Plex is discontinuing its “watch together” feature

I've been in a multi year process to move my users off plex onto jellyfin. They just keep doing things I'm not a fan of
- Jellyfin is absolute dogshit though.
  Sauce: I just installed it on my media server that concurrently runs plex. I run the app on a fire tv cube to use it... and it crashes* constantly.
  Edit: More stuff :)
  -My media library when imported immediately showed seasons of shows as separate shows, it doesn't intelligently automatically merge it like Plex would.
  -Subtitle options are not consistent or robust. I MUST have subtitles due to having a multilingual family which is largely ESL, if they speak English at all. This is the problem I tried moving to jellyfin to fix.
  
  I had a few metadata issues with Jellyfin until I changed the primary metadata source to be the same as what Radarr/Sonarr use so they all the file names match up and I've had no issues since.
  I also don't have a notable issues with subtitles in Jellyfin, but maybe your requirements have more friction. Have you tried the (iirc included by default) Jellyfin plugin to automatically download subtitles for your stuff? Or the *arr program that handles subtitles (I forget its name)?
  
  Works great here, and my users are very happy with it. Not disputing your experience, just saying it's not universal.
  Could be a compatibility issue with amazon's android fork? I have only used the android client on google pixel, samsung phones and AOSP builds.

The eternal problem of open source: people will happily pay for proprietary software and services, complain that open source isn't ready. Then when it is, they will not donate a single cent to continue development but instead create passive aggressive posts and issues demanding features or shitting on the project.
Anti Commercial-AI license

Obviously they got outside pressure to remove this because of muh ease of piracy sharing
- Honestly I really don't like how self hosted streaming services have been lumped into the same category as piracy. I have no issue buying media. If the law says I can't share it outside my household I will comply without arbitrary software locks.
  My concern is that media companies will go after Jellyfin. They don't really need to win all they need to due is bankrupt everyone involved.
  
  Don't worry, there are countries where it's perfectly legal to rip your own physical media and use it in a digital library. There are some countries where it's even legal to download a pirated digital copy of your owned media.
  Jellyfin will remain, and even if the capitalist pigs try and go after it - which is already close to impossible - they'll find shelter in a country with moral values.

I'll sadly have to keep using Plex until jellyfish makes library sharing simple.
I have like 10 different family members using my server. If I have to do anything beyond just letting them log in to a plex account on the app to get access, they just won't.
- I have like 10 different family members using my server. If I have to do anything beyond just letting them log in to a plex account on the app to get access, they just won't.
  Umm that is all you need to do with jellyfin. You can setup wizarr and give them invites to create an account or just manually make them and give out the info to people.
  
  Yup, took my SO like 10s to get on our Jellyfin server. No issues here.
- Is adding a URL too much? Jellyfin is also just login in addition to enter the server URL.
  
  Yes. Even with Plex I've had people just never log in. Or after I log them in and set it as a favorite they just never go to the unfamiliar icon.
  Most of the problem isn't even Plex/Jellyfin/etc.'s fault, it's that the UI of smart tvs is a nightmare hellscape running on underpowered hardware and people just want to interact with it as little as possible. The absolute best thing would be to copy Netflix/Disney/etc and throw a QR code on the screen to sidestep that by throwing authentication to the phone.
  
  Yes. Anything harder than Netflix is too much
  
  I mean fuck yeah, probably. I share with my family and I had to check their email for them to prove that they received it.
- I haven't tried Plex but Jellyfin is super easy. Type in IP, username and password and you're done. Only need to setup port forwarding on the router to make it work.
- Isn't it trivial to run both? You just point them at the same library right?
- You need a network level solution. You could pickup a few cheap single board computers and setup Tailscale or Netbird to route traffic back to your server.

