Ho ho ho! Join us this fine evening around the warming glow of your multi-core space heaters, busily slinging ones and zeros to you and yours. Pour that nog, sprinkle on some freshly grated nutmeg, and scooch your chair a little closer to that 24U rack in your basement. We’ve got some cool stuff to announce to round out 2018. Plus, Barkley does his best impression of a Sand Person #nospoilers

Dashboard and Dancer

So, let’s talk about the new server Dashboard. You’ve amassed your libraries; you’ve checked them twice; you still have no idea who’s naughty or nice. We’re here to help! Wondering which of your buddies is availing themselves of your media goodness? Wanna know what’s most popular amongst your family? Look no further; the Dashboard answers all that and more. We’ve upgraded the basic “Now Playing” area, and we’ve added some powerful new insights for our beloved Plex Pass holders. You guys literally put the (almond) milk and (gluten-free) cookies on our plates.











One neat thing is that the server has actually been collecting data for quite some time in anticipation of this feature, so if you’ve been running a server for a while, you can actually dive back about three years in the media consumption graph.

We already have more enhancements planned to show full view history, the ability to click through to see which four people played Frozen 97 times, etc. Stay tuned. The Dashboard will evolve, and eventually become sentient. Don’t say we didn’t warn you.

You’ll need the latest version of the Plex Media Server (v1.14.1 or newer) and our web app (v3.81.1 or newer; available now in our hosted web app and coming to the bundled server version soon) to see all this deliciousness.

Sleighs and Subtitles

We’ve also been working on improvements for subtitles, another feature that’s super important to many of you. We’ve made big improvements to the reliability of subtitles-on-demand—if you haven’t tried it recently, give it another shot and let us know how it’s working for you. We’re also in the process of adding more management features for Plex Pass holders like offset adjustment (available now on Apple TV), as well as manually importing and deleting subs (iOS and Android mobile). Those features will of course be spreading across all our apps.

Enhanced Players

We’ve touched on this a bit in previous posts, but we’ve made some massive improvements to our audio player on mobile platforms, and the video player on iOS and Apple TV. We know the ability to direct play media is important to you, and even though it required a total gutting of the player stack (which is not a small deal), we’re making great progress. Forget about gapless (babytown frolics), have you even heard Sweet Fades, bro? HAVE YOU EVEN DIRECT PLAYED MKV ON YOUR APPLE TV? NO!? Go ahead. We’ll be here when you get back from having your mind blown. Direct play can make a huge difference for low-powered servers (so much so that we’ve heard Al Gore might be presenting us with some sort of award in Oslo), but it also makes life much better even on more powerful servers with super fast startup and seeking.

Stocking Stuffer for New Subscribers

LAST, BUT NOT LEAST: as a reward for reading this many words in a blog post, we’re kicking off a holiday sale for those who are still on the fence about picking up a Plex Pass… 25% off a lifetime subscription! Use offer code HOLIDAY25. Offer available for new subscribers only and expires at 11:59pm PST, Saturday, December 22.

As promised, here’s Barkley offering up Tennis Ball à la Tatooine in exchange for your patience: