Hi,
I have music playing on my Windows PC, and I would like to control it from my phone when I am not in the room. But, when I go to look at the ‘companion apps’ icon from my phone’s Plex App, I do not see the instance of Plex for Windows running on my PC.
Anyone know how I can debug this?
The server is definitely working (running locally on a third linux machine), and I can also see the current song that is being played on my PC from Plexamp.
Thanks for the help,
Rich
Okay, so am I supposed to use PlexHTPC on my PC to listen to music while I work? I just tried it, and it takes over my computer like a full screen game, at first glance I don’t see any way to show it in a non-full screen window like you can with the Plex for Windows desktop app.
It seems to me like the feature to remote control the Plex Desktop app was removed yet the Plex HTPC app doesn’t suit all the use cases of the Plex Desktop app - namely, a Music Player while your working on something else. Is there a formal way to submit this as feedback?
As of now, I’m still using the Plex Desktop app but unfortunately I can’t control it unless I remote RDP into my computer… which is a big PITA from a mobile device etc.
Cheers,
Rich
Okay so I tried Plex HTPC again and I do see there is a way to put it into windowed mode. Now I basically have a windowed version of a very dumbed down Plex Desktop app, and you expect us paying clients to prefer Plex HTPC over that?
I can’t edit my music metadata, I can’t refresh my library from the GUI, I can’t see my server stats, basically the only thing I can do is hit play on a music album that is blown up way too large. In short, there is no way I can put away the Plex Desktop app, it is needed for 90% of my needs with my plex media server, yet now you’ve removed an important feature from it in order to coerce people into using the newer yet very limited Plex HTPC app…
Btw, this is exactly the same thing I’m noticing on iOS, it’s a mess there too. Now I have 3 apps, and still sometimes need the web player, in order to manage and play my media library. I am using 4 different plex apps to control one server! Seems like a nightmare to maintain that, to me.
Unfortunately an app can never suit all possible use cases. The decision was made to concentrate on the most-used features and save the time and expense to service features which are only used by a minority of users.
Plexamp suits that purpose quite well.
Sure, but removing an important feature that was working? It is also a feature that will lead me to inevitably find a different media player to use while I work, and that clearly isn’t
Plexamp - this is as, if not more, limited than Plex HTPC, and I have to operate on it using my thumbs. This is no way to manage a large media library, which I usually do (small edits) while listening to music. The Plex Desktop app is perfect for that.
Is there a place to place a feature request for bring the remote control feature back to the desktop app? It’s pretty critical for me, for example I’m not once again listening to Spotify while I work, because I can control the music when I leave my office from my phone. This is a huge shame, but I don’t see any working solution with the 5 apps that Plex Corp has made, which all do different things yet none is a complete app.
This is causing me to scratch my head a bit, I mean Winamp solved all these problems eons ago (and Plex Desktop app seemed like it was doing a good job too until it became ‘deprecated’ or whatever). Plex seems to have forgotten this while chasing Netflix users or something.
Thanks for your time and explanations,
Rich
Also want to gripe about Plexamp - yes it is a pretty good start to a music player, certainly beats apple’s (which isn’t too difficult). But it has almost no functionality for maintaining my media library - all the delete and meta data manipulation functions have been removed. So once again, if I find an error in some song I’m listening to, I have to switch to a different app to fix it, which is basically enough of a hastle that I don’t do it. So again, I’m looking for a better solution for my needs (or hoping Plex realizes that they need to unity their apps because currently it’s a mess).
Did you consider that your use case appears to be completely handled by the combination of the two apps? Since you appear to just use the playback for music, Plexamp can be the app for playback. You use it directly for simply controls it provides. Then you can use Plex for Windows (or the web interface) to edit your metadata, search, control Plexamp (for thing where it does better), and everything else.
Hi @gbooker02 thanks for the suggestion. I did indeed consider using Plexamp as the main player and try it all the time, yet it is also inconsistent when I can and cannot remote connect to it. It is likely due to iOS being a more restrictive platfrom, I’m not exactly sure because while I can certainly see music coming out of plexamp on my ipad from the dashboard, I cannot connect to it from any other plex app on my network. Then, other times I can. Sometimes that involves a device restart which is extremely annoying as it halts anything else I was working on with that device.
But my post here is not about using my ipad, it is about using my PC as a music player, which I’ve done for decades using other software. My best speakers are attached to my PC, and I work from it, so naturally you would expect me to prefer using it to play music as well, instead of using an iPad for doing what should be a simple and common task of playing music from a file based music library. Or maybe I am asking too much, for plex to be a music player that runs on a PC in the background…
I did almost get a particular funny setup working and controlled remotely:
While this was laughably a contending solution, in the end it has caused the entire plex system to crash on multiple occasions, which I haven’t yet debugged because well, I was working. In any event I hope it is obvious how the above complicated setup should be highly unnecessary, and is asking for failure. In my networked systems at work (I sometimes do large scale graphics installations with networked rendering), we aim to keep the system as simple as possible. So why do I need Plex HTPC above? Because the feature to remote control Plex for Windows was removed…
All this is to argue that I hope we can see that feature back in Plex for Windows until there is a better solution for managing an playing music from a Windows PC that functions as a work station, not solely a full screen media entertainment center.
Thanks for your consideration,
Rich
I was suggesting using Plexamp on the computer instead of HTPC for your music playback: https://plexamp.com/
Oh, I didn’t realize you were suggesting that, nor did I realize Plexamp works on Windows (thought it was a mobile only music player).
And oh is it so cute when I load it on my workstation - I’m running dual 4k monitors and it shows up as a little virtual iphone window. Just darling. I have an iphone app to play music on a top of the line Windows 11 workstation.
So again how are we users expected to like any of these way more complicated solutions, over using the Plex for Windows app that looks like the company is all but removing?
Simply drag its window larger.
And go into its settings and pick a larger font size.
Other immediately discovered issues that basically make the plexamp app a no go (besides it being such a minimalistic UI that it would only ever annoy me to use this as my day to day music player):
So how many non-working player does it take writing to make it worth deprecating the one plex player that actually worked well and was fully functional?
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