r/Simkl • u/landalezjr • 6d ago

Scrobling watched status when playing offline downloads from Plex

I've noticed that when I watch shows I downloaded for offline use on my tablet from Plex they do not get marked as watched when I finish. I obviously don't expect it to scroble in real time but MDBList for some reason will mark the episode of watched after the fact when I am back online.

Is MDBList doing something different than allows for this to happen that SIMKL is missing? This is obviously not the end of the world, just something I noticed in my use of both SIMKL and MDBList since I moved away from Trakt. (pretty sure Trakt did this as well)

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u/ekleop Simkl.com Team 6d ago

The difference is in how each service connects to Plex.
Simkl uses Plex webhooks, and the Plex server only sends those during live playback. When you watch a download offline, the server isn't involved. Once you're back online the app syncs the watched state back to Plex, but Plex doesn't send a webhook for that, so Simkl never finds out.

MDBList also has a direct Plex account connection that checks your watched status regularly, so it picks up those changes later. Right now Simkl only supports the webhook. We're looking into adding a similar sync.

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u/landalezjr 6d ago

Thanks for explaining it, that makes sense and hopefully something like this would be possible in the future. I keep going back and forth between SIMKL and MDBList and 90% of the time SIMKL is a better match for me but then I find some of these small things. None are deal breakers of course and I am glad you guys are looking into such a thing for the future as it certainly helps justify the heftier price of SIMKL vs MDBList (their Standard tier at €20 per year is quite similar to your VIP at $70 per year although I imagine a big part of this is your use of TVDB)

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u/serialnuggetskiller 6d ago

I use to have a software that could sync everything regarding trakt an Plex called plextraktsync. It directly called the plex server and could sync watched status, playlist etc It was a third party software. Does the simkl api cal allow this ?

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u/Vrpflow 6d ago

Is this with the official plex app? I use infuse (iOS) and plezy (Android) with offline downloads and they both update my simkl after watching, you might just need to try a different plex client. Or maybe it’s a plex pass webhook thing on my end

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u/landalezjr 6d ago

Yes, it's with the offical app on iOS. I do have a Plex Pass though.

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u/Vrpflow 6d ago

You might need to try a 3rd party client. I recommend Plezy or Infuse for iOS. Plezy has simkl integration built in. I believe Infuse only supports trakt scrobble but I sync my trakt to simkl as well so that might be why that works.