Unable to configure automatic selection of both forced and foreign subtitles

[NewPlaza]

@cremor

I don’t need subtitles for German since that’s my first language, but I still need the forced German subtitles for parts where they speak in some other (e.g. alien) language. For English audio, I’d like to have full subtitles so that I understand everything correctly.

As I can tell you can only have it one way. Not two, or three, or four…
Plex will ignore the forced flag set on your mkv files.
Was playing around yesterday and found this out

Forget Audio and Subtitle Selection after XXX days or Watched

Hey @leelynds Just found out something very interesting… Though not too helpful in your request but it couldof, lol [account0] [account1] [account2] [account3] [account4] Too bad it doen’t revert back to the forced lang or your preferred lang. Too bad, we could of faked plex out by selecting another lang for the secondary track… I know, not idea. Plex will select the lang from your preferred lang by default and ignore the MKV forced flag.

@cremor

but in addition to that I want to get forced subtitles. Forced subtitles should never be turned off - that’s why they are called “forced” after all.

I was gonna go on a rant about that very thing but realized that although I prefer it this way, it shouldn’t be this way.
Don’t get me wrong. I know why this is the case.
An example. You have 1000 movies with dual-audio English/German. English is default and forced, German is secondary(not forced). I would be able to play all my movies in English without needing to change anything. My German friend could also play all my movies without changing a thing. It has it’s good, it has it’s bad.

@cremor

So I found settings that work for German audio and settings that work for English audio. But how do I get both?

You cannot.

@cremor

And the “Problem 2” that I described is completely weird. Everything else can somehow be explained by the wording of the settings and the documentation - if you assume Plex doesn’t correctly handle the forced flag - but that one doesn’t make sense at all.

Plex cares more about the language of the track than the flags that are set.
The force flag comes to play when your audio is the same language as the subtitle.