Plex is an awesome platform that doesn’t get enough attention. Equal parts media hosting platform and movie/TV show streamer, Plex allows you to upload, store, and organize all your favorite movies, shows, music, photos, and more, and all at no cost.
But that’s just the tip of the Plex iceberg! For a deep dive into its many great features and a step-by-step set of instructions to get you going, here’s everything you need to know.
What is Plex?
Plex is actually two things: It’s free media server software that you run on a PC, Mac, or NAS drive in your home, and it’s also a vast set of free client apps, that let you access the media server’s contents from devices like smart TVs, Roku, Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV, gaming consoles, phones, tablets, and way more. Together, these two pieces create a powerful way to manage and access your media files.
Once installed, the Plex Media Server can automatically augment your collection of movies, TV shows, and music with a huge amount of related content from s around the web, like movie posters and album art, details on cast and crew members, episode descriptions, original air dates, and much more. In minutes, your media collection goes from being a series of files and folders to a Netflix-like experience that you control.
Unlike iTunes, Plex can read just about every media file format you can think of. So if you’ve gotten into the habit of running your media through a converter like HandBrake (Windows, Mac) to make it compatible with your software, you can do away with that step.
Best of all, your Plex library can also be shared with other Plex users, making it an ideal way to give friends and family members access to your media without having to upload all of it to a third-party cloud service like Google Drive or iCloud. Though some limitations need to be considered, such as the power of your Plex server and the bandwidth of your internet plan, it can be a great way to include others. There’s also a fun Watch Together feature we’ll get into below that allows you to watch your favorite movies and shows with friends.
And if that isn’t enough, Plex also operates its own ad-supported free streaming video service known as Plex Free Movies and TV, which can be accessed alongside your personal media, as well as live TV and DVR features you can access with the Plex Pass subscription.
What are the Plex requirements?
For the Plex Media Server, you will need to pick a device on which to install and run it. Your options are:
Whichever one you choose, a wired network connection for both your server machine and your client device is recommended. A sufficiently fast Wi-Fi network (routers and devices that support 802.11 AC are best) can work too, but you’ll need excellent signal strength to support streaming in 4K/HDR.
Since the Plex Media Server does the lion’s share of the work involved in organizing and playing back your media, a sufficiently powerful device is important for the best experience. Here’s Plex’s support page that discusses the minimum requirements; it’s a good place to start.
If you only plan to watch one video at a time and you’re not planning to share your Plex library with other users, an inexpensive NAS or a Shield TV might do the trick. However the moment your needs become more demanding, you’re probably going to want to run your server on a desktop or laptop machine. If you’re unsure what you should use, the Plex user forums are a great place to ask questions and get advice.
As far as the Plex Client Player goes, you can run the client app on just about any device that’s out there, so the odds are good that you already own a compatible one. But if you’re thinking of buying a new streaming device anyway, we recommend the Roku Streaming Stick+, Apple TV 4K, or Nvidia Shield TV, for the best Plex experience.
Those with Dolby Atmos home theater systems may want to read our How to know if you’re getting Dolby Atmos sound guide as it contains some considerations for Plex users who want to ensure they get Dolby Atmos support.
How do I install and use Plex?
Your Plex adventure starts by installing the Plex Media Server software on your chosen machine.
Step 1: Simply download the appropriate installer and follow the instructions. Once the media server is fully installed, it will open a new browser window, which contains the Plex web app.
Step 2: The web app is your main way of configuring the Plex server, but it also doubles as a way to look at your library and play your files on your computer. It will ask you to create a new Plex account and then take you through a setup wizard that mostly involves helping the server track down your media files.
Step 3: You can store your movies, music, and other files, anywhere you like, in as many different folders or hard drives (both locally, or on network shares), and Plex will keep everything organized. However, there’s one small catch: Plex has a preference for how different file types are named.
For every kind of file e.g. movies, multipart movies, TV shows that have multiple seasons and episodes, etc, there’s a Plex-preferred naming style. If you have a lot of files, renaming them doesn’t have to be a manual process: MacOS has a great built-in file renaming function as does Windows 10. You can always skip this step — Plex will still let you access and play your files even if they aren’t named using Plex’s conventions, but it may have a hard time identifying what the file is, so you may not get all of the rich data from the web that makes using Plex so enjoyable.
Step 4: The Plex Media Server will automatically scan all of the directories you identified during the setup process, and you can choose how often it scans those locations for changes. If you’re a frequent downloader of new media, you can set it so that Plex automatically updates its library any time it detects a new file has been added.
