I have not upgraded my server yet and I probably won’t unless I absolutely have to. I too like the orange triangle for the unwatched items and do not want to start seeing the green check marks on watched movies. I understand there are some that may like it,m so I would agree, as others have posted, that this be an advanced option we can set to turn on the orange for unwatched, green for watched and of for those that don’t care.
This reminds me of the horrible Roku UI change they made a couple years ago. I hope they handle this in a similar fashion and listen to the options we are suggesting.
It’s a small nitpick…but yeah, this was a change that makes no sense at all from a UX standpoint. If you’re going to make changes like this, please at least do it by adding OPTIONS to change the default behavior…
My PMS just started showing this “enhancement” this morning after updating. It’s super annoying when plex decides to just randomly implement the exact opposite implementation they have had for years (icon for watched vs unwatched). I get they want more consistency between UI implementations, but they still should have added this as a configurable option. For Windows, the yellow triangle has been the standard for as long as I can remember.
Regardless if green or orange, any watched color code notification should not interfere with the poster artwork (overlaid on top). Orange was less intrusive than the green checkmark, and the better option of the two.
An alternative solution, on poster mouse hover which highlights the poster, the poster highlight color itself could change the border colour to (green) watched vs. (none) unwatched vs. (orange) (lives in my watchlist).
Personally, I prefer the Unwatched Orange Corner. That’s the media that I want/need to watch. I already know what I’ve watched.
But I get it that others prefer the Watched Checkmark, so…what about a configurable option and keep everybody happy?
It’s a trivial thing to implement from a programming point of view. I’ve done something similar plenty of times in another context.
I know, I know, multiple clients on multiple platforms and so on, so why not take the bull by the horns and implement a unified UI/UX once and for all? Further implementations/fixes will be cheaper and faster in the long run.
I absolutely despise this change for all the reasons already stated by others. I have spent countless hours curating my collection, choosing just the right posters, ensuring they match in series, etc. I have purchased all of my movies which means I have watched almost all of them. I am now drowning in a sea of unwanted ugly green check marks destroying the look and feel of my collection.
My only options are now to mark my entire library as unwatched and maintain that going forward, or revert to the earlier server version and never upgrade until this mess is fixed. I have chosen the latter because I like having Plex give me a random unwatched movie to enjoy and living with this UX assault on my OCD is just plain never going to happen (I did validate that reverting to PlexMediaServer-1.32.7.7621-871adbd44-x86_64 does solve the issue).
I do like to keep up on updates for security reasons, so I hope and ask that the Plex team please resolve this issue by giving us a simple toggle as many have already suggested.
When creating a webpage every “choice” you offer to users makes it more and more complex to maintain.
I don’t like the change either, but with my perception of how singleminded are, I doubt this will be reversed or will have an option added. Whoever has the power to make either decision will wait for it to blow over.
Hell, if Plex won’t even apologise for sharing people’s private watch histories, this will already be forgotten.
This would take far more than an hour, between POC, development, testing, and merging it into the main branch. it’s certainly not simple. And as they advance the product, the decision to add an option would increase complexity of the product.
I hate the change also. I really wish they would give us the option to switch back to it having the orange corner for unwatched items. I don’t need a reminder of the stuff that I’ve already watched and hate having the check mark blotting out portions of the posters for stuff I’ve already watched.
I have been reading the replies with increasing annoyance. With each reply I hoped to read that it would be solved in an upcoming update.
I actually dislike ALL overlays in the main library view. I know what I have watched and what I still need to watch. Overlays just lead to clutter imho.
The only overlays that I find usefull are watched overlays for episodes of a TV Show. I really hope Plex gives us the option to use Watched, Unwatched or No overlays at all.
The inconsistency really bothers me about this. This should have been released with a feature flag, so when enough clients have been updated they could enable the feature across all of them at once. Now I have a single client (browser) with watched checkmarks, the rest with unwatched chevrons.
Don’t get me wrong, the change itself is nonsensical, but it should at least have been widely released at the same time, not randomly rolled out.
The same logic as for the feature flag could then also be used as an option in the settings.
Clearly the software already has the ability to display the chosen type of overlay based on the watched/not watched metadata, so I refuse to believe that it’s a “huge lift” to offer an option for one way or another.