Switch to jellyfin, it's really at the point where it's ready for everyone
- I run both Plex and Jellyfin. Jellyfin is ready for everyone who doesn’t have to deal with the Mother-in-Law Factor. Plex has an easy setup process, and I could walk my MIL through it on my phone. In 5 minutes, her TV was connected to my server.
  Jellyfin isn’t to that point yet, and likely never will be. Since there’s no centralized server for an app to phone home to, there’s no way to create a unified account creation/login experience. Jellyfin is nice as a “just for me” server. But as soon as I have to help others use it, it becomes a nightmare. Walking my MIL through setting up Jellyfin on her TV was the reason I re-installed Plex in the first place.
  I had finally converted my wife away from using paid streaming apps, and dealt with all of the “Why do I have to use three different apps to access it on my three different devices? They all look different and are harder to use” complaints. By the time it got around to my MIL, I was tired of dealing with it and just reinstalled Plex so people could have a consistent experience.
  I still use Jellyfin for my personal viewing because I prefer it. But saying “just ditch Plex, Jellyfin is ready now” is a little disingenuous. Jellyfin is ready for the people who want to use it. But if you’re trying to convince people to ditch their streaming apps, you’re fighting a lot of social inertia. You need to be able to provide a consistent experience across their different devices, with a decent login experience. And Jellyfin definitely isn’t there yet.
  
  Thank you for being a voice of reason. People here are completely out of touch from reality
  
  It's really not hard though, it's just entering a domain name. If you pick a decent one, it can be very memorable.
  All of my stuff is at "thing.domain.com." For Jellyfin, it's "media.mydomain.com." Nextcloud is "cloud.mydomain.com." Actual Budget is "budget.domain.com." Enter that, then you're good. Repeat on any device.
  Is that really a barrier for people? Surely this is sufficient:
  Install Jellyfin app
  Enter domain.com
  Login
  Do that once and you're good pretty much forever.
  I've used the website, android app, and WebOS app, and they all work pretty similarly, not sure what's confusing there.
  Is the Plex experience significantly different?
  
  Jellyfin is not there yet but it definitely can be. It can be done pretty easily without any centralised server.
  Sending people magic links to their accounts on their phones that auto log them into Jellyfin.
  Make IP dictionary to have people type "cat mug door end" which pings the server with a login from an IP.
  Show QR code.
  Scan with an authorised app which pings the server to authorise the device on behalf of the user.
  It's passwordless 4 word input + phone scan that can be optimised for TV pretty heavily since you only need make something 10^12 unique to account for all IPv4.
  It will take around 15-30 hours to code though for a person familiar with Jellyfin on android TV and server.
  
  I dunno, I found it easier to move my family to JF.
  I made them a bunch of accounts and sent them via signal.
  For my mum I logged in as her and configured everything how she would want.
  I didnt have to explain to anybody that remote stream needs to be unlimited bandwidth for better performance.
  If mum forgets her password I can reset it.
  To log her TV in we used quick connect where I had her enter the 6 digit code on the tv.
  We used SyncPlay to watch a movie together.
  
  I'm in the same boat, I use Jellyfin where I can but Plex is still so much better for sharing, especially with non-technical people so I run both. Really hoping the Jellyfin folks realize they can sell a relay service to make some money and fund their development to improve the app. Seems to be working well for Homeassistant!

Although Plex is running on your server it isn't there to do what you want.. unless Plex's real owner permits it.
That's how proprietary software works.

Jellyfin has much better Syncplay than plex
release announcement:
https://jellyfin.org/posts/jellyfin-10-6-0/
- Is there some trick to get it to work properly? Everytime I tried to use it, it works fine for like 10 minutes and then everyone desyncs to hell.
  It's still better than Plex's which didn't work at all though.
  
  Ah, strange.
  I've never had any issues, but I also haven't used it in a while.
  Might be related to transcoding/sub-burning? https://github.com/jellyfin/jellyfin-web/issues/6210
  