Step 5: To quickly check that everything is as it should be, click the home button in the web app interface. You should see your movies, music, and any other media you added during setup, beginning to populate, along with their respective poster or album art.
Step 6: If they don’t look quite right at first, wait a few minutes as it can take time for Plex to find all of the relevant info. To play a file, simply mouse over the thumbnail, and click the play button.
Keep in mind, playing a movie this way won’t necessarily show you what it will look like on a device like an Apple TV, or Roku. It’s really just meant as a way to check that the file will indeed play.
How do I play Plex files on my TV or other devices?
As we’ve mentioned, there is a Plex client for just about every device on the market. You will generally find the one for your specific device in the online download store for that platform.
For Apple TV, for instance, it’s in the App Store. For Roku, it’s considered a downloadable “channel.” Many devices, including smart TVs and Android TV boxes, come with the Plex client pre-loaded, so there’s nothing to download. The clients are typically free, but occasionally Plex charges a small amount to download them. A Plex Pass subscription includes free access to all clients (more on Plex Pass below).
Step 1: When you start the Plex client, it will ask you for the same Plex account you created when you installed the server. As long as your playback device and the Plex server are on the same home network, it should only take a moment for the client to display the same catalog of media files as you saw in the web app.
Step 2: You’ll find an intuitive set of category links on the left side of the screen, and all of your matching media files organized in the main portion of the interface. Selecting the file you want to play brings up an info screen with descriptions and more links, plus the “play now” button.
Step 3: No media software would be complete without a search function and Plex’s universal search does a really good job. It can find matches from among all of your connected libraries and services including your movies, music, and TV shows, free content from Plex Movies and TV, web shows and podcasts, and Tidal.
Why won’t some media files play?
Every client device possesses different capabilities, which means each Plex client also possesses different capabilities. When a Plex client connects to the Plex server, it tells the server what those capabilities are. An Apple TV 4K, for instance, only plays video files encoded in H.264, or MPEG-4, using the .m4v, .mp4, and .mov formats.
If the file you’re trying to play doesn’t correspond to one of those file types, the Plex server will need to transcode it into one of the formats that the Apple TV 4K understands. Depending on the file type you’re playing, and the formats supported by your client, this can take a lot of power on the server’s side. If your server machine isn’t powerful enough to handle this conversion process, you may be told that the movie cannot be played.
What to do
The obvious way to deal with this problem is to make sure your Plex server is running on a really robust computer. But not everyone wants to keep a powerful PC running continuously.
If you know that you will mostly want to play your files on a single TV at home, buying a more powerful client device that can handle lots of file types on its own — without needing the server to transcode — is a great alternative to a more expensive server machine. The Nvidia Shield TV and Shield TV Pro can play virtually every media file type, effectively eliminating the need for the Plex server to perform transcoding. We’ve been able to play 4K HDR files, with Dolby Atmos, on a Shield TV, from a Plex server running on a WD My Cloud Mirror Gen 2 — a NAS with less computing power than even the cheapest PC.
How to enable remote access and library sharing
One of the most powerful features of Plex is the ability to configure the Plex server for remote access. It takes a bit of fiddling to get this set up correctly because you’ll need to adjust your router’s firewall settings, but once it’s configured, you’ll be able to use the Plex client on your phone or tablet to stream your personal media library from anywhere in the world — including live TV and recorded shows if you have that enabled.
Here’s how to get remote access working across your Plex-powered hardware.
Step 1: First, you’ll need to configure your modem to send remote access requests to your router if they are not the same device.
Step 2: Next, configure your router to send remote access requests to the machine on your network that hosts your Plex Media Server.
Step 3: Then, configure your Plex Media Server to respond to those remote access requests.
If you want to share your Plex library with friends and family (who don’t live with you), you’ll need to configure remote access first.
Once that’s done, tell your friends and family to create a free Plex account(s) and then tell you the email they used to create it.
Step 4: Inside the settings for your Plex Media Server, you’ll find a section called Users and Sharing. Within that screen, you can add additional users for the people who live with you, as well as giving access to friends via the Shared Libraries option.
For each Plex user you invite, you can choose which server (if you have more than one) and which libraries (movies, TV, etc) they can access. If you have a Plex Pass subscription, you can also let these users download and sync your content to their devices, and upload their photos to your server.
You can see what these users are watching in real-time as well as being able to see a history of what they’ve watched, within the Activity dashboard for your server.
Plex Free Movies and TV
Similar in many ways to free, ad-supported services like the Roku Channel, Plex Free Mo