Plex for iOS 2.4 released
We’re happy to announce the next release of the iOS application with some great new stuff.
- NEW: Social features! You can now add friends to your myPlex account, recommend media to each other, and post directly to your Facebook timeline. Tap account settings and go to the friends tab to send out friend invites. Hold down a media item to recommend it or share to your timeline.
From this page you can tap the Edit button to manage your friends list or invite new friends. (We’ll be streamlining this process, as well as adding new ways to find friends in the near future.)
So once you have a friend, you can recommend media to them, much like you would queue media for yourself. In the iOS and Plex for Mac/Windows players you’ll see recommended media show up alongside your queue.
In addition, you can now link your myPlex account to Facebook (see the social media section on your account page):
Once linked, you can easily post to your wall by choosing the Share action:
We’ll be adding these social features to other clients in upcoming releases.
There’s lots of other stuff as well in this release:
- NEW: Ability to clear cached images.
- NEW: The app can be launched via the plexapp:// URL scheme.
- NEW: Media can be deleted from the app (must be enabled on the server, requires PMS 0.9.6.1 or newer).
- NEW: Automatic video quality adjustment has been restored, allowing the app to select the most appropriate video quality for the current available bandwidth, up to a user-defined maximum.
- NEW: Attempt to automatically select audio & subtitle streams for all parts when playing stacked media.
- NEW: Networked logging option (in advanced settings). Sends iOS and PMS logs to a centralized server in the cloud when enabled, to aid with support.
- NEW: A new look for settings.
- FIX: Channels section was invisible when no channels are installed on the server.
- FIX: TV season posters were low resolution on iPad.
- FIX: Remote control requests include the correct authentication tokens allowing the feature to work via myPlex connections.
- FIX: Marking progress when not signed in to myPlex was broken.
- FIX: More reliable reloading of home screen data.
- FIX: Images flickered while loading.
- FIX: Certain remote buttons weren’t working properly after rotating the device.
- FIX: Wide flag images could get cropped on iPhone.
- FIX: The movie player sometimes switched to portrait orientation when starting a video.
- FIX: myPlex scrobbling was broken.
- FIX: Search wasn’t working when not connected to a server.
- FIX: The on-hold menu wasn’t working when the default playback action was set to “Always Ask”.
- FIX: A couple of crashes on iPhone 3G.
- UPDATE: Translations for Arabic, Catalan, Chinese, Danish, Dutch, French, German, Hebrew, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Slovak, Spanish, Swedish and Turkish.
The new version should be live in the store shortly, we hope you all enjoy it!
60 Comments so far
Leave a reply
Cool! Looking forward to try this out!
Where’s Barkley? Did he want nothing to do with this set of bug fixes?
Cool to see the continued focus on iOS.
Great update! Facebok sharing is a neat option! Keep up the good work
Hello,
Is there still a way to use this new Plex iOS client without myPLex ? I do not use myPlex (not using any social sites) and would like to keep it that way but I could use some of the FIXes that are listed above.
Kind regards,
Thank you
I second the request for some Barkley love. Where is he? We demand him back!!!
How do you delete media files? Can’t see the option. Yes, I’ve got it enabled in the latest version of PMS
Sorted it, needed to close plex on my iPhone fully, then startnagain
Loving it
I’m sorry, I’m probably not looking right- but where is the Facebook integration? I updated everything but I don’t see an account page with that option… Do I need another version of the server for this (I have the newest official one)?
I cant seem to get facebook working. Ive got the newest pms and the updated ios app for iphone and ipad. Any ideas?
When I use the new function “Add Friend” on the iOS-app, the people show up under “Sent Requests”, but they don’t get a mail or something else. Same thing when I add server-shares for Plex-Users, they can only accept my share under my.plexapp.com but aren’t notified at all. By the way I can’t really understand why sharing servers and sharing recommendations to friends are two separated things at the moment.. Further more, with server-sharing only accessible within myplex-site and sharing recommendations only in the app. Little confusing, isn’t it?
How does one enable deletion on the Mac media server? The option isn’t listed in preferences for me, latest version.
So if I add a friend, will he have access to my library? Or if I reckomend a movie, will he have access to that movie only?
I appreciate the update Élan, but after installing this version my SD content now stalls every 5-10 seconds on my iPad 3, whereas the previous version did not. The old version plays smoothly on my iPhone 4s. The automatic video quality setting downgrades it so much it is unwatchable.
Good update.
