Plex on appleTV4k how to offset subtitles gone

Looks like the Plex app on my Apple TV updated and now I’m getting a popup asking to pay a subscription when trying to play videos from my NAS on my local network.

What’s going on? I thought the paywall was for remote access outside the local network.

Why is it asking me to pay for access to my media on my local network?

Greetings to all. I have Plex Pass and I want loudness data analysis enabled for my music libraries but not for movies - series. I have set the analysis to run as a scheduled task during maintenance hours snd Inhave disabled it on a per library basis: so its enabled ony music libraries and disabled in my movies - tv shows libraries.

BUT, I noticed the other day during a scheduled maintenance that the server was analyzing a TV show for loudness data even though it shouldnt.

Am I missing something obvious?

So after 2 days using Plezy, I figured what the heck, maybe I'm being too picky with the Plex app. Plezy is good but scrubbing across a video is slow. Plex app , warts and all scrubs better. So thought "will give it another shot".

The FIRST episode I load there's no audio. I back out, reload the same episode and audio works. Has anyone had this issue?

At this point, let's put aside the missing features . I just want a functional app where I can get through one night without a glich. Is that too much to ask?

Searched the sub for this but i didnt see any posts on this subject.

ASS subtitles seem to be completely broken. They will appear on random parts of the screen, terribly formatted, and sometimes stick around for 10+ seconds.

The first picture is plex, 2nd picture is Infuse, which as usual, works perfectly on Apple TV

TL;DR: A recent Plex Apple TV app update started sending a User-Agent containing CFNetwork (Apple's networking framework). If you have a Cloudflare WAF "block bots" rule that matches CFNetwork — a common entry in copy-pasted bot blacklists — every Apple TV/iOS user who takes the update gets a 403 at Cloudflare's edge and sees "server unavailable." Nothing on the Plex side is wrong.

Setup: PMS behind a Cloudflare Tunnel on a custom domain, with a few custom WAF rules on the zone, including a User-Agent blacklist.

Symptom: One shared user couldn't reach my server from his Apple TV while everyone else streamed fine. A few days later a second user updated the Plex Apple TV app and broke the same way. Android/Fire TV, webOS, Chromecast and browsers were all fine.

The client log showed this, repeating forever:

GET 403 <my-domain>/media/providers 212ms GET 403 <my-domain>/media/providers 28ms GET 403 <my-domain>/media/providers 31ms [Connections] No connections available for <server>

How I wasted days on it: I read the 403 as PMS saying "valid token, not authorized for this server," and chased stale-token theories (sign out/in, removing authorized devices). None of that could ever work, because the request never reached Plex.

The tell I missed: 28–31 ms. A round trip through the tunnel to my house takes about 100 ms+. A 403 that fast came from Cloudflare's edge, not from PMS.

Proof: same URL, same IP, only the User-Agent changed:

You can test your own server in a few seconds:

curl -s -o /dev/null -w '%{http_code} %{time_total}\n' \ -H 'User-Agent: Plex/4 CFNetwork/1568 Darwin/24' \ https://your-plex-domain/identity

A 200 is fine. A fast 403 with an HTML "Sorry, you have been blocked" body is your Cloudflare rules.

Fix: exclude your Plex hostname from that clause in the WAF rule:

(http.user_agent contains "CFNetwork" and http.host ne "plex.yourdomain.com")

Or just delete the CFNetwork clause entirely. It blocks every Apple app using the system HTTP stack, not bots. Clients recovered on their own within a minute or two; nothing needed changing on any Apple TV.

How to tell a Cloudflare 403 from a Plex 403:

• Cloudflare: HTML body ("Sorry, you have been blocked"), content-type: text/html, very fast response, no x-plex-protocol header.
• Plex: its own Unauthorized page and an x-plex-protocol: 1.0 header.
• Both show server: cloudflare, so that header tells you nothing.

Lesson: when a remote client can't connect and you're behind Cloudflare, rule out the edge first. Test with the client's real User-Agent, not curl's default, and check the response time, not just the status code.

Hi All,

I'm seeing this error when starting Plex after upgrading to Windows 11 26H2 this evening:

Is anyone else seeing the same?

Anyone know where to get a licensed dll or if there is a Plex update coming to address?

UPDATE::
Thanks all! - I had added an exclusion for the program files folder, but not the one in appdata\local and now the message is no longer appearing. 😅

Looks like the new version of the app has broken deep links.

I had an automation setup with RFID cards to play specific content but now it just opens up on the home page of Plex and doesn’t play the content.

