We’re in the era where everything must now look like ShadCN/RadixUI (looking at you too Apple /s), which, if this was simply the direction they went with the UI would have been fine, however, the UX has suffered.
I liken it to when MS Office added the Ribbon navigation that tucked all your favorite functionality under at least 1-3 additional layers/clicks and broke the muscle memory we’d all grown accustom to.
They’ve been fixing bugs, for sure, however, the “new experience” UX is just disappointing.
I actually welcomed the ribbon navigation, though I understand people who are upset with the change. There were a lot of features buried in menus in Office 2003 and below that didn’t seem organized the way my mind wanted them to be or were nested too deeply. The ribbon seemed to match my way of thinking better and was much more visual.
Let that be shown that I do welcome UI/UX changes that are positive or boost productivity. I do not feel that latest Plex client changes are or do either.
They’ve already made the solution clear, you need to move to another platform that doesn’t have venture cap investments which change the direction of the entire company and destroy the original vision.
I am on an entirely new kick of ditching bloat in my digital life. Project Linux has been a fantastic success and I’m making moves to get off Microsoft altogether… I am really enjoying the freedom I’m feeling.
Where have you landed? I switched to Emby right after they said “if you don’t like it, too bad.” There have been a few pains with the change but I came back to see whether Plex has even acknowledged the level of dissatisfaction to find that they’ve continued to ignore everyone.
Jellyfin has been good for me, Plex deserves credit where due and their (Plex) identification engine is better in my use cases. TinyMediaManager fixes that problem though and auto creates the relevant nfo files and properly organizes folders.
If you heavily rely on remote access, you may need to do more work vs Plex.
Jelly interface is faster on web and Roku, like an order of magnitude faster. Less clutter, less clicking around attempting to find the media you’re looking, no sponsored content/ads/irrelevant garbage, just your local network media.
I’ve heard good things about Emby as well but it sounds like you will need to buy a subscription to unlock several features.
I’ve been rolling on Jellyfin for the past few weeks. It was fairly easy to set up and get rolling inside the house. Remote access is a monster I’m going to try to get up and running this weekend. Setting all of that up with the proper levels of security is well above my paygrade, but I’m climbing the mountain and learning a lot. Plex easily wins in the sharing column for ease of setup.
For me… I’ve found it refreshing. It’s simplistic. You’re straight into your media, and only your media. I spend very little time in the interface because the media is just there. You might find yourself not thinking about things like click count because nothing stands in your way. If you’re using Emby, it would feel very similar. I actually think playback is better on Jellyfin over Emby. I had some playback issues when I was trying Emby a few months back.
You may want to have a look at Nginx Proxy Manager. Particularly in the case where you might want to use a dynamic DNS provider for a domain. NPM can manage your proxy and your certs (with no remote access configuration on the media server side). It’s HTTPS from the outside world to your proxy, and then HTTP from proxy to your server (on the LAN).
It still requires that you know what you’re doing, but it does consolidate and simplify some things.
I’m currently trying to muddle my way through setting it up. Also dealing with DDNS. I’m far from an expert. Gemini is barely getting me through setup. I have all my pieces in place. Paused on a 502 error that I’m going to take on tomorrow.
Please for the love of God move back to the old menu system. I like that there’s content outside of my own that I can access from within Plex, but:
WHY ARE THERE ADS IN MY OR MY FRIEND’S CONTENT!?!?
What is wrong with this company? You realize I am not watching those ads right? I back right out of them when they start.
IF YOU MAKE YOUR APP UNUSABLE I WILL FIND ANOTHER
Fix this with an update because it is purposefully garbage. I am fine with ads in streaming services that are ad supported, but not in my or my friends stream because I paused the video.
Now to avoid the ads I have to back out of the video and go back to the content every time I pause, which believe me I will do so that you get no revenue from them.
