And what’s with this joke of a communication style?
The way we watch together is changing
First of all you’re not changing the Watch Together, you’re ENDING it.
Now, five years later, we are nearing the official release of our new Plex experience that will bring us closer together than ever before.
How it can bring us together if you’re removing the only meaningful and impactful feature, which can really bring us together?
God… Who wrote this awful email LOL
What idiot decided this was a good idea? Watch Together is the backbone of my long distant relationship and the main way I share my life with my family back home for my GoPro videos.
This decision is a major disappointment. As someone who lives across the country from many of my friends, Watch Together is a frequently used feature on my server that helps us stay connected despite thousands of miles separating us.
Watch Together is a feature worth investing in and making work within whatever new experience Plex has coming down the pipeline.
I want my “Friends at Plex” to support the aspects of their app that actually foster a human connection with those I share my server with. Rewriting your apps to boost development speed for extraneous features without continuing to support the features that legitimately promote connection between users, like Watch Together, does not bode well for my continued use of this service.
I urge Plex to reconsider this decision, especially considering the outpouring of support shown here in addition to the “love and tremendous response to this feature” that Plex already acknowledges in their message.
This really sucks. I almost never use the forum but had to voice my opinion. This is a killer feature that I use almost every day. I hate Jellyfin and think it’s terrible but will switch to it just for its version of the feature.
Also the tone and wording of the email is god awful. “The way we watch together is changing”? Why would you say that if the feature is just getting removed?
Also I don’t understand why it’s only supported on the web app going forward? If it works there, why couldn’t it work everywhere?
This is unacceptable. I pay for Plex for this feature.
My Plex users and I use Watch Together regularly. This is one of our most used and loved features. While I would eventually love this new ‘Plex Experience’ app, with a reworked codebase, cleaner UI, and hopefully less bugs, WE DO NOT want it at the expense of removing our most-used features. We especially do not want it being forced on us, with no option to opt-out of the new app that fundamentally dismantles the ways we use Plex.
If I had known, at the time of providing you my money in exchange for a Lifetime Plex Pass, that you would be removing core features from your app, I would have chosen to use one of your competitors’ solutions instead. This feature was one of the standout features of Plex that put Plex above the rest, in my eyes. I am no longer seeing why my users and I should continue using your product if you remove this feature, and/or continue to remove features in the future.
If this change goes through, and you force my users and I to “upgrade” to a new app that removes this core feature, I will be reaching out again to request a cancellation of my Lifetime Plex Pass, as its obligations are clearly not being met. Additionally, I will be imploring my users who are paying for a monthly Plex Pass to cancel it immediately.
The ball is in your court. Do the right thing.
just here to also voice my dissatisfaction…
That feature is the main reason im not using Jellyfin right now.
Yet again we’re gathered here to try and get the Plex team to realise that their utterly boneheaded decision is, indeed, boneheaded and serves only to piss off the established userbase. I’m in a LDR and watch together, buggy as it sometimes was, was still the best way to organise a movie night or bingeing session, and it was native rather than relying on third party solutions.
The Web app is not a viable alternate as we used android apps for it (fire TV for her, nvidia shield for me)
Rather than nuking a valuable feature they should be trying to improve it by letting you queue up multiple files to watch together.
I will be setting all my apps to disable updating and archiving the APKs somewhere safe.
Do. Not. Do. This. Watch together is basically the one useful thing Plex does better than the competition at this point.
I know Plex don’t care about me as a user, I’m a lifetime sub so they already have my money,but I’m getting sick of stupid decision after stupid decision reducing functionality and usability while adding features nobody asked for
I use this feature fairly frequently and am NOT happy they’re removing it. I think they should hold back release of the new app until they implement watch together again.
Actually, the watch together feature doesn’t cost anything (unless your friend is using the iOS app). Still, use the link in the original post to voice your concern and ask for a refund if you bought the pass to support the app.
Just one more voice to agree with what seems to be the vast majority here - Watch Together is a far more useful and important feature for me than just about anything else that has been added to Plex in years. I use it with a group of friends for our weekly movie night and it’d really suck to be back at “Ok, everyone hit play in 3, 2…” If the Plex Experience doesn’t support Watch Together, I don’t need the Plex Experience.
Please don’t remove this. I use this feature almost everyday. I just got my long distance girlfriend a chromecast so it would be easier for us to watch together. Without this there is not much purpose to use Plex. If you must make it a Plex-Pass thing, but please don’t remove this.
I actually wondered if they had the Watch Together feature so Plex would act more like your are all sitting in the same room and watching the same movie. This promotes the idea of Plex acting like a group of friends or family getting together to watch a movie as they would normally do anyway legally.
Joining the chorus to say I’m extremely disappointed in this decision. I use watch together all the time and honestly it’s the biggest thing keeping me using Plex.
Not the point Mr. pedantic. The point is I paid because of watch together.
I am extremely disappointed in this decision by Plex. I use Watch Together on a weekly basis with my partner and friends, I’m not sure what I’m going to do if it goes away.
I would much rather keep Watch Together than continue to get these inane social features that are immediately turned off or a redesign that wasn’t asked for.
Please don’t be like Sonos and kill features to rush out a new app.
This is an important feature, and the new experience should not replace the current app until features like this are added.
Thank you
Write an email to Keith(ceo) and let him know how removing Watch Together hurts your trust in the platform. keithvalory@gmail.com
I guess, my question is: how does removing features promote the selling point of having separate apps to achieve faster development, if it is already causing features to be dropped?
Lifetime Plex Pass user here. This is a critical feature for my geographically distant family, and I’m blocking all app updates as a result until it’s reimplemented in a future app update.
