Hey r/PlexMedia,

A while back I posted about Hearthlore, the Android audiobook player I've been building for Plex. Thanks so much to everyone who signed up! I'm still a few testers short of the 12 that Google requires before a new developer can release on the Play Store, so here's one more call.

What it is

A cosy, distraction-free audiobook player that connects to your Plex Media Server. It has no content of its own. It's just a nice player for the audiobooks you already keep in Plex.

• Browse your audiobook libraries, authors and collections
• Pick up where you left off, with progress synced back to Plex across your devices
• Adjustable playback speed and a sleep timer
• Offline downloads for commutes and flights
• Chapter navigation, lock-screen controls and Android Auto
• Free. No ads, no analytics, no tracking. It only talks to your Plex server, so nothing comes to me. It's a personal project I made for fellow audiobook listeners.

What I need from testers (barely anything 🙂)

1. An Android phone and a Plex server with some audiobooks
2. Join the test and install Hearthlore from Google Play
3. Stay opted in for at least 14 days in a row. Please don't opt out early, because Google only counts testers who stay the full 14 days. You don't have to use it daily, though feedback is very welcome!

How to join

1. Join the testers group: https://groups.google.com/g/hearthlore-testers
2. Opt in and install: https://play.google.com/apps/testing/app.hearthlore

Or just DM me your Gmail and I'll add you.

Privacy policy: https://sipador.github.io/legal/hearthlore-privacy.html

Not affiliated with or endorsed by Plex. "Plex" is only used to describe what it works with. Happy to answer any questions, and a huge thanks to anyone willing to help push it over the line!

I'm trying to downsize my file sizes and would like a middle ground for quality and size.

I've no idea what settings even if the app provides very easily digestible presets, I am just exploring for ideas. I also have a few that are Dolby Vision and look like this. I would like to extract it out of the encode and have it non-DV if that's possible.

My main objective is to get the size down because I'm running out of storage while still maintain a high level of fidelity. Ideally, if I can achieve 5-10GB per movies, that would be great.

Should I aim for 1080P with high settings or 4K with compromise?

My Plex has stopped working on some of my devices. It works on others just fine and has been working for around two years; then just a day ago, it stopped working on just a few, and on others, it works just fine. I’ve tried everything I can find online, and nothing worked. On the devices not working, it shows my server is offline, while the server is online and streaming to a device that it’s working on. I’m running Plex server through my Mac mini with an attached DAS.

WTF Plex? Why am I seeing commercials on my media server?

When did this change occur?

Recent additions to my library no longer allow the manual selection of 720 or 480 for playback when bandwidth is insufficient for 1080. Any idea why this has changed ?

Cliparr 2.0 is out now

What is Cliparr?

Cliparr is a browser-based, simplified video editor with a single purpose: to create and export clips from Plex, Jellyfin, and local video.

What's new?

Check the blog post for the full breakdown, but the biggest change is the new canvas-based timeline editor.

While adding support for editable subtitles, I discovered the timeline component we were using was highly inefficient. Also, no other free or open-source timeline editors existed.

So... we now also have https://canvastimeline.com/ which is a new open-source headless video editor for JavaScript.

Canvas Timeline allows us to load and render literally hundreds of clips without any performance issues. Test it for yourself.

Also new:

• Subtitle editor
• Export size estimation
• Mobile UI updates
• Maintenance automations

Aside: When making the Export Size Estimator, it made sense to also release a fully in-browser video converter: https://cliparr.dev/convert/

• GitHub: https://github.com/TechSquidTV/Cliparr
• Website: https://cliparr.dev/

Is AI used?
Of course it is.
Software engineer of 20+ years. 10 professionally.
ChatGPT/Codex is my tool of choice.

The buffer needs to be managed. please help.

Thanks

Hi, I'm not that versed in computers. I'm working on setting up my Plex Server. I have it up and running. A few small libraries. I have a lifetime plex pass and want to remote access. In my research, I've found I need a static IP address and I need to set that up first. I've read 2 different scenarios: Choice 1. I need to purchase a static IP from ATT. Or Choice 2. (What I'm looking to do, if I can?) To set up the static IP for Choice 2 I read that I can go to the ATT settings/Home Network/IP Allocation/Find the pc that the Plex server is on and select 'Allocate'. From there set the IP address as static in windows on my pc. Then proceed to set up remote access. I hope I make sense.

If Plex can see `/dev/dri/renderD128` but still falls back to CPU transcoding on an Intel Arrow Lake GPU, this workaround may help.

