Using shared links without creating an account

General Discussions Plex Features
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1

Hello,
I want to share some medias from my Plex to my family or friends. BUT I realized that they need to create an account although I just want to share the direct link to the movie / music / etc.

Why do users necessarily have to create an account to play one single media ?

How could we get around this limitation ?

Thanks !!

2

You can’t. Accounts are required for all viewers, be it home users or regular users. Plex isn’t like YouTube.

3

Plex isn’t Youtube, obviouvsly.

I just want to share medias the way I want :slight_smile:

And it’s not because it’s the way Plex works now it can’t change and adapt to users needs :wink:

4

Please read

5

You can vote for it, but I don’t ever see it happening.

6

Thanks for your answer

Read, and

Once you are up and running, you can:
Share home movies from your Chicago Mac with Grandma on her Roku in France.

I’m pretty sure I didn’t find anything saying having a Plex account is mandatory :roll_eyes:
And even my grand parents are good with new techs, I try to make their life easier

(and I read the “Is Plex like Netflix” too, didn’t find anything relevant about my question)

I’m not asking for a Youtube or a Netflix like (since I’m not sure you can share movies with Netflix but I’m not a user).
Since you can share your library with someone with an account who can play anything on your server, you could share your library (or in this case just a media) with a person without asking for an account.

Maybe you have some good reasons to prevent that?

Thanks!

7

There is a simple answer:

  1. Plex is for your personal , private, media
  2. If everyone were able to post links, thrown out into the wild, where anyone with that link could download your copy, – That’s overt piracy and illegal. File sharing servers of the old days were shut down for things like that.
  3. Every country has different laws. Plex has to abide by them.
8

Obviously, I understand your answers, and you are right on these points.
However, the share button still exists: I don’t understand what it’s for!

In the case of hacking, you can easily imagine people creating communities around Plex instances, or finding other ways to share invites, there are always ways :slight_smile:

In my specific case, I just wanted to share media with my grandparents, avoiding the creation of a new account on a new service. Since I’m using Plex as my personal media service, with medias I put on it, I thought I could chose how I wanted to use it :roll_eyes: (But I still understand the piracy point)

What I mostly understand is that it’s also about getting more Plex accounts created, right?

9

If you think this is all about getting more accounts created, stop right there.
Maybe Plex isn’t for you.

If you want a completely uncontrolled vehicle someone can click on the links you post then maybe Plex isn’t the platform for you.

You’ll be better off making a web page somewhere, directly linking content to that page, and letting people have free access to it.

If your grandparents can click the link on a web page then they can click the button on a SECURE Plex page.

10

Wow, really ?

If you think this is all about getting more accounts created, stop right there.
Maybe Plex isn’t for you.

If my grandparents are able to click on SECURE link to go on a SECURE page doesn’t mean they want to create an account just because I want to share a video with them. And obviously I found other solutions to share it.

I’m using Plex since :roll_eyes: because the features correspond to my needs. I didn’t know that asking for a feature or just understand the goal of the sharing button could lead to such agressive messages from team members.

Thanks anyway.