Using Plex for Movie and TV Show Management: A Deep Dive into Customization and Control

One of the most exciting features of using Plex as a media management system is its ability to provide users with full control over their home screen. As soon as you log in to your Plex account, you'll be greeted with a sidebar that allows you to browse through different sections of your library. However, what many users don't know is that this sidebar can be customized to suit their preferences.

There's one dead bull it's going to give me movie Deadpool and it will search any library or any plex servers that you have access to so if you're searching for something specific it will find it on either server. So, this is all been talking about the sidebar so far but what about the actual homepage itself? Well, the good news is that you have editing control over that as well.

You can see here it mostly contains information from my main Plex server, but I can come up here to this little pencil icon and click edit. And you can actually customize the rows that are available. For example, I don't really want recently added music on this list, I don't want recently added TV shows on this list, I don't want recently added photos on this list at any point of time. You can click restore home screen and it's going to reset all of that, and you can come back and see it's all back.

I'm gonna go ahead and take all of it off again. Click save and now I'm left with one lonely row. Unfortunately, you can't manage it from here, but if you're in a specific section of your Plex library, such as the movie section of my secondary server, I can actually come up here to the sections on that server, recently added movies, and add that to home, and same thing with TV shows on or anime on this server, recently aired TV, add to home. Go home and now I have that and it integrates two different servers as well.

I can customize from there what I want, and if at any point in time I don't watch for these things like individually to be on the home screen, I can also click the X and remove it from the home screen as well. As you can see, you have a lot of customization and control over what's displayed here, as well as the usual kind of big view vs. little view of the thumbnails.

You can also come over here to your settings and under web client in general, you can actually come down to reset customization to completely reset both the home page and the sidebar if desired. For the most part, this looks the same even on the TV UI, you will have a little bit more of the kind of dragging and dropping for like reordering the sidebar instead of manual clicking.

For the most part, it looks exactly the same, and that's kind of the point is that it's keeping it all integrated. I'm gonna go ahead and unpin that if I come down here to TV shows, you have recommended library collections playlists, and so again these are different like ways to view your content.

So, you have recommended which is going to be recently aired and if you use the live DVR that's going to kind of affect that because I just recorded some shows that were just literally recently aired on top of reruns of shows you may have already watched. You've got recently added which may match up like that, and then you have stuff to start watching that you've never actually watched on this Plex server with your account or rediscover stuff that maybe you were watching at one point and never came back to.

And so, start watching is something I'm going to add to my home screen so that I have a little section that tells me shows that I have in my library that I haven't watched through. And even if I have seen them at some add various points, I can sit here and mark them as watched if I watch them for example, code-named kids next door, I have it, I've already watched it at some point in my life, it's not something that I'm tracking progress of.

I can match mark that it's watched and it will clear it out next time I load this up. So, this is a pretty cool quality of life change, always happy to see that with Plex UI. I have seen a lot of complaints in the comments about how the UI is looking these days. Hopefully, that makes people a little happier.

I don't know people may still complain, I can definitely see a little bit of frustration as when I was first getting used to it, I felt like I was actually having to spend more clicks to get what I want but then once I'm you know settled in the UI that I want to use, I think it makes a little bit more sense. Let me know what you think in the comment section down below hit the like button if you enjoyed subscribe for more tech education.

