It disturbs me a great deal to constantly ask Plex developers to fix some obvious issues and NEVER hear back from anyone. The only reason for me to start this new topic is because NO one seems ever to respond from Plex and comments or even resolutions get lost in tons of viewer comments or agreements with me.
I want to state that I am VERY disappointed in these new apps for iOS (this also might relate to Android as well). We have lost some much that it makes using iOS with Plex embarrassing to use.
I have worked years to create my own semi-cloud of personal images & videos that I can share with family and friends only to be stopped almost cold dead doing this with my iPhone. During Covid, when we had very few places we could visit, I directed myself to digitize every possible photograph, negative & slide into usable digital images. It was during this time that I found Plex and when I learned more, I decided to implement it for my use. I liked so much I became a full Plex partner.
I called this a semi-cloud because it acts like cloud but is stored on my own devices. I started out with a Synology DS1618+ NAS device with 56TB SSD Raid storage w/8TB recoverable SSD
When I started digitizing images, I was not sure exactly how to store them nor how it would be best to present them, so I started off on the wrong foot. I labeled digitized images poorly and corralled them in a confusing manner, so I gradually revamped my methods and after several other presentation testing, decided on what I am currently comfortable with.
For those who might be interested, I started with singling out groups. Within each group, I created year folders (1960, 1961, etc). Next, within each year, I created months (01-January, 02-February,…12-December). Then within each month, I created each day folder that contained related images. This became the basis for all of my continued digitized images.
With older images that might have been just photos that I found, I classified them as best I could and in many cases, if was having difficulties doing that and someone else was in the picture, I would ask them to think back and help put them as nearest date as possible.
My Synology device usage began to grow. At some point down the road, I decided to start another Plex server to cover NON-family/friend related. Thinks like images taken on a business trip. So, I purchased a Synology DS1817 with 65TB with one 13TB recoverable SSD.
All while doing this, I was able to the Plex Players on my iPhone, I was able to share everything that I had digitized. My home system allows me remote access. People that I showed these to, enjoyed them immensely.
Along the way, I incorporated video recordings of family & friends and incorporated them into the same structures and in many cases mixing them with images of the same events. Again, using my iPhone, and the then Plex app, I could show people these images & videos without any issues.
I am not to say the old Plex iOS app didn’t have issues, they just did not curtail what my presentations.
As my digitizing images and video storage began to grow, I found that some times, I would have several different events in a single day, so I expanded my storage to include an Alpha to end of the day’s date (first event would be 2025-09-11a and second event would be 2025-09-11b).
I am not done digitizing everything that I have found and already have almost ½ million images and videos stored on these two NAS drives.
I am going to add one more part to this. While my initial and main goal was to digitize images and videos, I found that digitizing movies that we had purchased over the years onto our Plex environment under “Movies” and the quickly added all of our music CDs under “Music”.
Your single Plex Player on desktop, laptop and mobile devices (iPhone, iPad) was able to present ANY of the Movies, Music, Photos & Videos WITHOUT issues. And I was happy with my personal semi-cloud and recommended Plex to everyone.
So, let’s talk about NOW!
While Plex player on my Macs and Windows is still contained with one app, Plex apparently decided that for mobile devices, they needed to separate presentation types into individual apps. Movies and TV (which I hardly use) fall under the “Plex” app. Music is now being handled by the “Plexamp” app. And, finally and MOST important to me, Photo images and home videos are now required to us the “Plex Photos” app.
I am not upset with the split, since I know that programs can get too large to handle and support and, Movies and Music are fine by themselves.
It is the Plex Photos app that I most upset and concerned about. If it would work the same way that it did in the older single version, I would have NO problems but, it is not. These problems are why I can no longer present images and videos to family or friends (I now have to carry my Macbook along everywhere so I can the ONE Plex app that is working. If Plex could fix a few of the issues, it would be a great start.
I am going to provide a small list of things that really need to be fixed in order for me to start using my iPhone to show images and videos to others.
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Allow us to increase the size of fold icons. I love seeing the number items under each icon, but as you drill down from year to month and then to day, the information on the icon is too small to read what the icon will be showing. My descriptions by the day contain short summary of what is in the folder. Currently, most of it is cut off, if the icon was allowed to expand in size, more of the summary would be shown.
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While horizontal images display just fine while the iPhone is vertical, when turning the iPhone horizontal, and tapping on the screen to remove the small previous & next icons of images, it leaves the name of the image at the tope cutting off a portion of the image. Fix this to remove that from the top so that one has the FULL view of the image. The same it true for a Vertical image. Most important here is that many times, an image might contain a sign with writing on it at the top and it is under the name of the image.
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This ask is the most important request. FIX videos. Besides being slow to respond (totally unlike the old version), now we are fast with the inability to run the video in a horizontal level. It sometimes with start that way, but if you even touch the video to maybe pause it, it will immediately STOP and rotate back to the vertical mode. This is a game stopper. I can show anything to people.
Fixing just these three things would mean an awful lot me and I am assuming to a LOT of other iOS and possible Android user.