Hope that the next update can include AirPlay improvements:
1. 5.1 audio
2. Resume playback
Will we ever be able to create playlists in the iOS app? Would love to be able to set several videos to play sequentially!
(Barkley is only under contract to provide images for media server releases only, sorry.)
@Michelle: I suspect so
@To lab: Check your quality settings, and you can turn off “Auto-reduce quality” if it’s not working for you. The player basically picks whatever quality it thinks is appropriate at a given time.
@RckStr: Adding a friend just allows you to recommend content to him or her, and receive recommendations. Totally different from server sharing.
@Ferik: You need to enable the preference from the web manager (http://x.x.x.x:32400/manage).
@Jay: When sharing sections, the people you’re sharing the server with do receive an email notifying them of the invite. You are correct that the flow could be more consistent for both areas, this is only an initial release, and we’ll be improving it over time for sure!
@HenkJan/JG84: Go to my.plexapp.com to your account page, and enable the Facebook link there. Now you’ll be able to share from the iOS client.
@Wally007: None of the social features are forced on you; use what you want, ignore the rest.
@elan Thats what i did, but i cant share. There are no options when holding. Only information
@HenkJan: It only works right now for queued media and some channel content, so if you’re trying it for your media library content, it won’t work.
Nice update…! Will the social sharing features find their way into the desktop version of Plex as well…?!
Okay, maybe I spoke too early about it being a nice update — because even though I’ve had deletion enabled for some time now and even though I have linked my FB account the only two buttons I get are “Play” and “Information…!
No “Remove from Queue” or “Recommend” or “Share”, not on my iPhone, not on my iPad…! I have relaunched the apps a few times, even restarted the devices, nope, nothing…!
((
Oh okay, I just read elan’s reply to HenkJan, so never mind…!
Too bad, in the current implementation I don’t really see myself using the feature because I don’t queue media, I’d just like to recommend and share stuff with friends…
I don’t really get why I can’t delete media either, though…?!
@MILE: Bear in mind you can only share/recommend stuff you’ve queued or from (most) channels, not your library (yet).
@MILE: When you tap on Info for the item, the delete icon is a new action on the action bar. See http://www.plexapp.com/elan/IMG_1811.PNG for an example.
Seeing as how you guys are adding some social integration to myplex, have you thought about adding Twitter and trakt.tv sharing / scrobbling into myplex as well? Congrats on the nice iOS update! So far it works great for me!
@elan: Thanks, I got that now, must have missed your reply to HenkJan before…! But as I said, I never really do queue stuff, si I guess I can’t share or recommend either then…
As for deleting media, that trashcan icon is nowhere to be seen on any of my devices…!?
Even though I do have deleting enabled…
Also you didn’t answer my very first question — are social features coming to the desktop app…?
@MILE: You can check to see if media deletion is really enabled by checking:
$ defaults read com.plexapp.plexmediaserver | grep allow
allowMediaDeletion = 1;
If that says 1, then make sure you restart the iOS app and reconnect to the server just to make sure it reads the new setting.
As for the desktop plans, we don’t pre-announce stuff, but it wouldn’t be a bad assumption to think we’re at least considering it!
@Ryan: Glad to hear, we’ve definitely heard requests for those things before, so you never know what’ll come in the future
Do you get crash reports? I know some stuff (only apple apps?) gets uploaded when the phone syncs, but I wonder if you see my crashes. I’m pretty lucky to get through an entire episode of anything without plex taking a dive.
Best I can tell is that it happens if wifi stutters and very reliably happens if the phone switches from wifi to 3G while playing. This dates back for at least the last 3-4 releases.
@Chaz: Generally if you have a reproducible crash, the best bet is to work with us and retrieve the crash report from the phone using the iPhone configuration utility. We’d love more details!
How do you get the “recommend” option to appear in the Plex iOS app? When I hold my finger on a video file, I only get “Play” and “information.”
@elan: Thanks again…!
Well, I checked and it does return “allowMediaDeletion = 1″ which is what I expected — but even after restarting the app and later restarting the device as well as the app it just won’t show me the trashcan icon…!
Any other advice…?
I mean, it’s not really a dealbreaker but now I really want to see why this new feature is not working for me…
@elstreif: It only works (for now) with channel and queue content.
great.. just a comment : it would be nice to can suppress the “Remote” tab
Seeing an instant crash when attempting to change any of the connection speed settings after this update. Ios 4.3.3. Sorry for brevity, sending from phone.
Am I not looking properly, or one still can not launch Plex client from te remote tab?
