I’ve seen a few threads about this but haven’t seen a solution.
I have 3 invited users in my list of users that are “pending”. I instructed them to Accept the invite and I’m pretty sure that they all did. They are able to watch media from my library. I can see that someone is watching something from my server right now because the Plex Transcoder is active and I can see that I’m uploading at approx. 1.8 mb/sec via my bandwidth monitor. But Plex Admin doesn’t show me who they are or what they’re watching.
I see this as a problem. When I see my connection is sending lots of data, and i can’t see what it is, it’s kind of scary. At the very least, Plex should always be able to show you (the Admin) who is doing what on your server, regardless of their status. But fixing the “Pending” problem is probably better. (i.e. if they did accept, which I’m quite sure they did, why are they still “pending”? And if they didn’t accept, why are they able to access?)
Get PlexPy. It can run on most devices that run Plex Media Server (all except the Shield TV.) and takes very little resources from your PMS machine.
You can find it here: https://forums.plex.tv/discussion/169591/plexpy-another-plex-monitoring-program
This will tell you every user in your friend’s list and give you complete stats of what, when, who and how it’s streamed. You can track it by user or specific media items. (And by library types, etc.)
There are a few existing Feature Requests to put this into the Web App, and one of them can be seen in my signature. Add your vote to the request by adding a “Like” to the first post of the thread.
That’s neat and all, but I still feel that the Pending thing is a problem.
I have clicked Like on the 1st post of that thread. Thanks
If you can PM me there names of these users, I can check on our end what the status of these users are.
MovieFan.Plex explained the various user types/statuses. Thank you for that.
Situation is: I have 8 users. 4 of them accepted the Home invitation. 3 are pending. Those 3 pending users were invited to my Home, but they did not accept the Home invitation (but somehow separately accepted usage of my server. Or maybe physical acceptance isn’t required.)
This is where the Friends area comes in. All 7 of the users above are listed under “Friends”. So I guess that tells me that they have accepted my invitation (even if it was a partial acceptance, i.e. not accepting my Home membership).
This leaves 1 user… the 8th user. That user is listed in my Friends, but not as a pending Home invitation. Apparently I invited them differently. I’m pretty sure I invited every user the same way each time, but it’s been so long, I can’t remember what I did exactly.
I get it now, but the whole Home concept seems clunky and unnecessary (consequences, limitations, and warnings listed at https://support.plex.tv/hc/en-us/articles/203960236-Consequences-of-Being-in-a-Plex-Home … what’s the point when it comes with so many negatives?). To be honest, when I was sending out these invitations, I wasn’t considering or caring about Home membership vs regular membership. All I want to know is: have I let you in, and do you want to watch my stuff? Yes or no.
I will mark this as answered and hope others agree that this should be simplified. Thanks!
@LaZiOPLEX said:
I get it now, but the whole Home concept seems clunky and unnecessary (consequences, limitations, and warnings listed at https://support.plex.tv/hc/en-us/articles/203960236-Consequences-of-Being-in-a-Plex-Home … what’s the point when it comes with so many negatives?). To be honest, when I was sending out these invitations, I wasn’t considering or caring about Home membership vs regular membership. All I want to know is: have I let you in, and do you want to watch my stuff? Yes or no.
I will mark this as answered and hope others agree that this should be simplified. Thanks!
Sharing your sever is pretty simple now, you added a layer of complexity when you enabled Plex Home.
If all you are doing is sharing with other non-local users there is no need to enable Plex Home.
Plex Home is for users that share their server with others in the same location. Plex Home allows a way to quickly switch users on shared devices.
REF: https://support.plex.tv/hc/en-us/articles/203815766-What-is-Plex-Home-
The difference with Plex Home Users is that they will get listed under the user switcher. So you can quickly switch the account being used on the device. As the name implies, this was meant for users in the same home so that different users don’t get their watched status mixed up. Being in Plex Home also allows those users to inherit certain Plex Pass privileges from your account.
Sharing regularly to a user, they do not get the user switcher and they do not receive the Plex Pass privileges.
Sorry. Understood. Thank you. I have removed Home. I thought it was the only way to allow my users to set PINs for themselves. (and if it still is the only way, the important ones have already set their PINs, so all is well now). Thanks.
Update: After removing my Home, one of my users can no longer use the Android App to access my media unless he Activates/pays for a subscription. I guess I’ll be turning Home back on… ugh!
I think your whole issue is in a lack of understanding the difference between a Home User (Managed User) and a friend.
Home users inherit the benefits of your Plex Pass, such as the mobile apps being free, fast user switching, etc. There is a limit of 15 Home Users. You are only able to be a member of one Plex Home at a time, hence why you have people that are in your Plex Home, and people who were in your friend’s list. There are actually 2 different invite emails sent out to each person when you invite them to your Home. One as a friend, and another as a Home user. If someone replies to the friend email, that’s what he is. If he replies to the Home email, he’s listed as both a friend and a member of your Plex Home.
Friends are people that aren’t living with you, aren’t really intimate, etc. These are coworkers, friends in the neighborhood, relatives from across state, etc. Friends still have to pay for the mobile apps, don’t get fast user switching (on the client apps that support it) and are limited to 100 total, including any Home Users you may have.
Home Users were put in as an answer to allow people living in your home to not need to pay for apps they use in order to access your server. Generally these are people you trust intimately, and the security for pins show it, by being 4 digits of numbers maximum. If you don’t trust the users with your most secret of secrets, then they shouldn’t be Managed Users, but friends, with their own designated Plex.tv user ID and then would need to pay for any mobile apps they might use.
EDIT: I agree the interface we have now is clunky, and not really very intuitive. There should be another way to do user management. but until we get a full set of User Management Tools, we have what we have.
