Support offline plex media server

[philion]

Server Version#: ??? Cannot login to my own plex server when plex.tv is unreachable.
Player Version#: ??? Cannot login to my own plex server when plex.tv is unreachable.

There was a point in Plex’s history where I can stream any media on my server, to every configured client on my local network, even when plex.tv was down or unreachable.

Now, after my home internet has been down for a bit, I have discovered it’s no longer possible. Worse, it half works, in that some media will play (music, playlists), but not other (movies, tv).

Is that feature officially gone, or is it broken currently? (If the later, consider this a bug report).

I expect to be able to access every piece of media on my system regardless of the state of plex.tv servers or my internet connection. If this is no longer supported by Plex, what media server do you recommend with that critical functionality? I’m going to have to rebuild a lot of servers for friends and family.

[tom80H]

[HowTo] Use Plex with No Internet

I’ve seen far too many posts regarding “can’t connect to Plex with no internet”, and an uprising/outcry always ensues. It eventually settles down, but the lack of single point resources can be frustrating. I’ve been there, no internet - can’t google anything from a computer so a phone will have to do, but navigating through results and trying “solutions” can be daunting. I’m creating this How-To to help alleviate those posts and help everyone access their servers when the net is down. Couple of …

[philion]

Tom,

Thanks, this was helpful as it allowed my to add that allowedNetworks param to my Preferences.xml which has enabled web to work on my desktop.

But doesn’t address any of the clients that worked fine online, and are still broken due to plex’s poor design decisions.

I’m glad Plex has expanded it’s feature set from when I signed up for my Plex Pass years ago, but I need that original functionality to serve media. If Plex can’t provide it, I need to move on.

[nx6]

@philion

I expect to be able to access every piece of media on my system regardless of the state of plex.tv servers or my internet connection. If this is no longer supported by Plex, what media server do you recommend with that critical functionality? I’m going to have to rebuild a lot of servers for friends and family.

Emby does local auth I believe, but since Emby is run by a company just like Plex who knows if it will stay that way long term. Probably would be best to change to the server not connected to any corporate entity (Jellyfin).

It’s been this way on Plex for like +5 years now.

If these are smart TV clients you’re referring to, the reason they don’t work when Plex is down is because the actual client does not exist on the TV set. It’s just a small launcher that downloads the client from the Internet when you start it. I’m not sure of the reason for this (likely has to do with how little storage space most smart TVs have), but the best way to avoid it is to use a client on a streaming device.

[robin58]

@nx6

If these are smart TV clients you’re referring to, the reason they don’t work when Plex is down is because the actual client does not exist on the TV set. It’s just a small launcher that downloads the client from the Internet when you start it. I’m not sure of the reason for this (likely has to do with how little storage space most smart TVs have), but the best way to avoid it is to use a client on a streaming device.

My Roku TV’s function fine when my internet is down with them set up to be able to access local network as described in the various how-to’s so not all smart TV’s have that restriction.

[nx6]

Sorry I was referring to the traditional smart TV platforms when I said that (Samsung Tizen, Vizio Smartcast, LG’s webOS). I didn’t really mean the TVs running operating systems that appear on OTT devices (like FireOS or Roku).

I have a Hisense running Android TV myself and Plex is like 25% of the TV’s storage space. Compare that to when I had an LG and the “app” was less than a megabyte.