TL;DR
- Plex is beta-testing a model new model of its cellular app.
- Together with a brand new look, the up to date design will permit all Plex apps for all platforms to share the same codebase.
- Plex has directions for the way to do this in your Android or iOS gadget now, forward of an early 2025 rollout.
Through the years, Plex has expanded from a distinct segment service for people with the time and assets to construct their very own media servers to a method for anybody to find, discover, stream, and price all manners of free content material. Sadly, the Plex interface folks have used on their smartphones has remained clunky and comparatively unchanged for years. Nicely, that modifications now.
Right now, Plex is essentially redesigning its cellular app for each Android and iOS gadgets. It’s higher organized, bolder, extra image-heavy, and feels extra trendy general. Most significantly, although, it represents a shift in how Plex is approaching its whole ecosystem of apps throughout the myriad platforms it helps.
One of many huge issues Plex faces that almost all different streaming giants don’t is the breadth of its platform help. If you happen to personal an internet-connected gadget that may show content material, chances are high it might help a Plex app. Whereas that’s nice, it places a variety of further work on Plex’s plate because it wants to determine inventive methods to make all these apps look cohesive and provide the identical performance as different platforms.
The brand new cellular redesign is the primary important step the corporate has taken to repair this. Beneath the hood, the brand new Android/iOS apps run on a more moderen codebase, one that every one different Plex apps will finally share. It will permit Plex to design a brand new characteristic for its apps and roll it out to all platforms concurrently, permitting it to work sooner with fewer useful resource commitments.
Even ignoring that, the brand new app design simply seems to be very nice. It’s bought much more photographs to make it pop off your display screen, together with a long-requested characteristic: title paintings. Within the picture above, you possibly can see that Labyrinth — the 1986 cult favourite — has the precise “Labyrinth” emblem on the prime somewhat than a easy typeface shared throughout all different films and exhibits. It’s the little issues!
Many of the options you’ll discover on different platforms are additionally right here, together with a newly designed profile web page. Plex additionally made efforts to maintain the overwhelming scale of the Plex app extra organized. And, for these of you with your individual media servers, you haven’t been left within the mud: there’s a brand new “Libraries” tab on the backside that can home all of your server connections.
If you wish to give the brand new cellular app a shot, Plex has directions at its help boards. There are some things to notice: there will likely be a restricted variety of slots for iOS customers and there will likely be a number of lacking options (playlists and forged help, for instance). Nevertheless, it is a beta, in order that’s to be anticipated.
Plex hopes to roll this out in steady kind in early 2025.