  I personally had really huge problems in the beginning with this feature, it depends on the file format, if it needs to be transcoded, if the subs are external or in the video container and what your users are watching it on.
  I can give you some advice on what to look for, but it will come down to just tinkering with the settings until you find something that works for you the best.
  Hardware acceleration is quite important, especially when there are like 6 people watching at once and 4 of them just refuse to watch it using the jellyfin desktop client that actually supports direct play feature (video does not need to be transcoded).
  Switching languages of subtitles sometimes mess things up, especially when the subtitles need to be extracted from the video container and then sent separately. Sometimes it just lags the video for up to two seconds. It usually just messes with one person that then is a few seconds behind so not a big deal. Although I recommend setting languages in the very beginning so it does not break sync mid-way.
  I also limited the thread count of the single ffmpeg stream to just one. Then i also limited the stream buffer to like 5 minutes so it just won't try to prepare a 4k movie for one person for the next several minutes. From my experience anyways, when we were watching some movie that is quite big, the jelly went bananas and a single user just maxed out the CPU and GPU. Ever since I set those limits, while also having the hardware acceleration enabled, the sync-play feature caused me little to no trouble. --- One of my friends has a slow internet that sometimes likes to drop things on the way and when his net drops out totally, it usually causes some issues and he then has to restart the browser tab. Although rare, it still happens from time to time.
  I have an Intel i5 8400 and a UHD Graphics 630. The performance is good enough for my uses and movies play without issues even when 6 people are watching while my dad sits on tv while also watching something else.
  Oh yes, now there are also a few other things to worry about. Make sure to check the maximum per-user bitrate the jelly will enable the users to watch. It's 40Mbps by default, I think. And you do not really need anything above it anyways, especially if streaming over the public internet.
  The second thing is having a Nvidia GPU. From what I heard, the consumer graphics card can have up to 3 consecutive video streams running at once. But since I do not have anything Nvidia, I can't really care, tho I would strongly recommend you checking the GPU limitations including both the encoder/decoder limits and the codec support. This will help you set the buffer limits and codec support.
  So full wrap, you'll just have to monitor your server's vitals and see if there is a bottleneck. Check your users client compatibility, see if the GPU or CPU is maxed out or if your ISP just isn't giving you a big enough pipe. It just comes down to tinkering.

I'm seeing a lot of love for Jellyfin in the comments. Seems like Jellyfin is finally mature enough to give a real shot.
Does anyone know how Emby is doing in relation to Plex feature parity?
- I can confirm jellyfin is great.... But I have moved onto burning onto physical Media (BD) to avoid HDD / SSD failure with data loss
  
  Why not both? BD for backup, Jellyfin for convenience.
  
  Optical disks rot even in perfect storage conditions. There's no failure proof storage solution easily available.
- Emby I feel is more mature then jellyfin in the sense of every device my family or I have just works on emby but has some issues on jellyfin. Also emby has features closer to plex that jellyfin doesn't have, like offline downloads and, at least in the emby beta, smart playlists. Jellyfin gives you more settings options for things like transcoding and per user settings than emby or plex. Both programs do some things better than plex too, like scheduling individual server tasks or outright disabling them. Overall from my experience a direct competitor to plex right now is emby while I would say a few more features are needed for jellyfin to be a direct competitor.
  
  Maybe I'm not understanding offline downloads, but I'm able to download media on jellyfin and watch it offline.
  
  That's interesting, I wonder why no one in these comments mentioned it if it's a bit farther along than Jellyfin. Maybe just good word-of-mouth marketing?

"We’ve spent two years requiring our apps from the ground up to boost our development speed, which should enable us to bring new features to you more efficiently, across more platforms,"
... "and that's why we're deleting a bunch of features never to bring them back. Because we're just so efficient!" Crazy how many companies use this awful excuse.
Also is that a misquote by the author or did they really write "requiring"?
- It’s wild to me. I’ve been in software development for almost 8 years now. The number one thing that we’re told across both companies (one small company and one huge company) is to not remove existing features or APIs.
- Removing old features so we can bring them back as paid features later on.
- More often than not that is corporate speak for "we fired the old team and replaced them with cheaper workers. And we didn't want to pay them to learn the old code/they tried but failed, so we are dumping features now"
- Misquotes are unlikely thanks to copy-paste. The post from Plex has been edited, so I think it was to correct that typo.
- Ah, that makes sense. I didn't realize we had asked for a new UI, here I was thinking we just wanted basic quality of life updates

Lack of feature parity is the number one thing holding so many people back from switching to Jellyfin. Of Plex is going to start deleting beloved features, a lot of minds will be made up very quick.
- This is a feature that Jellyfin natively has already. So now Jellyfin exceeds Plex in some areas.
  
  Now if they could just tidy up remote access so that everyone is comfortable being able to use it.
  They really need to partner with let's encrypt. If they implemented automated SSL generation and regeneration in the app and a dynamic DNS/Port registry, they would get mountains of new users.
  Just tidying up remote access would probably be enough to sync Plex.
- Honestly, the two reasons I've been sticking with Plex is the federated/shared libraries and watch together.
  If they're starting to axe those then I see no reason to continue using it.
  
