Plex has confirmed that it will require a Remote Watch Pass or Plex Pass for remote streaming on its TV apps. The change is going into effect for the Roku app first, followed by all other TV apps and third-party clients in 2026.
Earlier this year, Plex increased its pricing for Plex Pass and stopped supporting all options for free remote streaming in the Plex apps, such as adding a custom server connection in the app settings. The company said at the time, “The reality is that we need more resources to continue putting forth the best personal media experience, and as a result, we will no longer offer remote playback as a free feature.” That’s also when Plex introduced the Remote Watch Pass as a less expensive way to enable remote streaming again.
Plex is now rolling out the remote watch changes to its Roku TV app. If you have Plex Pass, or the owner of the server you’re streaming from has Plex Pass, you don’t need to do anything. Otherwise, if you are streaming on a different network from the server’s home network, you need Plex Pass or Remote Watch Pass.
Jeeeeeeelifin, jellifin. jeeeeely jellifin…
Jellyfin. All day, every day
Switched my users to Jellyfin this spring when Plex first announced this move, pretty seamless transition.
I actually prefer Jellyfin and it’s UI compared to the new one Plex rolled out on Roku, what a mess that is to navigate now.
I haven’t looked in awhile, how was the process of migrating watch history or did you not bother?
Here is one I was looking at https://github.com/wilmardo/migrate-plex-to-jellyfin
Didn’t end up using it as I had an issue where I lost all my watch history.
You probably could do it with trakt.
The plugin supports syncing watched history.But you’d need to do it for every user individually.
(Not tested. But at the time had issues with weird watch status in my jellyfin and trakt seemed to be the reason)
Switched to Jellyfin after more than a decade with Plex. Prettey… prettey… pretty good.
I can recommend a local Wireguard server for this. I have one port on my router open for Wireguard and all of my devices can connect to it remotely.
Once connected, they can see all the devices on my local network, including my local jellyfin server. It works pretty painlessly and you don’t need to open any jellyfin ports to the world.
Sure except for tv boxes.
That’s how it works with Tailscale as well. Tailscale creates Wireguard tunnels underneath between the different devices. There’s also an open-source self-hostable Tailscale control plane.
Love me some Jellyfin. I was yesterday days old when I finally read some documentation and learned that my metadata issues were because I was using a mixed library type for kids shoes and movies, and that they strongly discourage it because of the unreliable metadata it causes. Split kids movies and shows apart and now that works flawlessly, still, I feel like I’d prefer they could be combined on a single library for a kids’ browsing
Why do you have a library of kiss’s shoes?
Who is kiss?
A band.
No, my dogs give me kiss.
Yup. Shame the new version is unusable for me. Hopefully they fix the bugs.
Oh? I haven’t upgraded yet. 😄
Same, and I haven’t missed any of the streaming services I used to have. It’s amazing.
Do you remote stream (off your server network)? If so, how’s the experience?
I do. No issues.
Do you reverse proxy, Tailscale, etc to authenticate or circumvent the need for a secure connection? Every time I come close to planning a switch, that part paralyzes me, it feels so unintuitive.
I do use both a reverse proxy and Tailscale. All services are proxied. All services except for Jellyfin are accessed only via Tailscale. Jellyfin is publicly available. I’ve obscured it a bit by setting up long, randomly generated DNS name. The proxy would only forward traffic to Jellyfin if the request comes from that exact DNS name. Bots would have to know this name for the proxy to entertain their attempts at all. Then every user has long, randomly-generated password. I prefer to only use it behind Tailscale but some of my family needs direct access. Also Chromecast.
I get that some users need a DNS name, but for Chromecast (unless you’re talking about the original one that does not actually have apps) you can use Tailscale just like in any android device.
Oh fuck off, dipshits. You chose this route despite the community that built you.
They make more money off of FAST then they do self hosting own media. Of course they are going to care less and less about the self hosters.
If Plex was 100% paid there a would be zero complaints.
The issue, as always, is that Plex started to put free existing features behind a paywall to squeeze more money out of their client base instead of adding something and charging for it.
VC money came in and now the VC wants to cash in on the investment.
In that case, I think no one would’ve used Plex in the first place. But yeah, I think it should be that way ideally.
I don’t think that’s it.
There were complaints when Netflix started enforcing password sharing rules.
I think the main driver of complaints is “you promised the thing I’m paying for would be X, and now you’re changing the deal.”
And the main answer is “Pray we do not change it any further.”
And as you’re done praying, they change 10 more, because they can.
Which is not what Plex is doing. There’s no change for paid users.
There were complaints… and then subscription numbers increased.
Overall. They went down in the affected areas.
There was never an explicit deal on providing free shit. Although they seem to be honoring paid stuff. If your account is old enough, content shared with friends can be downloaded even if they don’t have a Plex pass.