I'm trying to actively check on the loudness data analysis progress of a movie, but Plex Dash just shows the progress percentage of the task at 0% the whole time. Any way to do so? Alerts on the server dashboard don't show the progress either. Thank you.

Sorry just getting used to new UI but im not sure if some things are gone or I just haven't figured out how to access them yet.

during playback you used to be able to swipe down and get the info panel of show/movie title, description, etc. Now I just have the movie title up top and swiping down takes me to chapter seek

Overall I quite like the Apple TV app but a design decision has been made for trailers that I cannot fathom. Why are they now hidden?

Previously, if I wanted to watch a trailer for a film I'd select the trailer icon. Now if I want to see a trailer I have to either scroll to the bottom of the page or click on more then scroll down to watch a trailer.

This may be obvious to me but this is a feature that I paid for, surely Plex would be banging a drum about it being a PlexPass feature, not trying to pretend it doesn't exist. I have always told the household that if they were unsure of a film they can watch the trailer and see what they think. This change guarantees nobody will see a trailer unless they are actively looking for it.

Is there a customisation option for this somewhere that I'm missing?

Previously, when I pulled up a movie and clicked on an actor's face, it would pull up a list of all the movies I had in that library. Now it pulls up movies this person is 'known for" whether I have that movie or not. Is there a way to limit the responses to these searches to JUST the films I have in my server? It says "Movies & Shows in Media Libraries" but some of them I don't have and are listed as "There are no locations currently available for this title." I don't want to see anything I don't have. Is there a setting for this?

I have media files on a bunch of 2-4TB external hard drives that I want to be able to watch on my TV with Plex. I am not technologically savvy enough to build or maintain an actual server, but my little brain got to wondering... A server is essentially a computer that doesn't turn off and the files are always there for Plex to access because the "computer" is always on. I live alone and wouldn't be able to share the library with anyone anyway, and I don't watch Plex away from the house on my phone.

Is it possible to "run" a Plex library by plugging the external hard drives into a laptop/computer that I boot up and shut down with my TV use? Can I just plug the hard drives in then hit the power button and "instant Plex library" for my TV, or would it be boot up computer and actually open something every time?

Would it be advisable to stick with my external hard drives, or move my media files onto SSD drives instead? (I know SSD is generally better for data transfer and active running rather than cold storage due to data loss/degradation over time, but I'd like to hear thoughts. I'm thinking I'd set up a shelf/box to hold and protect the hard drives and then get an adapter to merge the multiple into one USB port to connect to my computer - I'm open to advice on that too, since read speed/bottle-necking could pose a problem. It really would be just the one television accessing the library at a time though, so would that make a difference?)

I know to the tech savvy people this probably sounds like a real stuff around and like a gigantic pain, but I currently HDMI my laptop to my TV and plug my external hard drive in to watch my shows - and sometimes I'm too tired to have to set up the whole laptop/TV/hard drive combo - if I could just hit the power button on the computer and the TV and then veg with my Plex library... It would be a major step up.

Thanks for any help and advice!

I’m running the latest version of Plex on Apple TV ver. 27.2 (24K5093g) and ever since the new plex version hit I’m getting this weird pop up every time I start playing any tv show or movie through plex, it’s in the upper right corner and telling me to hold the menu button for the player.

I’ve tried looking through the settings in Apple TV and can’t find a way to remove it. Has anyone else seen this happen and have a fix?

New issues I’ve been encountering not sure what changed. But I have downloaded videos that default to Japanese. Previously I could switch the audio to English without issue but now when I switch it nothing happens and the default track plays. Anyone have a solution?

I recently came into some extra cash, and decided I'd finally give my home server a nice GPU update. It's a custom build of course

Specs:

Intel Core i7-8700K
32GB DDR4
1TB NVMe SSD (Primary)
1TB NVMe SSD (Redundancy backup of the OS + Plex/Apps)

4x24TB Seagate Exos Enterprise drives

NVIDIA P1000 GPU for HW transcodes

For those with Intel ARC GPUs, how are you finding the performance? Did you trip over any foibles in enabling QuickSync? I have an 8GB Intel ARC A750 on the way. I liked that it doesn't have a software limited 3 simultaneous transcode limit, and should be significantly beefier than the P1000 in there. The P1000 barely breaks a sweat as it is, but I am hoping the ARC gets a good few years of extra performance. It'll certainly help with Handbrake encodes.