  Jellyfin has had sync play for a long time
  
  Id love to have the federated libraries in jellyfin. That would be amazing.
- I really try to move to Jellyfin, but there's always some papercuts that block me. Tried it last weekend again, and:
  It just can't find most of my movies in the NAS share. They never appear in the library.
  The music player cannot play all my files. DSF files are transcoded to AAC. Also finamp streams AAC and not Opus, and uses more data than Plexamp did.
  I also tried Navidrome for music. Weirdly it had hiccups playing some files, and DSF was again a problem.
  I really want to get out from Plex, but I use Plexamp so much and it handles my huge music library really well it's hard to switch :(
  
  All my media is shared from a Raspberry Pi 4 with a HDD attached to it via NFS. Jellyfin runs as a container on a cheap Chinese mini pc I got off AliExpress. I've not had any issues over the network. It even transcodes on a share of the Pi as my SSD that has Jellyfin on is too small for larger movies.
  
  Plexamp right now is the biggest reason I have not even thought of moving to something else. I have yet to see a music player that comes close to the features Plexamp has.
  
  I loved the idea of navidrome and also briefly ran an instance, and like you use plexamp heavily. I stopped using Navi because one day it broke, and I found the plexamp experience just better.
  Maybe it's time to try again.

I have had a plex instance but when they started adding their own movies and crapola into it, and requiring logins and etc etc etc I started keeping a Jellyfin instance live as a hedge. I still use Plex primarily, but use Jellyfin and keep it patched just in case. If there's any kind of ugly action with Plex, I feel like my bets are pretty well hedged. Plex definitely has a lot more polish than Jellyfin, but I wouldn't doubt if there is a rug-pull in some way or another. After all, Plex sold a bunch of lifetime subscriptions ONCE but they still end up paying to support those. Sooner or later they are going to want more money again.
- I used to use Plex as well but similar to your remarks, they started doing a lot more updates that added a "corporate" feel to it such as adding their own movies/tv. Nothing inherently wrong with that but in my opinion, when a platform has the option to add features such as that, that costs money. And they're gonna want to get that money back somehow. Yeah they offer subscriptions but to me this all was a redflag that I could see them taking further in the future. Where as Jellyfin is completely free at the cost of a little extra work to setup.

What hell is wrong with these idiots?
- They took private investment.
- Don't spend time maintaining niche features seems smart.
  
  I would agree if the features they did work on made sense.
  How come every time I open Plex there is another social media integration, yet device downloads haven't worked for literal years.
  Plex itself is niche software, offering niche features is why Plex gained popularity, watch together is a great feature, I often use when I'm cleaning house so I can watch a show even as I move around rooms, same thing when cooking, which let's the person in the kitchen watch while others may be in the living room.

Jellyfin is love, Jellyfin is life.
- It's bad. But it's the best we've got.
  
  Speak for yourself, Jellyfin has been awesome for me. Fantastic piece of software.

people still use plex after the last sneaky they pulled?
- I paid for a lifetime pass like six years ago or more. It was definitely before Jellyfin was well known or well developed.
  I'm probably gonna keep using it until they do the whole "lifetime is over" crap these kind of companies usually do.
  I'll at least have gotten my moneys worth.
  
  I paid for the lifetime pass maybe, 10 years ago? I dunno, it's been a very long time. It's still my primary. I've been trialing Jellyfin, but there are still enough quirks that my wife (non-techie at all) won't put up with, so yeah. That, and Plex makes it too easy to share outside my house, not sure where Jellyfin is at with it. I appreciate Jellyfin for what it is though, it has a lot of potential.
  
  Just because you paid for it doesn't mean you can't switch to the better, free option.
  
  I paid for it and literally never used it.
- What sneaky?
- Got a plex lifetime sub like 7 years ago… As soon as Jellyfin allows downloads for offline viewing, I’m jumping ship. I know I’ll have to figure out TV listing data for OTA recordings, but that seems like a small price to pay. I’ve already got Jellyfin setup and running in my Kubernetes cluster for my video backups, but plex thus far “just works”.
  
  As soon as Jellyfin allows downloads for offline viewing
  Time to jump ship then...
  
  Just an FYI that you can definitely download shows/movies to any device via Jellyfin - just did so on my tablet yesterday...jump ship!!
  
  The android app has had downloads for years, they just download the entire file to your phone.
  Streamyfin is a newer android app that also works very well with downloads.
  
  I know Findroid allows easy downloading and offline watching. Fladder (another newer Android client) also has downloading, haven't tried it myself yet.
  
