I’ve had a routine for years where I place my iPad on my nightstand, open up Plex, and hit random on my favorite playlist and watch something good before I go do sleep. It was easy because my favorite playlist was pinned on the homescreen. Two clicks and I’m set.
So last night to my surprise I open up Plex to a new UI. I search and search for my beloved playlist…scroll. Hmm, maybe I need to repin playlists to the home screen…scroll…hmmm, I can’t modify my home screen any longer?! OK let’s go looking in my libraries (click 1), oh there’s the playlists, but now they aren’t ordered by the last played…scroll…OK there it is (click 2). Hmm, no random play button, lets click those 3 dots (click 3). Ah there it is in the very bottom left of the screen (click 4).
What an adventure! Thank you for this experience. I’ve always felt that I needed more clicks and more scrolls in my life before bedtime and your team has done a masterful job at making a worse experience. BRAVO!!
You can short-circuit this process a bit. On your ‘click 2’ step, instead long-press (~1.5 secs) on the poster of the playlist. You should be presented with two options, either to watch or shuffle. This works for collections as well.
If this playlist can instead be created as a collection you can eliminate the scrolling as well. Collections support a sort order property. If you set it to something like “100 - Collection Name” it will be sorted to the front of the list.
Further, if you create it as a smart collection, you can make the random sorting of its items an inherent part of the collection. For example, I have a smart collection of all of my movies that I’ve not watched in the past 9 months, sorted randomly:
Another advantage of collections is that they can be made visible as a hub on the home screen along with the other library recommendations. Just click on the more (vertical ellipsis) button on the collection’s poster and select Visible on → Home. Doing it this way you can actually get one-click access (maybe with a little scrolling) to a random item.
I’m not suggesting that easier access and better sorting options for playlists shouldn’t be addressed, just to be clear.
Yup, and the moment you try to express disdain, you are just told by our Dead Leaders to step in line and use plex the “correct” way. Meanwhile they spam users with email solicitation pushing more expensive subscription plans to people who are already covered by one.
Or, yeah know, instead of all this bullshit, they could just give us back our playlist library, our sidebar, and oh yeah, 99% of the functionality of plex, that would just be grand! Because guess what, even with stupid convoluted work arounds to get to the playlists, they still don’t shuffle! And if you do manage to get one to shuffle, I hope you like rewatching the beginning of the show that just finished all over again, the same 7 shows over and over, and that’s if the playlists even function or show up at all! What a great job plex did!
