I would like to add my two cents to this. My initial response to the new iOS Plex app is that it should NEVER been introduced as it arrived with way too many issues. And it should never been split into three apps as I find the Plex Media Players on my Macs (& Windows) allows me to access so many things quickly. I am not saying that Mac/PC players didn’t have issues, but luckily, these seem to have been resolved. And I might add when we asked for them, Plex employee seemed to respond quickly.
But this is NOT about the players on a Mac and/or PC.
Suddenly, we were faced with three apps, each doing supposedly a portion of the previous iOS Plex Media Player app. I am not going to talk about areas in these new apps that are new or supposedly improved.
These three apps allows us to view what we did in one app before.
- Plex became our access to our own ripped movies and streaming online.
- PlexPhoto took on all of our personal photos and videos.
- PlexAmp allowed access to our ripped music libraries
I would like to focus on the PlexPhoto app. First it should not have been introduced without the choice to use it without removing the veteran app. Use it on the GetGo, proved to anger many of us do to the all of the mistakes and restrictions that we were force to ride through. It was so bad, I removed it from my iOS Apple devices.
But now, within the past few days, it appears that Plex development have worked through it and it is better then first delivered. But, it has a long way to go. I am going to tracking this by Client Version for the foreseeable future.
I have three servers, two Synology NAS drives and one Mac Studio which accumulate about ½ million personal photos & videos. While the current PlexPhoto app (version 2025.1.0 (58)) is NOW allowing me to move easier between areas of interest, it still needs attending to make this acceptable. I will list what I would like to have done to do this.
- I would like to able to ‘PIN’ certain libraries to the login screen as we have available in the previous single app.
- I would like to be able to increase the size of the viewed folders. This would allow us to better view select posters which make it easier to identify the folder’s subject line.
- NOTE! The majority of my libraries are based on four levels (subfolders) of access. The Library name or main subject is level 1. Within each subject, the next level (2) is that subject by year. The next level down (3) is by month (3) and the final level (4) is by day. Which brings us to my next suggestion (improvement).
- While the library name, the year & the month are easily displayed and readable, the final subfolder posters will contain a date along with, in some cases, a lengthy description. Your current version displays this, it cannot in most cases provide all of the description. So, I would like to see the ability to increase the size of the poster much like we do for the Mac/PC Plex Players. In addition to this, I would like to have the description placed as far to the bottom of the poster as possible to allows us to recognize the subject matter quicker. Right now, I can’t see much of the poster behind the description.
- Another request concerns personal videos. Then main problem is that while you can start and stop the video, there is NO method to back up or jump forward.
It is missing the little dot on the line and allows you to hold and move the video back and forward. Currently, if you touch the video line to try and back it up or move it forward you move on to the next photo/video in the level. - Also, and this is important. For some reason, all photos when display appear initially out of focus. They do come into focus very quickly, but this NEVER happened on the old Plex app.
- One other thing I just noticed. When I am viewing a video (horizontally taken) on the iPhone, when I turn the iPhone horizontal the video becomes horizontal but then reverts to vertical and then stops.
I hope that someone in the development team will review and possibly help in making the app change to accommodate these previously adapted features.