  For music, offline play is already available via Finamp. For everything else I'm personally making due with the regular Download feature that just gives yout the raw files. But then again it doesn't really come up often, since I don't really consume anything but audiobooks when I'm on the go.
  
  I've had a Lifetime PlexPass since 2013, so I've definitely had my moneys worth and then some, but for the last 2 years I’ve been dual wielding Jellyfin and watching it slowly get to the point where I can move over entirely.
  I'm 100% Jellyfin now for my personal playback at home, and will be transitioning users over to it as soon as it gets a few more user management features for remote users.
  
  As soon as Jellyfin allows downloads for offline viewing, I’m jumping ship.
  https://i.xno.dev/02fl4.png
- Gotta provide details. Don't leave us hanging.

Lame. I’ve used this feature a lot. It feels like such a basic thing to include.
SharePlay is a standard feature in Apple devices, and it handles it. But only in supported apps.
The pandemic showed how nice such a feature can be for a lot of people.

My friends and I use syncplay + mpv for this. It works well, and even though it's designed around local file playback, you can add https URLs to the playlist. So this with nginx serving the files has been a great solution.
You can even play YouTube videos by adding yt-dlp to mpv, but that doesn't reliably work right now as far as I can tell.

LoL. That feature is literally the only reason I also have a Plex docker pointing to my library. But they’ve definitely not been supporting it for a while, because I don’t think it’s worked well in forever. Last few times I tried it with friends, we ended up having to just try to hit play at the same time.
Oh well. One less container now.

It was a cool idea, but I could never get it to sync everyone's playback properly without constant buffering for all involved. We just sync manually by counting down from 3.

Good thing I chose jellyfin over plex. This is the main reason I got jellyfin.

Dang that's sucks, I never used it but it's neat in concept

For anyone in that spot of being savvy-ish but having fellow users that finally got used to plex:
A work around is Xteve and owncast. I was successfully able to make an owncast broadcast into a "DVR channel".
Its cluegy but it does work. My tech level in this stuff is spotty. I'm used to stacks of tech but more for physical control systems (NOT consumer facing). But I was able to get that to work.
Edit: little bit of clarification: Xteve will let you add DVR to your plex server. It's possible to tie owncast into Xteve. That allows users to cue into a "DVR" channel which is kind of "simulcasting" whatever you're pointing owncast to. In my case it was a screen share of sportsball, but it could be whatever.
- cluegy
  I believe the word you're looking for is "kludgey."
  
  you are correct. On holiday with a few beers I'm surprised I got that close lol

First they removed downloads and now this? Feels shitty. I used this feature weekly to watch a show with a remote friend.
- Downloads havent been removed
  
  In 2022 they added a paywall to the feature which was previously free to all users of a Plex Pass server. https://support.plex.tv/articles/downloads-sync-faq/
- Downloads definitely haven’t been removed. I use it virtually every day to watch stuff on my iPad at work.
  
  In 2022 they added a paywall to the feature which was previously free to all users of a Plex Pass server. https://support.plex.tv/articles/downloads-sync-faq/

I never used that feature. Sometimes less is more. Anyone actively using it in plex or Jelly?
- Probably around 40% of my watching is via syncplay on Jellyfin, as I like watching with buddies.
  Sans jellyfin you have to find a way for both of you to access the same file/stream and manually sync across snack/bathroom breaks or use the external and separate syncplay app.
  I do like the external syncplay app but if I'm going to have to get the file to them anyways, why not just stream it synced? In my mind this is a really convenient feature.
  It is not perfect, in my experience;
  on rare occasions, it gets 'stuck' and won't sync correctly, so one will play but noth the other, pausing one unpauses the other, etc. Usually rebooting helps, but if not, I just manually sync
  there was 1 occassion which made no sense. I played a movie with a friend, we were watching together, but they were ahead of me by a whole ~15 minutes by the end of the film. Neither of us felt it was fast/slow or skipping anything.
  I haven't had luck using syncplay on my TV. The feature exists but it doesn't actually work.
  But these are rare, minor gripes IMO. I'm glad Jellyfin has this feature.
  
  Thanks for sharing
- I never used it, but it was a popular third party add-on before the feature was integrated.
  
  Yeah I don’t even used the SharePlay on Apple. Question for people using it: How do you start that? First do you start over phone/whatsapp/messengers? Or do you see people online in plex and propose to watch? For me either people are in different timezone so not practical or will be home and we watch it irl sync on the same tv.