Is this a joke?
8 Likes
I bought my plex pass last year specifically to use this feature with hardware transcoding! It was so nice to hang out with friends in Discord and watch together rather than having to use Discord streaming that has been getting worse over time. It is my biggest use case and I kind of regret buying my lifetime Plex Pass now. I am using Syncplay with select friends to watch local files synced. If an open source project can do it seamlessly with local files I don’t see why Plex can’t.
I was really hoping for support for locally downloaded plex content to be used with watch together to alleviate some transcoding, but it looks like that was never even going to be a consideration. I really wish Plex would reach out to us, those who pay for the service, and see what features we want. It feels like we are no longer even a consideration, especially those of us with lifetime passes because we are a dead end revenue stream. It may be time to look elsewhere again unfortunately - almost wishing I didn’t pay so much upfront for the pass.
6 Likes
This is the full email I sent to keith@plex.tv via email.
February 26 2025,
ATTN: Keith Valory
This has to be the stupidest decision that Plex has made. I am a life time member
and I have been for many years. If Plex removes the watch together feature then I am done!
https://support.plex.tv/articles/watch-together/
I will switch to Jellyfin at this point and abandon plex all together.
Go look at my account under this email address darkshad9999@gmail.com
I have been a Lifetime member before even COVID hit.
2019-09-15 is when I got my lifetime membership I have been a LONG
time member September 15 2019.
This has to be the stupidest thing that Plex has ever done and this will
kill your media platform.
This is used constantly by me as I have friends down in the USA and
I am in Canada and we watch movies together. I run the movie server
here as I have a technical I.T. background.
The watch together feature is widely used by me and clearly other people
as well. check out Reddit as well there is a thread there as well along with
several on your own forums plex.
https://www.reddit.com/r/PleX/comments/1iy0n38/plex_is_killing_watch_together_feature/
https://www.reddit.com/r/selfhosted/comments/1iy1qz9/plex_removes_watch_together_from_app_going/
https://www.reddit.com/r/PleX/comments/1iyad4d/since_plex_is_killing_watch_together_what_are/
I have run a plex media server for years now on a Debian Operating System
and it works very well and the watch together is one of the features I love.
People are telling you they still use the watch together feature and
that is still widely used by people. Plex you need to listen to your customer
base and keep the watch together feature!
If you remove the watch together feature then I am done with plex and
I will switch. This has to be the most bonehead decision plex as ever
made. This will kill the plex media server if you remove the watch together
feature you will lose your customer base!
You need to listen to your long time customers like me and keep the
Plex Watch Together feature! It is still widely used! Fix it or do whatever
you have to do to it to make it work but keep the watch together feature!
Look you are talking to a trained I.T. professional myself I am a trained network
admin myself. Find a way to keep the plex watch together feature.
Clearly i am not the only one upset about this by looking at your own forums.
you need to reverse this decision effective immediately before you do permanent
damage to the Plex name.
Also sent a message via your contact form as well
https://www.plex.tv/contact/?cjdata=MXxOfDB8WXww&AID=13279074&PID=3607085&SID=UUhtgUeUpU2010620&utm_source=CJ&utm_medium=Affiliate&utm_campaign=Valnet+Inc.&utm_content=plex.tv&cjevent=9f209618f4ad11ef81d801590a1eba23
I am telling you now that you are seriously ticking off a large percentage of your
user base right now. That is not a good thing this decision could very well be the
death of the Plex Media Server.
Jamie Baillie (she / her)
14 Likes
I’m Honestly Not Surprised
This is the last straw for me. I’m not going to do anything drastic like delete my account or anything. But my catchphrase just went from ‘It’s on Plex’ to ‘It’s on Jellyfin’. That’s where I’ll be putting my further efforts simple as.
10 Likes
What a garbage decision. I use watch together often. This makes me regret my plex pass. Time to move to Jellyfin.
8 Likes
The worst decision ever made, plex sucks bad, only good thing where
- A way to playback heavy DV movies that don’t work because of the the Android hardware playback bug on fire TV and Android tv
- Watch together
They steal and sell data all the time, they don’t care about self hosting, while it’s the reason people use plex, and they don’t care about some nice and easy interface.
All seems intentionally a very intricate and uncomfortable/un customizable interface to push paid streaming services
They suck really bad. The moment jellyfin solves the DV problem playback, I am off so fast they can’t even imagine it
9 Likes
This is very upsetting! I use this feature all the time to watch content with my daughter while she is away at college!
8 Likes
Way back in July '24 I posted a concern about seeing a shift in company direction. I had cold water tossed on me…
“You could use a little balance when dealing with your base. I’m not asking you to share your current direction. I’m suggesting that you add a little ‘sweet’ to the ‘sour’. Otherwise you further risk your reputation.”
And now we’re in 2025 and many are playing with a ‘preview release’ of something that MIGHT happen in the future. In this time, current features are being dropped and years-old enhancement requests are ignored.
The recipe for self-destruction continues to be followed.