It’s a choice they are making for us. Why? Who knows…but they clearly don’t have a UX team with any focus at all.
TEAM ORANGE. If no way to build in the option to choose one’s desired format (green check vs orange corner), the more discrete orange corner is by far the cleaner option. The green check may as well cover the entire image, it’s such a blemish.
I honestly have been hoping for quite a while to see someone of the Plex team respond about this, because I’m still wondering as to why we’re being forced to use it as it is, as opposed to etting the option…
For me, I think it’s related to how the “Plex Movie and TV Shows” is used rather than how people use Plex for local content - those are two very different contexts of browsing content libraries.
It’s become evident that the “Plex Movie and TV Shows” and Discover features are the new direction of Plex (local content management is at the bottom of any press\marketing info about Plex now). I get it from a business perspective even if I’m disappointed about it myself (and personally don’t think some of the handling has been very respectful of long term customers but I’ve already covered that in other posts).
This is not a big notice complaint thread with hundreds of active responses each week - yet (wait until it hits Roku and iOS\TVOS clients) - so reps\employees aren’t going to engage in it. They have pulled back a lot on community engagement outside of actual troubleshooting situations; when was the last time a “feedback” thread was offered for anything? It used to be a regular occurrence for new features but hasn’t happened in quite some time - unless I missed it?
Plex is no longer a community run product - it’s a consumer product and service with expectations for investors to get a return via “line goes up every year” profits and lifetime Plex Pass folks don’t contribute anything to the current\next years profits. Only active subscriptions do that and long time local content server admins aren’t generally those subscriptions. I’ve kinda accepted this is how it’s going to go so, personally, I just try to adjust and push back on things by voicing opinion in a way that hopefully those “investors” will see a value option. I hope “enshittification” doesn’t hit Plex too hard in the process.
So, I do wish they’d offer the option for watched\unwatched\off at a library level account option. That’s something the other platforms don’t offer and would be a reason for people to stick with Plex over the other options. Plex does a bunch of stuff the others don’t do that are QoL functions and I think that’d be a good one too.
Plex keeps track of watch status per user to display it now already (watched or unwatched) so it feels like it wouldn’t take much to add a more customized option - watched\unwatched\off. Personally, I’d love an “off” option for my movie libraries but like the watched option for TV Shows so I’d like a library level option for my best case scenario for myself.
Jellyfin is working on offering exactly that option - and already adjusted some aspects based on user feedback - it’s just low on the priority list according to dev comments in forums. So having Plex get it before Jellyfin would keep a certain number of folks on Plex and promoting it’s use to new users (I also mentioned this in previous comments so no rehash - I’m already a “long post” user as it is ).
Anyways… figured I’d jump back in with my 2 cents again since I think it helps persuade Plex changes if presented well and maybe this perspective can help with constructive discussion as opposed to some of the less considered responses (that’s not directed at @MrWaxWeazle at all, I would like to hear back too).
I would challenge that. Of those I know with lifetime PlexPass (quite a few), all run servers that have users. Those users have specifically paid for Plex to access that server content.
Lifetime PlexPass users are a core customer group IMO.
As an example, I have a dozen or so Plex paying customers that would not be if I didn’t maintain my server hosting family movies and pictures. In my case, I have a very limited user group (for good reasons).
As for Plex responding to posts in this thread and similar, good luck. Apart from a few dedicated Plex staffers and Ninjas, you won’t get responses of any value, if at all. Some (many) of the community focussed Plex staff are no longer with the company sadly.
This isn’t a new thing, it has been the case for years.
Plex still does much of what I want. I try and limit the incursion by Plex into my personal library and users but by nature of the product and offering, that is almost impossible.
I’m surprised by this only because my users get most of the benefits of a Plex Pass automatically because I am the server owner with a Plex Pass and they don’t need it themselves as much in that case to get the benefits - like skip intro or credit detection and transcoding. Mobile users probably get the most out of their own Plex Pass though but I don’t really have any.
I’m the same way. It still does a good job - best job compared to other options in many ways so I’m not unhappy with Plex overall, just some bits of it would be nice to adjust for my own personal preferences which is why I lean towards “options” when possible.
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