Come check us out on floatplane where you can support with and get early access to videos.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enplanck's got a new UI today well not exactly today but this week it's called uno not after the card game I don't really know why it's called you know other than it's just a new UI that's everywhere so they have shifted the UI for the TV app the mobile app and the web app as well as the desktop app however it still looked the same for me when I was in normal view I had to switch the TV view and it's switched over to this new UI and it's gonna ask you to choose your preferred server and it did this on the other devices I just didn't think to record it until now and then it will ask you to customize what is shown on your navigation so yes yes yes yes I want all of these checked there's no scroll box here for some reason but you can uncheck these so for example I don't want music shown on there right now so that's fine and hit continue and then you'll be presented with the new UI just very sumed in for the TV view if we go back to desktop view on the windows the non Windows 10 app the Windows desktop app you still get the older view so if you're looking for that at least for me personally you can still get that that may be a server update that's coming or something like that but the the new UI doesn't affect this but it will affect the TV layout and all of the other versions of Plex and I'm just gonna run with the web UI moving forward to show this off as always this video is part of my monthly sponsored Plex tutorials series here on the channel that I run at least once a month where I show you how to do some pretty cool stuff in Plex today is a special kind of departure from what I have planned for Plex stuff because they've just released an entire new UI which I encountered on a big project I was working on and was kind of confused by because I encountered it early before it was officially announced and so that's what we're covering today if you do want to sign up for Plex or try it for yourself I do have affiliate links in the description below which will let Plex know that I sent you help tell them to keep supporting the channel things like that be sure to use them if you sign up for free by up like spaz for yourself or by a Plex pass as a gift for someone else let's check out this UI so the web app is also special in that it allows you to also manage your server from here as well and according to the Plex team they have done their best to make it the best of both worlds so I'm gonna go ahead and full screen this and you can already see that this looks more like a TV app or a mobile app in that it takes up a little bit more screen space but you have much more control over what you're seeing here so you can actually go to these three little dots and still manage your individual libraries I can manage the library refresh metadata scan the files share the library or we can reorder what is shown here so live TVs at the top for me movies TV shows anime music I'm gonna drag that down for a second other videos photos and playlists that is what's currently pinned and you can change that as well so I will close the reorder menu and I'm gonna go ahead and unpin music and photos so then you only have this available on the sidebar then when you click more you're taken to your multiple different servers and you can pin other things from here so I already controlled what was pinned but I can come down here to other Plex features or features from another Plex server and pin them to this list as well so I can pin podcasts or title or news and then you can go back and reorder from there as well so if I want podcast at the top they can be there or if I just want to unpin it it's there so the goal here is to give you less clicks to actually get to what you want and for the most part I think this achieves that especially when you get this smaller so you have a big nice view for all of your cover arts and things like that then you can just click on the sections if you already know what they are and you're pretty much good to go here and then it will expand as you hover or if you're like me and prefer just keeping the sidebar open here you can do that as well and then you can choose between music playlists video playlists or photo playlists I accidentally deleted all of my playlists at one point I need to go back and clean that up so it gives you more control and a kind of cleaner navigation over the whole UI and allows you to like I said manage multiple servers worth of stuff here and in fact I'm gonna go boot up another plex server real quick that I have behind me so I can show you integrating to plex servers side-by-side alright now that I have access to multiple plex service if I go to more I I can now choose between the two different servers and their sources and if you click plus you can actually add and manage a library for each of those servers from this UI so that you're still managing the server at the same time and you can go over here to empty trash scan library files and share that individual server or click on it to go directly into it which i think is pretty cool you can do a lot of the stuff without having to go into the actual settings button but then I can come in here and I can say ok test bench for this server I want to pin the movies as well you'll notice you got the little pin there then you come back all right now we have two different sets of movies but it does identify which server at that so if I go to reorder I can put these two right next to each other and then as I am home and viewing I can sit here and be like ok I want to watch movies from this server watch it watch movies from this server watch it I would like to see the ability to actually blend essentially the movies of the two servers that you have together as a viewer so that you don't have to basically differentiate between what's on what server however for the most part that's kind of a moot point because either you're scrolling through them and just looking for stuff anyway and this isn't a good example because this mostly has game capture files but if you're searching for it I search for the movie that is there dead bull it's going to give me movie Deadpool and it will search any library or any plex servers that you have access to so if you're searching for something specific it will find it on either server so this is all been talking about the sidebar so far but what about the actual homepage itself well the good news is is you have editing control over that as well you can see here it mostly contains information from my main plex server but I can come up here to this little pencil icon and click edit and you can actually customize the rows that are available so for example I don't really want recently added music on this list I don't want recently added TV shows on this list I don't want recently added photos on this list at any point of time you can click restore home screen and it's going to reset all of that and you can come back and you can see it's all back so I'm gonna go ahead and take all of it off again click save and now I'm left with one lonely row now unfortunately you can't manage it from here but if you're in a specific section of your Plex library so for example I'm in the movie section of my secondary server I can actually come up here to the sections on that server so recently added movies and add that to home and same thing with TV shows on or anime on this server recently aired TV add to home go home and now I have that and that integrates two different servers as well and I can customize from there what I want and if at any point in time I don't watch for these things like individually to be on the home screen I can also click the X and remove it from the home screen as well as the Edit tab so you have a lot of customization and control over what's displayed here as well as the usual kind of big view vs. little view of the thumbnails as well now you can also come over here to your settings and under web client in general you can actually come down to reset customization to completely reset both the home page and the sidebar if desired now for the most part this looks the same even on the TV UI you will have a little bit more of the kind of dragging and dropping for like reordering the sidebar instead of manual clicking you'll have to use your little up-and-down arrows of course but for the most part it looks exactly the same and that's kind of the point is that it's keeping it all integrated so I'm gonna go ahead and unpin that if I come down here to TV shows you have recommended library collections playlists and so again these are different like ways to view your content so you have recommended which is gonna be recently aired and if you use the live DVR that's going to kind of affect that because I just recorded some shows that were just literally recently aired on top of reruns of shows you may have already watched you've got recently added which may match up like that and then you have stuff to start watching that you've never actually watched on this plex server with your account or rediscover stuff that maybe you were watching at one point and never came back to and so start watching is something I'm going to add to my home screen so that I have a little section that tells me shows that I have in my library that I haven't watched through and even if I have seen them at some add various points I'm kind of going through this I can sit here and mark them as watched if I watch them for example code-named kids next door I have it I've already watched it at some point in my life it's not something that I'm tracking progress of I can match mark that it's watched and it will clear it out next time I load this up so this is a pretty cool quality of life change always happy to see that with Plex UI I have seen a lot of complaints in the comments about how the UI is looking these days hopefully that makes people a little happier I don't know people may still complain I can definitely see a little bit of frustration as when I was first getting used to it I felt like I was actually having to spend more clicks to get what I want but then once I'm you know settled in the UI that I want to use I think it makes a little bit more sense so let me know what you think in the comment section down below hit the like button if you enjoyed subscribe for more tech education come check us out on floatplane where you can support with and get early access to videos and behind-the-scenes content been posting a lot recently and check out plex with the affiliate links in the description below to get yourself a free account buy yourself a Plex Pass or buy up like space as a gift for someone else so you can start building the Plex server together or something like that I'm able zux I'll see you next timeplanck's got a new UI today well not exactly today but this week it's called uno not after the card game I don't really know why it's called you know other than it's just a new UI that's everywhere so they have shifted the UI for the TV app the mobile app and the web app as well as the desktop app however it still looked the same for me when I was in normal view I had to switch the TV view and it's switched over to this new UI and it's gonna ask you to choose your preferred server and it did this on the other devices I just didn't think to record it until now and then it will ask you to customize what is shown on your navigation so yes yes yes yes I want all of these checked there's no scroll box here for some reason but you can uncheck these so for example I don't want music shown on there right now so that's fine and hit continue and then you'll be presented with the new UI just very sumed in for the TV view if we go back to desktop view on the windows the non Windows 10 app the Windows desktop app you still get the older view so if you're looking for that at least for me personally you can still get that that may be a server update that's coming or something like that but the the new UI doesn't affect this but it will affect the TV layout and all of the other versions of Plex and I'm just gonna run with the web UI moving forward to show this off as always this video is part of my monthly sponsored Plex tutorials series here on the channel that I run at least once a month where I show you how to do some pretty cool stuff in Plex today is a special kind of departure from what I have planned for Plex stuff because they've just released an entire new UI which I encountered on a big project I was working on and was kind of confused by because I encountered it early before it was officially announced and so that's what we're covering today if you do want to sign up for Plex or try it for yourself I do have affiliate links in the description below which will let Plex know that I sent you help tell them to keep supporting the channel things like that be sure to use them if you sign up for free by up like spaz for yourself or by a Plex pass as a gift for someone else let's check out this UI so the web app is also special in that it allows you to also manage your server from here as well and according to the Plex team they have done their best to make it the best of both worlds so I'm gonna go ahead and full screen this and you can already see that this looks more like a TV app or a mobile app in that it takes up a little bit more screen space but you have much more control over what you're seeing here so you can actually go to these three little dots and still manage your individual libraries I can manage the library refresh metadata scan the files share the library or we can reorder what is shown here so live TVs at the top for me movies TV shows anime music I'm gonna drag that down for a second other videos photos and playlists that is what's currently pinned and you can change that as well so I will close the reorder menu and I'm gonna go ahead and unpin music and photos so then you only have this available on the sidebar then when you click more you're taken to your multiple different servers and you can pin other things from here so I already controlled what was pinned but I can come down here to other Plex features or features from another Plex server and pin them to this list as well so I can pin podcasts or title or news and then you can go back and reorder from there as well so