Have you ever had to reinstall Plex Media Server, either on the same server or a new one, and you lose all your watched/unwatched statuses? It’s one of the worst things about Plex, and you’d think by now there would be a way to tie that watched/unwatched status to your Plex account. Luckily, there’s Trakt.tv! And with the official PMS plugin, you can push or pull watched status and scrobble play progress in real-time! Sound awesome? I agree, so let’s get it set up!

Just a disclosure; I’m not affiliated with Trakt.tv in any way, it’s just a nice tool I’ve used for years which has saved me several times during PMS migrations/reinstallations.

Step 1 – Create a Trakt.tv Account

Head on over to Trakt.TV and create a free account. If you end up really liking this tool, you should consider upgrading to a VIP account to support the developers.

Step 2 – Download the Trakt Plugin

Let’s get situated inside your downloads folder. If you used my previous guide, Getting Started with Plex, you should have a folder inside called “PMS” for all your Plex-related downloads. I’ll be downloading into that directory in this guide.

cd ~/Downloads/PMS

And now we will download the latest release of the plugin from GitHub, saving it as “Plex-Trakt-Scrobbler.zip” with the same command. We will then unzip the archive:

wget https://github.com/trakt/Plex-Trakt-Scrobbler/archive/master.zip -O Plex-Trakt-Scrobbler.zip unzip Plex-Trakt-Scrobbler.zip

Now let’s stop PMS so we don’t break anything:

sudo systemctl stop plexmediaserver.service

And then we can copy the Trakt plugin folder from the extracted archive to the Plex plugins directory:

cp -r Plex-Trakt-Scrobbler-*/Trakttv.bundle "/var/lib/plexmediaserver/Library/Application Support/Plex Media Server/Plug-ins/"

Now that the plugin is copied, we can start PMS back up:

sudo systemctl start plexmediaserver.service

Step 3 – Configuring the Trakt Plugin

And now just open up Plex web and check out your Channels section. You should see the Trakt plugin. Hover your mouse over the icon, and click the settings cog. You’ll see a section called “Authentication PIN” and a URL to visit. It should be “https://trakt.tv/pin/478” or similar. Open that URL in a new tab, log into Trakt, and copy the PIN they provide. Paste that PIN into the “Authentication PIN” field, then take a look at some of the other settings for the plugin. There is a handy list here on the plugin’s GitHub page detailing what all these settings do. The first one I’d set is the “Global Filter – Users” option. You’ll want to specify the Plex usernames you want Trakt to “scrobble,” or keep track of.

Step 4 – “Pushing” to Trakt.tv

When you’re finished tweaking the settings to your liking, go ahead and hit the “Save” button, then click the Trakt plugin icon. Click the “Sync” icon, and then scroll to the bottom and click “Push all to trakt.tv” option. This will “push” all your watched/unwatched status information to trakt.tv, and once that’s finished, you’re all set! The Trakt plugin will now keep track of what you watch and synchronize with trakt.tv automatically.

Wrap-Up

So there you have it. A handy little tool to keep track of your watched items and your watched progress, separate from what’s stored by PMS. Anytime you need to reinstall PMS or move servers, you can follow these same instructions to set up the Trakt plugin. Once set up, rather than “pushing” to trakt.tv, you’ll want to “pull” from trakt.tv after your media is all added to Plex, and all your watched/unwatched status information will be back in sync.

Again, if you really enjoy Trakt.tv, you should consider supporting the developers by purchasing a VIP account. If you’re feeling up to it, the next guide is here: