The last big news in Plex, that I caught at least, was when they combined the Plex Pass and Plex app into one app. It wasn’t earth shattering, but it did give both users a single app to download with an in-app purchase option to grab your Plex Pass subscription. In the update that Plex started rolling out yesterday, the apps design got a whole new redesign that is quite a bit more intuitive and takes some queues from Google’s Material Design with a little Netflix mixed in.
The first thing to note is the new Dashboard where you look through your content. The upper most part shows you the last three videos you were watching with an overflow menu button to Play, Play next, Add to Up Next or Add to Playlist. Below those are your On Deck listings followed by anything that recently added. This dashboard view will change depending on a few things. If you share servers with your friends and family, then the dashboard will show you the last three videos you were watching on their server followed by the On Deck content you had on their server and all their recently added content.
The mobile app also adds in full support for Plex Home. Plex Home is the prettied up PC app that you can run on a connected computer. That means you can now easily switch between users in your Home and use PIN protection on your account as well as make managed users for the kids to keep them from watching everything.
A final note that Plex made on their blog post about the update was directed towards the Android TV app. It has graduated from the Plex Pass preview period and is now a full fledged app for everyone to install and access. Simply put, you don’t need a Plex Pass to check it out anymore. They also added in a new experimental player for Android TV that should solve issues users reported with stuttering and pausing during playback.
As for other addition, Plex does list a few things on the What’s New section on the Play Store such as not requiring activation when playing media flung from other devices, fixed crashes on the “already paid’ option, crash fixes scrolling on home screen after pulling to refresh. Yes, you can now pull to refresh the media on the current screen much like Google Chrome and other apps.
It would also seem, at least to my usage, that I can now also set the Play next and Add to Up Next on content that is on shared servers and it works. Where as before it only worked on my own server. That could have been fixed a while ago and I just never tried it though. The app update is available now and anyone who uses and loves Plex should go pick it up when they have a chance.