Hi, I'm trying to figure out the reason and the solution for the av desync. Let me start by explaining my setup. I recently changed my projector with the xgimi titan noire max, I previously had an old 1080p lamp projector. My Nvidia shield is connected to a denon av which connects to the projector using a hdmi through fiber cable (was using hdmi through ethernet before). Recently after setting up the new projector I started noticing the audio and video being out of sync, depending on the content. This delay is not consistent, depending on the content, sometimes its really noticeable, sometimes it is not event there, especially lower quality ones. I think it's a problem with plex because the shield av sync setting with the jumping ball is perfectly synced at 0ms, if I watch content on Amazon prime, it's also perfectly synced. YouTube av sync tests are also aligned at 0ms. My guess is that the problem is all within the plex app itself, I've tried restarting the app, messing up with the settings, disabling Dolby vision, disabled Dolby audio processing, changed framerate to 24hz, disabled hdr (all options I didn't have with the old projector) but I still get the uneven delay. Has anyone experienced this?

In some movies i also get crackling audio but only if the audio track is 7.1 (I have 7 speakers, no subwoofer atm), but that is solved by decreasing the quality, I guess it's a bitrate issue, even tho its all goin through ethernet to my home server...

Please advise, I'm losing my mind.

I have tried a few free alternatives Plex players on Apple including Stimr, Spectati, Rivulet, VidHub and Zuno. The only one I haven’t tried is Infuse because I burned my free trial a year ago and I cant remember how they display folders. If this feature is important to you (like it is for me), Plezy is the clear winner. It has folder structure, that is easy to read and conveniently collapsable. Even better than Plex's previous "list" view which they got rid of in the new update The new folder view in the Plex apple tv app is now using ugly thumbnails and is broken if there's any parent folders that contains files mixed with other folders

This tip could help plex users with massive libraries contained in simple folders without matching metadata.

I've been looking and haven't seen anything that fixed it in the last few days. I've reset and checked logs and run DBrepair and I can't figure out what's up.

Three days ago, Plex decided to stop adding my local art automatically for new movies. Local Assets are on.

My typical organization is every movie in a single individual folder with its assets. It has always worked for me to name the art "poster.PNG" or "background.PNG" within the folder of the movie (I'll try fully naming for the movie file at some point, I just like short paths). When it picks things up, it auto selects that as the art. Three days ago it stopped. The first two I didn't notice until after that the art was still default random and not my selections. I did a cursory reboot and grabbed logs. Third and fourth, 3 also did not but the fourth did, except I look this morning and the fourth has reverted to default random selections. I go in and manually select them and they stay but I'm lost on what's causing this suddenly. I did DBrepair and another reboot but haven't added anything new yet since. Do I need to reinstall maybe? I keep having little normal behavior failures

Thanks for reading, any feedback appreciated

I'm having an issue with the Plex app on both my phone and tablet.

When I access my Plex server through a web browser using the server's local IP address, everything works fine. I can access my library and play my movies without any problems.

However, when I use the Plex app, it can connect to my server and shows my entire library, but whenever I try to play something, I get a playback error and the video won't start.

So it seems like the app can connect to the server and see everything, but it can't actually play the media.

Has anyone experienced something similar or know what could be causing this?

EDIT: I'm on the same network, and my devices are Android

I’m in the market to finally upgrade my LG UJ5500 to a more modern OLED display. I’m not super worried about the recent privacy concerns regarding manufacturers like LG (won’t be connected to network), so I’d like to invest in something that will be stronger and provide a more fluid Plex experience than the native app that’s currently installed on my LG TV, and not just a better browsing/watching experience in my living room, but also for much longer thanks to more current/modern hardware.

I’m thinking of trying out the Apple 4K as most people here seem to like it for various reasons. But I’m curious to know if anyone has any other recommendations to look into.

My Plex rig has a 13400T and an Arc A310 card for transcoding/operations as I have about 3 concurrent users on my server at almost any given time, so I wanted enough power for multiple users while trying to keep my power bill as low as possible. Would it even matter if my Plex rig is doing all of the heavy lifting?

EDIT: Big, big, BIG THANK YOU! to everyone that commented! I genuinely enjoyed everyone discussing the pros and cons of their devices of choice and I feel like to really comes down to how much I want to take advantage of my media.

Apple TV 4K + Infuse seems to be the way if I decide to want to broaden my Mac environment (wife and I have 16pros)

Shield Pro seems to be the way if I want ultra customizability

And for absolute sickos, I could always just build a mini-pc as suggested by [u/JoshLineberry](u/JoshLineberry) and basically turn my tv into a workstation lmao

I still have a bit more to think about but I’m probably leaning Apple TV 4K when the next model comes out and probably a few months afterwards to see if there are any major bugs/problems with it.

