I use Plex almost every day, and I’ve noticed several massive “improvements” over the last year.While I’m happy with most of the changes, one of my favorite features—and very underrated—was on the wrong end of them.Allow me to explain.
Playlists are awesome The feature I’m talking about is playlists, and I should explain why I love them so much.You probably think of playlists when it comes to Spotify or YouTube, but Plex has them too.Anything that you have in your Plex library can be added to a playlist, and you can customize the name and cover art as well.
There are a couple of reasons why I love playlists in Plex.First, they can be much more focused than the Watchlist.I own a bunch of TV sitcom seasons, and I’ve created seasonal playlists that include holiday-related episodes.
It’s also really nice to have a list separate from my Watchlist just for stuff I think my son might like to watch.Once you have a playlist created, you can do my second favorite thing: shuffle.As mentioned, I have a lot of TV sitcom seasons, and I’ve dropped all the episodes into one big playlist.
I love being able to click “Shuffle” and pretend I’m watching old-school linear TV.What’s going to play next? I don’t know! Related 5 Overlooked Plex Features Everybody Misses Plex is best known as the streaming platform that lets you host your own video content and then stream it to devices on your local network.However, Plex has so much more to it, and chances are there's at least one of these five features you weren't aware of.
Posts By Sydney Butler So what happened? The beauty of the Plex apps used to be consistency across devices.Maybe they weren’t the prettiest, but they all worked essentially the same.That’s not the case anymore, and it’s especially apparent with playlists.
On the web and TV apps, playlists can be found in the sidebar along with your Watchlist and libraries.That used to be where playlists lived in the Android and iPhone apps as well.Early last year, however, the mobile apps received a massive redesign, and the sidebar was removed.
Finding my playlists is more cumbersome now, but that’s not the worst part.Plex has decided to hide playlists within specific libraries.If you want to see playlists with TV shows, you have to go to your TV library first, then tap "Playlists" in the menu bar or scroll past rows of “Continue Watching” and recently added content.
You have to do the same thing for playlists containing movies from the Movie library.The ability to see all of my playlists in one spot is gone, and they don't show up on the “Home” tab at all.Close The problem, however, is that the ability to add media to a playlist has simply vanished from the mobile app altogether.
There is literally no way to add to a playlist from your phone.It used to be an option in the “More” menu, but it was removed for some reason.If you really want to add to a playlist while you’re away from your desk or TV, you’re forced to open your phone's web browser, navigate to the Plex web app, sign in, and try to use a desktop interface.
Close What’s strange to me is the fact that it’s still possible to add to a playlist from the Plex TV app.The functionality is notoriously janky—I can’t tell you how many times I’ve accidentally created a new playlist—but it does work.It was so much easier to do on a phone.
It’s odd to see what I would consider to be a core feature get sidelined like this.The TV and web apps are always where I want to watch my content, but the mobile app used to be great for the management side of things.There have been rumblings of Plex making it easier to find playlists in the mobile apps, but nothing about actually adding to them, which is the biggest omission.
Bring playlists back to their former glory, please.Related How I Used Plex to Unify All My Streaming Services For streaming your collection, Plex is an excellent tool, but it can do even more by acting as a middleman to your streaming services.It's so handy that you'll find yourself opening Plex more than the other apps.
Since I unified my streaming services with Plex, I don't have much of a reason to visit, say, Max or Netflix, two services I subscribe to.I love that I have an overview of everything rather than being limited to one ecosystem.Posts 6 By Brady Klinger-Meyers
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