I’m having trouble understanding the purpose of the guest home account. I’ve read a few other threads, but think I must be misunderstanding something…
I live in a shared house and wanted to lock down my PMS whilst still allowing my housemates to access my library with the Guest account so they wouldn’t need a password. But it seems they need a Plex account just to get to be able to select Guest. Why, if they need a Plex login in the first place which requires them remembering a password, shouldn’t I just add them as ‘friends’?
I also noticed that with Guest enabled and my PIN removed, they don’t need a Plex account. But of course this leaves the PMS open to them logging in with my account, so again there’s no point of Guest.
Am I missing something here? Is there really no way to give people restricted access without them needing a Plex account?
Enable Guest is part of Plex Home so the admin account needs to login to the plex app to allow the Fast User Switching between the users of the Plex Home, which the GUEST account is part of
So Guest isn’t usable unless an admin of the PMS home first logs into a given device with his/her Plex account?
This seems like a pretty silly limitation on the use of the Guest account, but at least I understand better.
@Luinnar said:
This seems like a pretty silly limitation on the use of the Guest account, but at least I understand better.
Can you provide an example of how you were hoping to use the Guest Account ?
Is this for when friends come over and want to use their own device to watch content on your server?
So my housemates and anyone else on my LAN can access my PMS without requiring a login.
Edit: like the guest account on my computers. They simply turn on the workstation, click the ‘guest’ account and can log in and use it with restricted rights. But when they browse the PMS, they then need to create a Plex account to actually access it, or I need to log in myself before they can use ‘guest’.
@Luinnar said:
So my housemates and anyone else on my LAN can access my PMS without requiring a login.
Edit: like the guest account on my computers. They simply turn on the workstation, click the ‘guest’ account and can log in and use it with restricted rights.
And that is how the GUEST account works with plex. Just like with your computer, there had to be an account setup on that PC before guest mode was turned on. The Plex admin needs a one-time login on the device running the plex app to allow the guest mode access. After that login anyone one in the house can launch the app and select GUEST
And I’m saying that’s a silly limitation (to me). The point (to me) of having a guest account is so people don’t need a login - ever. I shouldn’t have to setup each individual device so the guest account works, especially when people will log into a device like my guest computer with a temporary guest profile that clears the profile at logoff for the next guest. YMMV
@hthighway said:
@Luinnar said:
So my housemates and anyone else on my LAN can access my PMS without requiring a login.
Edit: like the guest account on my computers. They simply turn on the workstation, click the ‘guest’ account and can log in and use it with restricted rights.
And that is how the GUEST account works with plex. Just like with your computer, there had to be an account setup on that PC before guest mode was turned on. The Plex admin needs a one-time login on the device running the plex app to allow the guest mode access. After that login anyone one in the house can launch the app and select GUEST
And actually I don’t think they’re comparable. A computer is a device whereas PMS is a service. I think a better comparison would be an FTP server - when you enable guest on an ftp server, you don’t need the FTP admin to first log in to your laptop before you can use the guest account. Same with public websites; you don’t need the webadmin to log into laptop before you can browse their site. I think this is pretty typical of services, which is why I was surprised by the limitations of the PMS guest implementation.
1 Like