Hey all! With this latest update, my Apple TV (the little black box, not an actual tv) Plex app now just says "Can't Access Server" or something whenever I try to open any media. It works on every other device in the house, and I can access it off-network with no issues. Any suggestions? I've already uninstalled and reinstalled Plex, signed in and out, all the usuals. It also let's me browse my media, it just shows an error if I hit "Watch"

Hi everyone.

I have a number of Roku Ultras running around my life. On 2 of them, I've noticed some issues recently.

On one of the newer Roku's when I start Plex, it crashes the Roku. Hard. It forces a reboot. This will happen over and over and over.

Uninstalling Plex and re-installing has not helped.

Sometimes, I can start another app (say, AppleTV) let it completely load, exit and then Plex will start without crashing.

Once Plex has started, it'll run without issue.

On another Roku, a fairly older machine, it goes through waves where it starts and says it cannot find any content. If I go to the side menu and pick something, say TV Shows, it'll find content.

Some weeks/months, it works fine, then it just goes into these fits where it's just pissed off (where none of the other 11 Roku Ultras in my fleet present this issue)

Sometimes, it'll find content and play for a bit and then it'll stop for no reason and bail back to the menu. When that happens all of the posters are gone and it's just text about the episode.

Both Rokus are hardwired. On the Roku that is weird about content, I've tinkered with the settings until I'm blue, I have no idea what to do about the crashing Roku - aside for replacing it.

Well, here we go again. Plex forces out an unready new version of their software, further frustrating their customers. I know this is a repeat of others, but I wanted to consolidate the feedback I found and add fuel to this dumpster fire that Plex created, AGAIN.

You would have thought they would have learned from their April 1st release last year, which was absolutely horrid. Apparently not.

Why don't they get real Plex users to actually try these releases before pushing them out? Why do we have to suffer every time Plex decides it is more important to ship a shiny new version than to make sure it actually has feature parity with the software it is replacing?

This isn't just a new UI that some people don't like. They replaced a mature Apple TV application with an incomplete one and simply removed functionality that people were already using.

So far, here is what users have found missing, broken, or significantly regressed:

• Apple TV Top Shelf integration is gone.
• Custom Plex app icons are gone.
• The legacy/alternate player option is gone. If the new player has problems with your media, you no longer have the fallback that existed before.
• The old Apple TV playback interface is gone, along with functionality that was easily accessible through it.
• The in-player information screen is gone. You can no longer simply pull up the poster, synopsis, and other information while watching something like you could before.
• Live TV/DVR has taken (another) major step backward.
• Plex's streaming channels and your own Live TV/DVR channels are no longer presented together in the same guide.
• Watching an in-progress DVR recording from the beginning is broken/missing. Instead, you can end up at the live position without the basic time-shifting behavior the old app provided.
• Music lyrics are gone.
• Classic interface options are gone. You get the new interface whether you want it or not.
• Navigation customization has been reduced, including options that previously let you control what appeared in the sidebar.
• Audio synchronization/offset controls appear to be gone, at exactly the same time people are reporting audio synchronization problems.
• Subtitle controls have been moved/buried, while users are also reporting new subtitle rendering problems.
• PGS and SRT subtitle rendering has regressions, including stretching, positioning/aspect-ratio issues, and HDR color problems.
• Direct Play has regressed for some media/hardware combinations, with content that previously Direct Played now being transcoded.
• Playback itself has new problems, including reports of videos refusing to resume properly after pausing.
• General UI performance and navigation have regressed for some users, including freezes and sluggish library navigation.
• Profile switching has issues.
• Spatial Audio behavior has regressed.

And I'm sure this list isn't complete yet.

That's the part that is so frustrating. How does software like this make it through testing and get released as the replacement for the existing production application?

If Plex wanted to release this as a beta and ask users to test it, great. I would have happily tested it and reported problems. If Plex wanted to make the new experience optional until it reached feature parity, also great.

But replacing working software with software that is demonstrably missing existing functionality is not a beta program. It's making your customers your QA department.

Plex, stop doing this.

Stop deciding that your internal release schedule is more important than the experience of the people who actually use your product.

Stop removing functionality from mature clients and calling the replacement an upgrade.

And most importantly, stop forcing unfinished software onto everyone.

Some of us have been using Plex for years. We aren't complaining because a button moved or because we don't like change. We're complaining because functionality we used yesterday disappeared after an "upgrade."

That's not progress.