10 Hacks Every Plex User Should Know

Plex has been around for almost 20 years at this point, and has added plenty of features and functions in that time. We've previously covered some of the ways it can be useful for creating your own personal streaming service.

Even if you're a seasoned Plex user, you should find something of use here, as there's everything from tweaking the metadata that the apps use to create your library, to improving the quality of your video streams—with a particular focus on films and TV shows (though Plex is capable of handling music and photos, too).

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Edit your show and movie metadata if Plex gets it wrong

Your filenames and folder structure should give Plex enough information to correctly label TV shows and movies, but it doesn't always get it right every time. If you spot a mistake then there are a few ways to change it.

From the main page for a show or film, click the three dots and choose Refresh Metadata. This gets Plex to check again with its online sources, so if the data was missing or incorrect the first time around, this may fix it.

Your second option is to head to the listing for a specific movie or show, click the three dots, and then pick Fix Match. This lets you pick from a selection of online search results, and is useful for titles that are very similar to each other or very common.

The final way of fixing metadata is to go to an individual movie or episode, and click the Edit button (the icon that looks like a pencil). This lets you enter manual metadata edits that won't be overwritten by any online databases that Plex references.

Clean out the clutter from your library

Delete leftover bundles from your library. Credit: Lifehacker

As your media library grows and evolves, clutter can start to build up—particularly when it comes to items you've removed, that tend to leave metadata, preview thumbnails, and other bits of digital detritus behind. These leftovers are known as bundles.

You can clear out bundles and keep your library trim in a couple of ways: In the web app, click the three dots next to your media server on the left-hand navigation pane, then choose Manage Server > Clean Bundles.

The same option is in the troubleshooting part of settings on the web. Click the wrench icon (top right) to open Settings, then choose Troubleshooting > Clean Bundles. You can also follow the Scheduled Tasks link on the same page to have Plex do this chore automatically every week for you.

Set up multiple editions of the same movie

There may be times when you have multiple editions of the same movie in your library—director's cuts, perhaps, or extended editions—and if you have the Plex Pass plan then you can label these as separate entities inside your library

You can either change the filename on disk to have the edition in curly brackets after the title—so "Blade Runner (1982) {edition-Final Cut}.mp4" for example—or click the Edit button (the pencil icon) on a movie listing page and enter the details in the Edition field.

Add subtitles to your media with FileBot

FileBot can find subtitles for you. Credit: Lifehacker

Your Plex content isn't automatically going to come with subtitles attached, and that's where the FileBot tool can help. Get the program installed on your system, sign up for a free account at OpenSubtitles, and you're ready to start looking for your subtitle titles. This is done via the Subtitles panel inside FileBot.

Use the green user icon to log into OpenSubtitles through Filebot, then search for your films and shows via the drop-down at the top and the Find button. When you find the files you need, double-click them to move them down to the lower window—in there, you can right-click, choose Export, and save them in the relevant Plex library folder.

There are other options, like a basic built-in subtitle search that's available if you have the Plex Pass, and the standalone Bazarr app, which gives you more options than either the integrated tool or FileBot, but takes longer to set up.

Share your Plex library with friends and family

You don't have to keep your Plex library to yourself, but there are some tricks to sharing it with friends and family. From the web app, click the wrench icon (top right) to open the Settings pane, then choose Manage Library Access on the left.

Click Grant Library Access to let someone else into your media library: You'll need to supply a Plex username or an email address (which will be used to prompt them to sign up for a Plex account). You're then able to select the servers and libraries they can access. If you have a Plex Pass, you can set more limits in terms of age ratings and whether or not your friends and family can download content.

The wrinkles come with remote access. If you as the media server owner have a Plex Pass, then your friends and family can stream content remotely, as well as on the local network; if not, they each need a Remote Watch Pass ($2 a month or $20 a year) if they're not watching on the same local network as you and the server.

See who watched what and when with Tautulli

Tautulli is one of the best Plex add-ons around, giving you a host of useful stats about your media server—including records of who watched what. Once you've downloaded the installer for Windows or macOS, you'll be taken step-by-step through the process of connecting it to your Plex server.

If you've shared your Plex library with the family, then you can, for example, see what the kids are watching and when, and even the devices they've used and how much bandwidth they've used up along the way.

The plug-in is interesting enough even if you haven't shared your library: It's possible to break down viewing to day-by-day or hour-by-hour graphs, see the movies and shows you're watching most often, check out detailed information on your media files, and keep track of when new films and shows are added.

Create collections for easier library management

Use Collections to organize your Library. Credit: Lifehacker

Collections are a useful way of applying some order to the chaos of your Plex media library, and the feature is perhaps not as well known as it should be. You can collect whatever you like, whether it's feel-good TV episodes or spy films.

To get started with collections, click the Edit button on a listing page (the pencil), then choose Tags, and enter something into the Collections box. If the collection already exists, it'll show up as you start typing.

You can also set up smart collections, where media files are added automatically. Set a search filter via the Library tab on your Films or Shows screen, and if you click the Add to button (the plus and horizontal lines icon on the right), you get a Create Smart Collection option. Any files that are added in the future that match your search filter get automatically added to the collection too.

Make videos look as good as possible

Most of the time Plex will handle video quality automatically, and do a good job of it, but there might be occasions when you're not getting the best quality possible (particularly if you're watching on less powerful devices).

To make sure Plex is always serving up video as best it can, in the web app click the Settings icon (the wrench, top right), then Transcoder. If you know you've got the computer to handle it, you can set the top Transcoder quality drop-down to Make my CPU hurt, and enable the Use hardware acceleration when available.

In the apps for individual devices, you'll also find video quality options in the settings. Put video quality up to Maximum for best results—you may need to experiment to find the limits of what each device can handle.

Customize the Continue Watching pane 

You can decide what's in Continue Watching (up to a point). Credit: Lifehacker

You might not have given much thought to the Continue Watching pane that shows up on your Films and Shows pages, but you can customize this on the web to suit your own preferences—and maybe remove some content you don't want to keep around.

Click the wrench icon (top right) to open Settings, then select Library on the left. You're able to set a threshold (a number of weeks) beyond which titles disappear from Continue Watching, as well as limiting the number of titles included in title. Turn off the Include season premieres in Continue Watching checkbox to hide premieres for new seasons when you've finished old ones—otherwise they'll show up indefinitely.

The settings you configure here should propagate to the Continue Watching rows in your other apps; try closing and restarting them if not.

Get the channel surfing experience back with QuasiTV

If you miss the traditional channel surfing experience when using Plex, there's a solution in the form of QuasiTV: This app works on Android TV, Google TV, and Fire TV devices, and wraps your Plex library and streaming services in a more conventional interface.

Sign into Plex, point it towards your libraries, and it'll create a custom channel guide filled with your shows and movies. These might get assigned to genres, or to the TV stations they originally aired on, and you can browse around until you find something you like—just like the old days.

It's not the most efficient way of searching through your Plex media library, but it's fun to use, and when I tested it out I rediscovered a few movies and TV episodes that I hadn't watched in a while.

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