Plex Dash

[FIXED] Issue has been fixed. Rated five stars. Thanks developers. I see a lot of potential in this app, and I would grant it five stars, but currently any attempt to swap out artwork through this app results in an instant error upon pressing the “up arrow” when you go to edit the artwork. I check the settings of the app, assuming that for some reason it didn’t automatically prompt me to enable access to my photos, but in settings the app itself it has no toggle to switch or to enable photo access. Which is why I believe it is failing. When fixed I will gladly rate five stars.

I love to fire this guy up and get a bit of insight into what my Plex server is up to under its hood. It’s a solid, effective app if you want some info at-a-glance: which media is being converted, what’s been played and how often, storage being utilized, and a few other metrics. I highly recommend it for power users of Plex, or simply folks who are curious. On the surface, the UX is straightforward and you’ll find it easy to call up said info. I suppose you could argue it could use a bit of tweaking as far as the way you navigate the different metrics, but I’m more than willing to deal with worse if it means having access to the info the app provides. All in all, the app succeeds admirably at what it sets out to do, and that’s more justification than any to give it 5 stars. Enjoy it, if only because it’s provided to Plex users for free. Many thanks to the Plex folk behind it!

It is easy to use even for non-techie types. Very useful for snooping on your own libraries and also with free sources. I would prefer that they were include an option for it to offer some of the time-based metrics with greater precision. Last night, I started watching a 1 hour show but fell asleep halfway through. I finished it this morning. When I looked back at the record, it told me that I started it “12 hours ago” and I started it again “6 hours ago”. I can see that someone might argue that this casual timekeeping can be more useful for most users. But as the days pass, it will only tell me the number of days/weeks/months/years since an item was played. But why not offer this info in a standard date/time format. It’s programming too sloppy for the talented coders at Plex. There are so many times where you need precise datestamps for all kinds of troubleshooting or server metrics. A server logging util should become less and less useful due to date inaccuracies as minutes turn to hours, to days, to weeks, to months, to years. Probably this slop extends to decades and centuries but it hasn’t happened to me this far. I’d also like to see a summary of dropped frames in a show, a graph showing the general CPU load in 1 minute increments, maybe even an option to show server/CPU temps during playback. Don’t let these complaints fool you: I am a big time fan of this media server. I’m not giving it up any time soon.