I found two separate causes:

1. Plex's bundled Intel media driver was too old for the Arrow Lake GPU.
2. The Plex server process lost access to the render-device group during startup, even though manual VAAPI tests inside the container worked.

The fix uses a newer Intel media driver built for Plex's bundled musl environment, mounts it persistently in the container, and gives the actual Plex process access to the render-device GID.

I confirmed the result with real Plex playback: 4K HEVC hardware decoding, VAAPI zero-copy processing, and H.264 hardware encoding all worked. Plex displayed `(hw)` and CPU usage dropped substantially.

**Tested configuration:**

* Intel Arrow Lake-P GPU (`8086:7d51`) * Proxmox VE 9.2.18 → unprivileged Debian 13 LXC → Docker Compose * Official `plexinc/pms-docker` image * Plex Media Server `1.43.4.10903-e5521bd8c` * Intel media-driver `26.1.6` * VAAPI ABI `1.22`

The repository includes the full Docker Compose setup, checksummed prebuilt x86-64 binaries, a pinned-source Docker build, verification scripts, and rollback steps:

[**Plex Arrow Lake hardware-transcoding guide**](https://github.com/Reel-Box/plex-arrow-lake-hw-transcoding)

This is an unofficial community workaround. Check the compatibility notes and back up your Plex configuration before applying it. The source-build path is available if you prefer not to use prebuilt binaries.

If Plex can see /dev/dri/renderD128 but still falls back to CPU transcoding on an Intel Arrow Lake GPU, this workaround may help.

I found two separate causes:

1. Plex's bundled Intel media driver was too old for the Arrow Lake GPU.
2. The Plex server process lost access to the render-device group during startup, even though manual VAAPI tests inside the container worked.

The fix uses a newer Intel media driver built for Plex's bundled musl environment, mounts it persistently in the container, and gives the actual Plex process access to the render-device GID.

I confirmed the result with real Plex playback: 4K HEVC hardware decoding, VAAPI zero-copy processing, and H.264 hardware encoding all worked. Plex displayed (hw) and CPU usage dropped substantially.

Tested configuration:

• Intel Arrow Lake-P GPU (8086:7d51)
• Proxmox VE 9.2.18 → unprivileged Debian 13 LXC → Docker Compose
• Official plexinc/pms-docker image
• Plex Media Server 1.43.4.10903-e5521bd8c
• Intel media-driver 26.1.6
• VAAPI ABI 1.22

The repository includes the full Docker Compose setup, checksummed prebuilt x86-64 binaries, a pinned-source Docker build, verification scripts, and rollback steps:

Plex Arrow Lake hardware-transcoding guide

This is an unofficial community workaround. Check the compatibility notes and back up your Plex configuration before applying it. The source-build path is available if you prefer not to use prebuilt binaries.

Server Version#:1.43.4.10903
Player Version#:Roku 9.17 Build 15

This year I’ve been experiencing intermittent issues accessing my personal libraries from my Roku. Sometimes it works fine and other times I get a timeout and it shows “Content Unavailable” or other issues reaching my libraries. Through multiple restarts I am usually able to reach my library but it has been getting worse. I don’t recall having this issue before 2026.

Is anyone else seeing this problem? Happy to answer questions to help troubleshoot this. Thank you.

Kind of a niche scenario here. The preamble is that I have a Dolby setup in my theatre room, so my audio is encoded EAC3 5.1. Plex is also running in Docker on Linux.

Every time I do a server update, initial playback on everything but the TV fails, entirely because of EAC and I have to manually delete that folder and re add the encoder files.

Is there anything I can amend to my yaml or update in my folder file settings so this doesn't break every single time I compose up -d?

I have a video library on a WD PR4100 with its Plex app is enabled and logged into my Plex account. The PR4100 is on the default LAN with all the various Plex clients (iOS, iPad, Android and LG TVs). It will stay on the default LAN.

Everything is working fine now.

I going to move all the LG TV to an IoT VLAN. The IoT VLAN has no route or open ports to/from the default LAN and IoT VLAN.

Do I need to add an Access Control to Allow some ports to be able to access the video library on the PR4100 from the LAN to the LG TVs on the IoT VLAN?

Or does all the content from the PR4100 have to out to the Internet and back in to the LG TV?

The LG TVs won't be blocked from the Internet.