11 Likes
There is zero reason to remove this beneficial feature for those who rely on it. Please reconsider your stance and DONT remove the Watch Together feature. A product/service should be improved upon, with features added, not removed. This is regression, not progression, especially for those who paid money for Plex.
8 Likes
Literally just signed in when I heard this news to say this is a garbage decision, I know people whose partner lives halfway across the country and taking this away will literally stop them from having date nights on Plex. The new features you may be planning can’t replace that
9 Likes
I am kinda sad that I have to tell my friend and her mom that they will no longer be able to…
6 Likes
I guess I am grateful that we at least got warning before they axed this feature. Perhaps they made the announcement as some sort of trial balloon to find out what their users would say.
In the best case, Plex reverses course on this decision based on the negative response.
However, in the instance that they “might” decide to keep it, would you really want to stay with them? This is seems to be more of the same from this company.
They already have my money, but I’m done wasting time on a platform that is actively being destroyed by poor management. I was in the process of convincing someone to buy a Lifetime Plex Pass when this announcement arrived in the email, so at least I can save someone else from that needless expense.
When I was initially comparing Plex and Jellyfin, I picked Plex assuming it would have better support as a paid service. I was wrong. Just take a gander at these forums if you don’t believe me. The “new and improved experience” crashed my server when I tried to use it.
I tested out SyncPlay on Jellyfin (their “watch together” feature) and it worked just fine. It allows me to play a list of videos instead of just one at a time like Plex. Many people have mentioned hardware transcoding as a draw for Plex, but Jellyfin also seems to offer hardware encoding/decoding (at least for my Nvidia GPU).
I regret falling for the old bait-and-switch, but I must ultimately thank Plex for this disastrous move. . . Now I can easily get over my sunk-cost fallacy and dump them for the FOSS option I should’ve picked in the first place.
I imagine Plex must be getting their money elsewhere these days (say, from ad-supported content?) since they seem to be actively alienating both their existing and potential subscriber base.
8 Likes
Is it possible to lock down our installation code level to keep it or is it one of those things that will be automatically removed or blocked on their side?
I’m not sure who mother is and how the clients work. I run the Plex server and connect up via the Plex app on the Nvidia shield. Children watch using the web browser I am guessing although I need to ask. Plex removed the watch together feature from the Play Station app a while back which was lame which is why they use the web interface now.
Doesn’t look like we may have a lot of options if we are staying within Plex. Especially since they are not sharing what the new gee wiz bang new app provides.
5 Likes
Time to switch to Jellyfin. Thank you Plex for encouraging the use of free and open source software!
7 Likes
This is a rare post for me. I usually think online commenting should be approached with tact and polite discourse. But, in this rare case, I’m just going to come out and say that this decision to ship your new Plex Experience by removing one of the app’s core experiences and selling points is absurd.
I get that you’re PE funded with profit motives and incentives like any business that has external forces lobbying for their own interests over those of your loyal user base; especially the passionate ones who (while in the minority) drive most of the feedback that contributes to development and improvement of the platform.
I have turned more people on to Plex because of this feature than all of the rest combined. We live in a disconnected world. Ironically, more-so than 5 years ago when Covid forced us all to be home watching movies as a family together (as you cited). Family, friends, parents, siblings are all scattered everywhere and this feature gave us all a chance to connect in ways that felt special and unique to your platform. I use Plex as a server for all of our Home Movies and videos from the old 8mm reels your parents used to shoot. They reside in a digital library now that we’ll play for the family and my aging parents during holidays or birthdays when the 8 hour distance between all of us is too far or expensive to travel for each time.
Long distance relationships that thrive off of creative ways like this to maintain an intimacy and connection with one another. I’ll watch a movie together with friends using PiP while we chat together on the iOS messages app. It’s a phenomenal feature.
While the new architecture you refer to, l’m sure, requires a rewrite of the code to make this feature workable again, and business is all about prioritization of resources, I would strongly urge and plead for more of a user focused decision making approach to this and the development roadmap going forward. Send out a poll, get feedback, engage with the people that use Plex still even though their $87 per month in subscription services largely offers the same or more content than what they have on Plex.
Why do they still use it?
LEARN from them.
And if a hackathon was able to produce a perfectly adequate feature that really improved the lives and experience of your users, then do it again. Only, this time, make the feature even more prominent and easy to find and use because it’s one of your best. I’ll happily supply the Pizza.
Love you guys, love the platform (and have since its earliest days) but damnit I don’t like you all very much right now.
13 Likes
A absolutely idiotic decision
10 Likes
Was just about to buy Plex for this feature. Guess not. Amazon watch party and now this… Sucks
7 Likes
Their literal official response to this is that no matter how many people you referred, it pales in comparison to the people who have no idea what Plex is and are technically “asleep” but use it to watch Flubber with ads on their Roku, which is their actual customer base.
10 Likes
Plex just keeps removing features, eh?
Well, time to finally drop Plex and move on.
12 Likes
Bafflingly bad decision making here. Nobody wants to be forced into using your new UI while it is missing core functionalities. Anything other than an opt-in system for this destroys user experience enough to force migration to a different ecosystem.
8 Likes
