I used to love the whole idea of having your own Plex media server and having my own media organized and shared with my family. But for at least the last year I feel like I’m always fighting against having Plex shove their own service down my throat. No matter how many times I disable Plex media services, they always come back and wreak havoc on my home screen. I’ve disabled every setting I can find, and yet it keeps happening.
I don’t want to see what’s on live right now, I don’t want to see channels, and I don’t want to see anything that is NOT ON MY SERVER. I understand they are trying to expand what they offer, but they’re losing sight of what made them so great to start with. It’s so frustrating that for the first time in 5 years I’m actually considering starting over with something else.
Has anyone found a way to just keep your home screen as you want it without Plex pushing their crap into it? I’m a premium member, but that doesn’t seem to make any difference.
Any help is appreciated. I can’t be the only one frustrated.
I don’t have any of the Plex offerings displayed on my Home screen. I don’t mind them, they just don’t fit my needs - you can turn them all off.
I then use automatic home and pinned the sources I wanted in the order I wanted (depending on client) and then used the Manage Recommendations library options to display what I wanted for those pinned sources (libraries).
I also am testing out using Smart Collections (which can be added to Library Recommendation screens in Home or Library view) to make some of the options a little more personal like an “Unwatched Recently Released” row for movies so stuff we watch drops off in place of the built in Recently Released row. Info at the above link for how to setup a Collection as a row and here’s how to setup Smart Collections: Collections | Plex Support
There’s definitely folks who are frustrated (there’s a 1000+ thread around mostly of complaints and frustrations being vented) but there are functions to address most folks needs with the changed features. Plex hasn’t been great with publicizing\announcing those feature or functionality changes to the general user base as well as they could (but evidently they are aware and working to address it) … but definitely worth digging into some of the newer feature setup. If you have some specific library setup you’d like to detail out I know a few folks in these forums have had experience swapping settings around a bit to fit older needs with the newer features.
Yea, that all makes sense, and that’s what I keep doing. But after a few days or a update they all creep back in. So you’re not having the same issues?
Never. But I carefully configure my web browsers to not delete the cookies from plex.tv. Because in these are the settings of the side bar stored.
Also, “Disabled for Managed Users” means they are still enabled for you (the Plex Home admin and server owner).
You must keep in mind that only the web browser clients are syncing those settings across different instances (if you don’t disable that feature).
If you are using different Plex client types, they each have their own settings and are also not transferring them to other devices.
Same applies if you routinely “Switch User”. Each user has his/her own preferences.
And if you reset a client (device), those sidebar prefs are reset as well.
Thanks. I think it was the “Disabled for Managed Users” setting instead of just “Disabled”, since I’m not a managed user. Feeling a little foolish but I think that fixed it, which I’m grateful for.
This has been a ClusterF*** for some time now, especially for new users who confuse plex content with server owner content.
Even experienced users don’t know how to handle this sometimes, as witnessed by this thread.
It is really annoying how plex inc tries to monetise server owner’s friends with a torrent of garbage content.
