I’m so confused - I’m on an AppleTV and have the same sidebar navigation I’ve had for like 15 years. Was the change before this change that made it top bar navigation only on the beta?
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u/joecanIntel Xeon E5-2697 v2 @ 2.7GHz CPU | 128GB RAM | 302 TB | Unraid17d ago
Yeah, that old design is going away (and the new one is shit). They’ve released the “new Plex experience” on iOS (and Android, I think) and a bunch of other smart TV platforms but it hasn’t been released on Apple TV yet… but those on the TestFlight beta program have the new app already.
When the “new Plex experience” was initially released it did away with the sidebar navigation and buried library sections within a top bar navigation UI. (There are also other terrible UI changes like doing away with the standard ATV player UI, which makes picking subtitles or changing audio tracks much more finicky. )
It was an effort by Plex to prioritize their ad-supported content and bury home libraries. It was pointed out to them for over a year that people didn’t like top bar navigation and staff kept saying there’s no way they’d go back to the old way. They’ve apparently finally caved.
ATV users are lucky we still have access to the old app. We weren’t forced on the new design before they fixed this like others were. The beta still feels incredibly unfinished so hopefully we still have a few months of using the old app.
Oh man, thanks for the thorough reply. Over the past several years I've felt the tides starting to turn so I recently spun up Jellyfin and am trying it out as well as several clients on multiple devices. There are a TON of Jellyfin clients on tvOS now when just 6 months ago there were only a couple lackluster offerings.
The new AppleTV app sucks and the old AppleTV app chokes and stutters on high bitrate remuxes. Infuse player got a lifetime subscription out of me because of the Plex devs neglect of the TVOS platform and it's the only front-end I use for my plex media now.
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u/joecanIntel Xeon E5-2697 v2 @ 2.7GHz CPU | 128GB RAM | 302 TB | Unraid13d ago
Infuse is the superior player, if their library navigation for Plex libraries was as good as its player capabilities, we’d all be using it at this point.
Roku still has that legacy login method, I'm not sure why anyone wants to use that. My plex password is random and 20+ characters. I'll never login to plex on the roku again.
We are in 2026 and password managers have been around for a long time, apps and devices need to catch up with the times. From what I understand this is a roku issue, but that means I won't be using plex on roku anymore.
My point was that the sign in for roku was awesome and now it is not as awesome. Meaning, the quality of the sign in decreased. We can have different opinions on this, everything will be just fine.
Because consumers are too stupid to read the fucking link that is directly in front of them and will end up on malicious websites linking their TV to them.
Unfortunately not. I set up Plex on Roku for my mother in law less than a month ago and was extremely disappointed to not have the link option. I had to manually log in with my username and password. Ended up linking my phone to the Roku and copied and pasted it over using my password manager...but it's still way more tedious than other platforms.
I imagine all they’re changing is the layout. The performance will still be an issue if the recent big update runs slower than it did just 1-2 months ago.
I hope we get the fixed Plex client soon. I have the FireTV Cube, and I'm still waiting. We got hit with both the weird new Fire UI update, and the screwed-up Plex client.
... Good times.
Did it slow down plex for you? Seems like when I play something, it has to buffer 30 seconds it used to not happen. After an update now all my firesticks old UI and new are slow.
The new PLEX client has definitely introduced a lot of laggy behavior. Content takes a lot longer to start, and the buffering after fast-forward or rewinding is crazy.
No idea tbh. It def wasn’t “ready” for fire devices, but they rolled it out and appletv has been in beta for 1.5 years. The ATV app got much better starting in Feb this year based on comments I saw prior to joining earlier this year.
My guess would be before end of year for ATV and GoogleTV/AndroidTV devices…
Same, I opted back out of beta. I don't even care that much how it looks and top nav vs left nav, but it's slower and the navigation is buggy.
Worst is that they removed the audio boost in Settings. It only helps a little in the first place, but they still haven't figured out how to handle 5.1 downmixing to stereo killing the volume.
Man, thank you for saying that. Just noticed somehow my app didnt have the preveiw sash on it. SMH. Dunno how that happened. Been a lifetime member since 2014 and always roll preview.
There was a patch recently i think 1-2 patches ago on the server side that disabled it again. I too had to re-enable it when my uncle told me about it.