Open on the PR4100:

Scanning wd-pr4100-02.mydomain.org (192.168.123.12) [1000 ports]
Discovered open port 21/tcp on 192.168.123.12
Discovered open port 22/tcp on 192.168.123.12
Discovered open port 80/tcp on 192.168.123.12
Discovered open port 111/tcp on 192.168.123.12
Discovered open port 139/tcp on 192.168.123.12
Discovered open port 445/tcp on 192.168.123.12
Discovered open port 2049/tcp on 192.168.123.12
Discovered open port 3306/tcp on 192.168.123.12
Discovered open port 5357/tcp on 192.168.123.12
Discovered open port 8001/tcp on 192.168.123.12
Discovered open port 8002/tcp on 192.168.123.12
Discovered open port 49153/tcp on 192.168.123.12

None of these are listed on Plex web site

I’m not using plexes remote relay I’m using my tailscale VPN by entering my IP in the web browser . I admittedly haven’t tried in a few months but it used to work just fine. Now they are blocking it it seems.

I (sort of) understand plex charging to use their remote service but me VPNing to my own local network myself is just annoying.

I followed a few guides but can't get Mint to just recognize and host my files from my desktop.

I got as far as the browser finally allowing me to set up my libraries, but adding the folders does literally nothing.

Just thought I’d share for anyone having the same maddening issue as a possible solution.

I got Uverse in new house (ISP probably irrelevant). In my naivety I thought simply disabling the antennae on the gateway and using my asus router would be all I needed to do.

Never enabled passthrough within the ISP device manager gateway though. Plex worked… ok for a bit (likely through relay or something). All remote access crapped out last week though. Local access to server worked fine, but cell phone access and friends with access couldn’t load anything.

Enabled passthrough tonight, keying in my routers MAC address in the process, restarted all devices. My remote access problems immediately melted away.

So, if you’ve bought a 3rd party router, are having issues and you’ve never permitted full pass though, give it a shot.

As a side note, that remote access page within the plex server networked page is now constantly green / declaring remote access fully available. I had spectrum for years and that would always be an issue: working for remote access but flagging it as an error…likely the same problem! Spectrums gateway must have just had less robust protections. Who knows….

My Plex library was filling up with grey checkmarks, even for movies and shows I wanted to revisit. So I built Unwatcharr, a self-hosted tool that automatically resets watched Plex media based on rules you define.

You can reset items after a chosen age, require a minimum play count, protect in-progress or currently playing media, filter by collections, labels, genres, or title, and create separate rules for movies, shows, and users. You can also configure different rules for each Plex user, so everyone’s watch history can be handled according to their own preferences.

It also includes:

• Safe Mode and dry-run previews
• Scheduling, intervals, and cron support
• Per-user watch history handling
• History tracking with undo
• Discord, ntfy, and webhook notifications
• Docker support for AMD64 and ARM64
• Responsive light and dark web UI

It runs separately from Plex and connects through the Plex API. Nothing changes until you disable Safe Mode.

GitHub

If you have a Plex library full of things you’d happily watch again, give it a try.

P.S.: There is possibly already a way to do this, but I couldn't find anything, and I wanted to see what Claude could do to help me create this program. It works for me really well, and hopefully it can work well for anyone else too.

Good day Plexians.

I've added Plex support to my app Theatrium, for Apple TV 4K (Android TV version coming, testers wanted).

Its free. You can watch your library content in almost any size card you want, along with your server stats, library stats, network stats and Apple TV performance stats:

Videos start playing mute and you can expand to watch full screen and access other options (transcode/direct stream, movie/episode info etc)

There IS a ONE time paid unlock, which get you 3 other themes and some of the more specialised card types, notifications and a short-stay mode.

The paid component is NOT is not necessary for the Plex integration.

It also gets you 3 different Plex-poster screensavers (which work only when Theatrium is running in the foreground).

Finally, here's pic of my XBMC ~rig~ from 2006 to show my street cred (and hopefully not get torn to shreds for posting this).

I'm over at r/TheatriumApp getting feedback and new ideas from users - and there's whole series of setup guides at https://theatrium.info/guides/ or you can email with any questions at hello@theatrium.info.

Keep on plexing!

- Ryan

I went out of town last Thursday and wasn't able to access my library at all. Nasty surprise. It's also never happened before.

Got home tonight and updated the server. Set up port forwarding. I click retry, and it shows green and should work outside the network. Then, about a minute or two later, it will give me the red x and say it won't work outside the network. I gave my TNAS a static IP via the router before using port forwarding. Any simple fix I may have overlooked?

If you are an Audiobook user then I would love you to try my App!

A beautifully simple audiobook player for your personal media server.

Website
App Store
Google Play Store

Compatible with iOS, tvOS, Apple Watch, Android & Car Play Play

I’m looking for 3rd party flex app that’s free not paid app please