Not for users who paid the mobile unlock fee.
What if I’ve already paid the one-time mobile app activation fee?
For users who have already paid a one-time, in-app activation for either our mobile Android or iOS app, an extended trial for the new Remote Watch Pass subscription is available.
(Source: Plex)They soften the landing with the “extended trial”, but anyone who paid the “one-time fee” is finding out what that really meant.
I wouldn’t be surprised if a year from now there’s an announcement for Plex 2.0 and my lifetime account only applies to legacy Plex.
Thought it would have happened by now. Life time doesn’t make sense as there are recurring costs.
What exactly does this mean?
Yes
Which part?
Is there a difference between the two?
Cue all the users with lifetime passes not seeing that this is slowly becoming a problem…
I have a lifetime pass and stopped using it. I got my money’s worth over the years. No regrets.
Same. I finally switched over to jellyfin recently as it was low down on a long list of stuff I want to do, let alone need to do. I feel like I got my worth and if things mess up with jellyfin, I’ve got a temporary backup option to spin up without having to give a single penny more. Fingers crossed, no more of my data either seeing as it’s all uninstalled.
I literally only ever open these threads for the cope.
Abandoning streaming services only to become a serf of another commercial subscription service seems like such a bizarre move that I really don’t understand how Plex users even exist.
Wow, could you get any more condescending? We bought a product (10+ years ago in my case) and it still works great. Why would I switch to an inferior service, just because the FREE version of the product I already bought got worse?
This has no impact on anyone that actually paid for Plex.
With this move the free version of Plex got downgraded, to now have feature parity with Jellyfin. Meaning a VPN is required if you want to access your media on the go
Privacy for me. When they where sending out emails about what you watched. Kind of made the we don’t know what’s on your server line a lie. So how could I trust them. I still expect a massive sting where they have to tell the MPAA or something who has pirated content and they go after people. Surprised it hasn’t happened yet seems so obvious.
I’m not sure if you’re joking or not, but you can remotely stream from Jellyfin without using a VPN.
You CAN, but you really shouldn’t. Even the documentation says as much. The Jellyfin server is way to insecure to expose it to the open internet. In reality you can’t safely use Jellyfin remotely without a vpn
What problems? The ones that everyone keeps posting which are not a big deal. Sure they should get fixed and a lot of them have been.
‘I paid for this shit, and I will not allow it to be disrespected’. Sounds too much like Microsoft and Google apologists.
It does not say that in the documentation. What the documentation does have, however, are extensive instructions on how to make Jellyfin accessible on WAN: https://jellyfin.org/docs/general/post-install/networking/ https://jellyfin.org/docs/general/post-install/networking/reverse-proxy/
This is good to know, thanks for sharing. I’ve only got it local for now after installing at the weekend and wasn’t sure how secure it was for external access.
What do you mean?
To me the problem would be modifying the lifetime pass or simply removing it (for new customers) in favor of a fucking subscription only.
I always thought less of people whenever they mentioned plex.
Why? Plex was one of the original self hosted streaming platforms and for a long time was pretty much the only option. We have more options now, and those still on Plex, I imagine, are because they don’t have the time or capacity to perform a migration. So they stick with what they’ve got until it breaks.
Maybe this will be the one that breaks it.
I was a Plex holdout until 3 months ago. I wanted off Plex for the last 2 years but just never had the time.
For those waiting, don’t be like me, it’s easier than you think.
Same I put off and might still be on it if I didn’t loose my watch history. I figured if I was starting over might as well be with FOSS.
What was the migration like? I’ve been looking to get off Plex for a while now but like you say, haven’t had the time nor the energy.
Is it as simple as just installing it and pointing it at my NAS?
Pretty much. Personally, I spun up another VM and had the two running alongside each other for a few weeks. Doing it this way allows you to split the work. First get the base server up and running, do some testing and get familiar, then migrate a client.
It took more effort to get family to switch their client than it did to do the server.
I switched to Jellyfin about 4 years ago, no regrets. If I’m traveling I tunnel into my home server and watch whatever I want. As most of us, I started in Plex because back then I was with Synology (cheapest NAS they had back then). The moment I moved to building and maintaining my own server, I tried JF, liked it from day one, learned to deal with the caveats and fix them (took me a while), and have been on it since then.
Great, so the free Plex now was downgraded to feature parity with Jellyfin
I’m what way? You can remote stream on Jellyfin for zero dollars.
Yes, but you should use a reverse proxy for anything open to the internet. If you use a reverse proxy (without passing X-Forwarded-…), Plex and Jellyfin should have feature parity with this change.
So Plex has downgraded to [insert the word below feature parity] with Jellyfin.
In the sense, that you need a VPN for both
You don’t need a VPN for plex?
Nor do you for jellyfin
