bandwidth.
you can improve server performance by using an SSD, and if you are using a virtual machine, you should consider not using a vm.
the size of your library also has an effect, obviously the more stuff you have, the more stuff that plex has to keep track of and the slower it will get.
if your transcoding is slow, then you need a bigger/newer cpu and/or cpu/gpu that is compatible with hardware acceleration.
I feel like my server is pretty quick and it already runs plex and its database from an SSD, while the media is on spinning disks, its an i7-3770 with 16GB of ram, so I mean its a few years old but its not an atom, heh. The actual media loading etc is about the same as kodi, but the app takes like 4-5 seconds to load which feels glacial, if its remembered my credentials, if not I have to log into it yet again… where as the remote control apps for KODI like yatse load in the blink of an eye… I realize they cache the server metadata locally, but I thought the plex app did that also and it just seems to drag its heels.
well plex is client/server based, whereas kodi is basically a self contained app which reads/plays files directly and keeps a local library database.
plex clients do cache to varying degrees, but they will always be somewhat slower than fat clients which do all the work locally instead of going across the network.
I’d love to know the answer to this as well. I have emby installed along side Plex and it loads everything nearly instantaneously in comparison. It’s almost as if Plex doesn’t cache and has to constantly reload everything. Tested with PMP, web, Roku and iOS.
That is a good point, EMBY is a lot faster, from what I remember, I need to do some tests I think.
Your web browser must not delete the cookies from plex.tv
Nowadays many browsers do forget all cookies when they are closed. Or they have add-ons which erase the cookies. Or you have software which does it (CCleaner etc.)
Create the necessary exemption rules in the preferences of said web browser/add-on/software.
see also Why Plex always must reprocess the items? - #5 by OttoKerner
for some tips on speeding up Plex a bit.
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Thanks OttoKerner for the suggestions. Unfortunately, I implemented those things a long time ago (around the time you originally posted them). 
With Plex, simply scrolling to the bottom of a library and then back up again results in the thumbnails being reloaded. I see this behavior using the Plex web interface, PMP and iOS. As a secondary test, I happened to have an older version of Plex (Web 2.13.0) installed on an older
/slower PC and it is MUCH faster so it appears that Plex versions 3.0+ have become increasingly sluggish.
Like I mentioned, I have Plex and emby installed side-by-side on the same machine, pointed at the same folders and the latter is much, much faster. Emby exhibits none of the sluggishness when using the web interface, my iPhone or the emby Theater client. Quite frustrating since I still prefer Plex.
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Actually I’m referring to the android app here, it frequently requires me to log in again, I’ve had it occur to me on 5 different handsets it just never seems to remember my credentials. thankfully it does one button logins with google or facebook… Every other app on my phone can just have an account loaded into it, and stay like that for years, but the plex app seems to demand another sign in sometimes multiple times in a day, hah. Maybe that contributes to my frustration.
Honestly I think its the speed between my phone or client laptop or server and plex’s servers, the ones that tie everything together in a neat bundle, I never have streaming or buffering or jittering issues, its just the actually browsing the servers and processing my login and changing between libraries or switching users (I have a number of libraries restricted from the children in my house) that are tedious.
The Android client forgetting the credentials is a whole different issue.
I am not an Android expert, though.
You might wanna search or create a new thread in the Android section of the forum.
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