As it continues greyed… (unless you previously launched it some other way but not the app what makes it pointless).
Another GREAT update! I will definitely use the “recommend” feature with the inlaws up north. The only thing I think the app needs now is playlist creation…
Why would you release a app for only iOS 2.4? The header should really say “Plex 2.4 for iOS released”
Dear Plex,
I have a weird problem with the latest iOS update.
When i start to play a movie when my iPad is in Landscape mode, the movie is 90 degrees turned on my TV. When i play the movie and held my iPad in Portrait mode, the movie is shown in the right way.
setup:
I use the latest iOS Plex app on a first generation iPad with iOS 5.1
I use an external video out (Camera Connection Kit not made by Apple) by the dock connector of my iPad.
With the former Plex app i did not have this issue.
Thanks in advance.
René
I’m seeing an issue with this release where iOS Plex is connecting to myplex but is not showing the queue, if I have an inaccessible server linked to the account. If I remove the server from myplex, and refresh the iOS app, the queue shows up.
The desktop version is working fine though
Hmm. Ignore my previous comment- the problem seems to be that I’m on a shoddy ‘net connection…
@A huge plex fan: I’m so happy when problems fix themselves
I’m relatively new to Plex but the idea of using the app to launch plex is very intriguing to me. How do I use the Plex URL scheme to lunch plex? Can anyone please explain this to me?
Okay, now I even deleted the app and re-installed it again and still no trash icon/delete option anywhere…!
@MILE: we’re very confused, and have noted it for looking into for the next release. Sorry for the trouble!
Awesome app! Is it possible to hide the channels category on the home page? I don’t use channels at all so it’s just cluttering things up for me… Cheers!
@rezsound: it will be in the next release.
Nice update!
For the next one can you please add support for scrobbling to Trakt.tv! I have recently switched to XBMC to get this feature but would gladly switch back to Plex if trakt was supported!
Keep up the good work!
Funny, I was just saying today, “You know what would be great? Facebook in my media server software! I just can’t get enough of the darn thing.”
IMHO this is just more code cruft to support, and a distraction from the real featureset. I get it — you want the Plex brand plastered all over Facebook status updates. But it seems like a bad direction for the software to take.
@brett: I totally understand how you feel that way, and we’ve been very careful about the social features ~ we don’t shove them down your throat, and if you don’t care about them you’ll never notice them
But just watching the logs in the last few days, there are definitely a number of people who are enjoying the feature. It’s sort of like the personal content/channel split, about 50% of people care primary about local content, and the other 50% care about online content. You can’t make everyone happy all the time, but you can at least try to avoid pissing off the other half.
why you can recomend only in the queue folder but not in the movie folder?
Is way to recomend movies you have in the movies folder to friends?
Wow… lot’s of positive feedback here… makes me think that I was obviously doing something wrong for the past hour and a half trying to get this working… Too slow, too clunky, uninstalled and went back to Nero…
@elan and @MILE, I had the same problem, but found that delete option was available on one of my media servers. The only difference between the two, was that the working one, was logged in to my plex account. When I logged my other server in to my plex account , the delete option also appeared for that server as well.
Don’t know why that was needed….?
@David: thanks, I’ll confirm to see if that’s the issue!
Plex server for Synology NAS is too heavy…
I have Synology NAS -ds3611xs.. It has 2G ram ..
I installed plex server to NAS
But, when I run Plex client app in IOS and play movie, Plex server has too heavy memory… to 90%..
please help me.. sorry my english..
@MILE: Are you signed in to myPlex on the server too? As David pointed out above, this is required to use the delete function if you’re signed in to myPlex on the client.
@David: It’s needed so we can be sure that only the owner of a server can delete content from it. If neither the client nor the server are signed in, it’s a free-for-all, but if you’ve linked your client or server to myPlex we require that both are connected to the same account before we allow you to use the delete function.
When will the Media Center finally get some love too?
Apple Remote still doesn’t work with iTunes for going on a year now?
Plex is just great, on all platforms i’ve tested (Mac, IOS, Win and Andriod). One important thing is still missing in the clients though, the possibility to download movies for offline use. If I had a vote for what to implement next, it would be this, especially for IOS.
can i open my server on my mac at home on my iphone using my data service?
+1 for this
Plex is just great, on all platforms i’ve tested (Mac, IOS, Win and Andriod). One important thing is still missing in the clients though, the possibility to download movies for offline use. If I had a vote for what to implement next, it would be this, especially for IOS.