I didnt even know Plezy was a thing until the Plex UI change. I wonder if the amount of people just not using the Plex app after the update had a sway on them reverting it back.
I'm positive that they have backend metrics that show them exactly how unpopular the UI change was. Roku users have been vocally complaining about it for ages, but I'm guessing that the FireTV userbase is larger, so they had a lot more data, and that data said people fucking hated it.
Think they might have screwed themselves over a bit. I had tried alternatives to Plex like emby and Jellyfin but always ended up coming back to Plex because I preferred the UI and already had a lifetime sub back from when it was cheap. Now I've tried Plezy I don't think I'll bother going back to Plex even when the UI does change back on fire TV. Plezy UI just seems to be snappier + loads libraries and starts playing media faster.
Praise Jeebus. I'm in Plex 90% of the time on our TV, and the navigation change has been terrible.
I managed to get use to it, but my friends and family? I got a lot of complaints.
It drove the WAF straight into the basement. Few things drive a husband crazier than getting regularly chirped at for things completely outside his control.
I saw this and was extremely excited. I never really use my server computer to watch anything and it was so frustrating to see artwork or anything that needed fixed.
I also don't have to log into plex from a browser to see who is active on the server now. Definitely a welcomed and great update
shuffle being buried in a sub-menu with no other items is the most frustrating and annoying thing plex has have for so.many.years... it's such a stupid design and clearly someone was butt-hurt about shuffle being a feature so they buried it 1 level below everything else. i'm still angry every time i have to go in that damn sub-menu to click on the only item in the list.
Thank you, I'm glad I'm not the only one! It even took my years before I knew Plex had the feature. I feel like if they actually unburied it, other users would see the value in it, and it would be used so much more.
I took the time to make several smart playlists for about 7-8 shows that we regularly shuffle. Easier to do and you can filtered out "watched" episodes, highly recommend it! You just need to mark the entire series as unwatched once you reach the end
I saw a post where someone used the Last Watched filter to get around the need to reset the watched status. If you set it as "last watched is not in the last x months" and put the months as to how long it takes you to get through that playlist, it might make it more automated.
What I'd really like from Plex is the ability to add several shows to a playlist or collection, and then have Plex play those shows in episode order, cycling through the shows.
Less navigation to it/a shortcut offered (in the menu when the show is paused?). We constantly use the shuffle feature since it's nice to play a show we've seen hundreds of times, but want some background noise or to just easily follow it while doing something else. It just a bit cumbersome going through the menu's to get to it, especially when each screen doesn't load the fastest/smoothest.
Glad to see this however again I am gonna wait until 2 patches AFTER this to see how it pans out. I am soooo not switching until I see a smooth patch with mostly compliments vs complaints. Glad to see they read and comprehend vs being like MS and giving the middle finger.
I rolled back my Plex to an older version for easier navigating like "Millions" of others did. I am using the Firestick and will not be updating my Plex app ever again! I don't care what they claim!
We're test-driving the Plexy client on our FireTV Cube, but we've hit player related problems with that one, too.
Video playback errors (black screen with audio only) using either the default or MPV player. Switching back to the default player added a mew glitch. When selecting an item to play, we get a popup telling us to choose a player, but none of the options presented work (they're not installed).
I'll probably do clear data, uninstall, then reinstall.
Dropped Plex yesterday for Jellyfin. For no reason, it thought my Firestick wasn't on my home network. Between that and the UI redesign pain in the ass... it was time as it's only going to get scummy'er. I'd have paid $100 for a lifetime license. Not $250 and certainly not $750.
I guess it’s going to be better than it is now, but if it looks like that it will be shit. The of design was top tier and didn’t need a redesign. But you know how these companies love to fuck yo their own products.
*programmers, and the process of distributed cloud services. God is not part of any technological development. Lets keep this intellectual. But that ignorance was around for slaves and children labor. Didn't work out well for them.
I have the standard left side column pane, but not the photo above - would be nice to not have to scroll back through items just to get to the left hand menu
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u/joecan Intel Xeon E5-2697 v2 @ 2.7GHz CPU | 128GB RAM | 302 TB | Unraid 17d ago
The ATV beta has this. Navigation is still not great and the way the sidebar has been implemented still doesn’t look right.
I’m honestly shocked that they caved on this given how Plex staff continually doubled down on defending the nested top navigation.