if I want podcast at the top they can be there or if I just want to unpin it it's there so the goal here is to give you less clicks to actually get to what you want and for the most part I think this achieves that especially when you get this smaller so you have a big nice view for all of your cover arts and things like that then you can just click on the sections if you already know what they are and you're pretty much good to go here and then it will expand as you hover or if you're like me and prefer just keeping the sidebar open here you can do that as well and then you can choose between music playlists video playlists or photo playlists I accidentally deleted all of my playlists at one point I need to go back and clean that up so it gives you more control and a kind of cleaner navigation over the whole UI and allows you to like I said manage multiple servers worth of stuff here and in fact I'm gonna go boot up another plex server real quick that I have behind me so I can show you integrating to plex servers side-by-side alright now that I have access to multiple plex service if I go to more I I can now choose between the two different servers and their sources and if you click plus you can actually add and manage a library for each of those servers from this UI so that you're still managing the server at the same time and you can go over here to empty trash scan library files and share that individual server or click on it to go directly into it which i think is pretty cool you can do a lot of the stuff without having to go into the actual settings button but then I can come in here and I can say ok test bench for this server I want to pin the movies as well you'll notice you got the little pin there then you come back all right now we have two different sets of movies but it does identify which server at that so if I go to reorder I can put these two right next to each other and then as I am home and viewing I can sit here and be like ok I want to watch movies from this server watch it watch movies from this server watch it I would like to see the ability to actually blend essentially the movies of the two servers that you have together as a viewer so that you don't have to basically differentiate between what's on what server however for the most part that's kind of a moot point because either you're scrolling through them and just looking for stuff anyway and this isn't a good example because this mostly has game capture files but if you're searching for it I search for the movie that is there dead bull it's going to give me movie Deadpool and it will search any library or any plex servers that you have access to so if you're searching for something specific it will find it on either server so this is all been talking about the sidebar so far but what about the actual homepage itself well the good news is is you have editing control over that as well you can see here it mostly contains information from my main plex server but I can come up here to this little pencil icon and click edit and you can actually customize the rows that are available so for example I don't really want recently added music on this list I don't want recently added TV shows on this list I don't want recently added photos on this list at any point of time you can click restore home screen and it's going to reset all of that and you can come back and you can see it's all back so I'm gonna go ahead and take all of it off again click save and now I'm left with one lonely row now unfortunately you can't manage it from here but if you're in a specific section of your Plex library so for example I'm in the movie section of my secondary server I can actually come up here to the sections on that server so recently added movies and add that to home and same thing with TV shows on or anime on this server recently aired TV add to home go home and now I have that and that integrates two different servers as well and I can customize from there what I want and if at any point in time I don't watch for these things like individually to be on the home screen I can also click the X and remove it from the home screen as well as the Edit tab so you have a lot of customization and control over what's displayed here as well as the usual kind of big view vs. little view of the thumbnails as well now you can also come over here to your settings and under web client in general you can actually come down to reset customization to completely reset both the home page and the sidebar if desired now for the most part this looks the same even on the TV UI you will have a little bit more of the kind of dragging and dropping for like reordering the sidebar instead of manual clicking you'll have to use your little up-and-down arrows of course but for the most part it looks exactly the same and that's kind of the point is that it's keeping it all integrated so I'm gonna go ahead and unpin that if I come down here to TV shows you have recommended library collections playlists and so again these are different like ways to view your content so you have recommended which is gonna be recently aired and if you use the live DVR that's going to kind of affect that because I just recorded some shows that were just literally recently aired on top of reruns of shows you may have already watched you've got recently added which may match up like that and then you have stuff to start watching that you've never actually watched on this plex server with your account or rediscover stuff that maybe you were watching at one point and never came back to and so start watching is something I'm going to add to my home screen so that I have a little section that tells me shows that I have in my library that I haven't watched through and even if I have seen them at some add various points I'm kind of going through this I can sit here and mark them as watched if I watch them for example code-named kids next door I have it I've already watched it at some point in my life it's not something that I'm tracking progress of I can match mark that it's watched and it will clear it out next time I load this up so this is a pretty cool quality of life change always happy to see that with Plex UI I have seen a lot of complaints in the comments about how the UI is looking these days hopefully that makes people a little happier I don't know people may still complain I can definitely see a little bit of frustration as when I was first getting used to it I felt like I was actually having to spend more clicks to get what I want but then once I'm you know settled in the UI that I want to use I think it makes a little bit more sense so let me know what you think in the comment section down below hit the like button if you enjoyed subscribe for more tech education come check us out on floatplane where you can support with and get early access to videos and behind-the-scenes content been posting a lot recently and check out plex with the affiliate links in the description below to get yourself a free account buy yourself a Plex Pass or buy up like space as a gift for someone else so you can start building the Plex server together or something like that I'm able zux I'll see you next time\n"