Server Version#: Version 1.42.1.10060
Just posting my own thread in the hopes the volume of complaints will actually have an impact. I’ve been a Plex Pass users for close to ten years now and never made a post or even had to contact support in all that time. I’m not one who complains about UI tweaks just because something is different. The new UI is just a complete failure, I have no idea how this got through your testing and doubt you did any real community feedback.
I will also say this is the first time I have truly felt that Plex is abandoning it’s core product of self hosted content, and gone all in on trying to become a “content provider”. I’ve never once been tempted by Emby or Jellyfin, this update is so bad that after one day of using it I have already started to look into both. Both of which, I might add seem to still be focused on what Plex used to be. After this I honestly expect Emby in particular to start eating your user base.
From a use perspective the new UI is a step back in every way. You probably tossed around words like “sleek” and “modern” when making it. What matters is how it actually flows. Everything takes three more clicks to get to than before and it’s a confused mess. Actually get to your library? Then you have to click three more times to get passed “recommendations” nobody asked for to find your content. The lack of customization is a money grab to force us to keep on demand and live tv front and center. Again pushing your streaming service instead of focusing on what most of us use it for. A lot of us stream content to our elders to make life easy for them. My folks are so frustrated with the new UI after ONE DAY. These aren’t throw away people, these are your customers. And again its not because we are lazy or can’t handle learning a new layout, if that layout does something good, but this new UI is absolutely a huge step back. Why exactly was having icons on the left side of the screen so terrible?
Let’s move on from the GUI to performance. Across five Rokus in two households it’s broken on every one. I have had zero issues with Plex on Roku up until now. Sometimes content just won’t play. Many times when it does play, it “breaks” the remote so none of the buttons except home works. IE, you can’t fast forward, rewind, hit the down button to bring up the options like closed captioning, nothing. Until you go all the way out of the app, and then you can’t just open it again, you have to hit the star button and restart the app first, then go back in or it’s still broken. Everything take longer to load. You get the spinning circle in the middle of the screen between every action when it used to smoothly hop between screens. And again, this is not one rogue device. It’s all of them.
Please listen to your customers. Please return to focusing on your core product. Please fix this. Please allow those of us that think the old UI was superior to roll back to it. I realize maintaining multiple UIs from a programming and support prospective is not idea, but until you can find some kind of “middle ground” between the old and new. Me and others I know who use Plex, don’t want this.
