Plex

The plex platform allows you to connect a Plex Media Server to Home Assistant. It will allow you to control media playback and see the current playing item.

Setup

The preferred way to setup the Plex platform is by enabling the discovery component which requires GDM enabled on your Plex server.

If your Plex server has local authentication enabled or multiple users defined, Home Assistant requires an authentication token to be entered in the frontend. Press “CONFIGURE” to do it.

If you don’t know your token, see Finding your account token / X-Plex-Token.

If your server enforces SSL connections, write “on” or “true” in the “Use SSL” field. If it does not have a valid SSL certificate available but you still want to use it, write “on” or “true” in the “Do not verify SSL” field as well.

You can also enable the plex platform directly by adding the following lines to your configuration.yaml:

# Example configuration.yaml entry
media_player:
  - platform: plex

In case discovery does not work (GDM disabled or non-local plex server), you can create ~/.homeassistant/plex.conf manually.

{"IP_ADDRESS:PORT": {"token": "TOKEN", "ssl": false, "verify": true}}

IP_ADDRESS (Required): IP address of the Plex Media Server.
PORT (Required): Port where Plex is listening. Default is 32400.
TOKEN (Optional): Only if authentication is required. Set to null (without quotes) otherwise.
ssl (Optional): Whether to use SSL/TLS or not. Defaults to False if not present.
verify (Optional): Perform a verification of the certificate. To allow invalid or self-signed SSL certificates set it to False. Defaults to True if not present.

Customization

You can customize the Plex component by adding any of the variables below to your configuration:

# Example configuration.yaml entry
media_player:
  - platform: plex
    entity_namespace: 'plex'
    include_non_clients: true
    scan_interval: 5
    show_all_controls: false
    use_custom_entity_ids: true
    use_episode_art: true

entity_namespace (Optional): Prefix for entity ID’s. Defaults to null. Useful when using overlapping components (ex. Apple TV and Plex components when you have Apple TV’s you use as Plex clients). Go from media_player.playroom2 to media_player.plex_playroom
include_non_clients (Optional): Display non-recontrollable clients (ex. remote clients, PlexConnect Apple TV’s). Defaults to false.
scan_interval (Optional): Amount in seconds in between polling for device’s current activity. Defaults to 10 seconds.
show_all_controls (Optional): Forces all controls to display. Defaults to false. Ignores dynamic controls (ex. show volume controls for client A but not for client B) based on detected client capabilities. This option allows you to override this detection if you suspect it to be incorrect.
use_custom_entity_ids (Optional): Name Entity ID’s by client ID’s instead of friendly names. Defaults to false. HA assigns entity ID’s on a first come first serve basis. When you have identically named devices connecting (ex. media_player.plex_web_safari, media_player.plex_web_safari2), you can’t reliably distinguish and or predict which device is which. This option avoids this issue by using unique client ID’s (ex. media_player.dy4hdna2drhn).
use_episode_art (Optional): Display TV episode art instead of TV show art. Defaults to false.

Service `play_media`

Plays a song, playlist, TV episode, or video on a connected client.

Music

Service data attribute	Optional	Description	Example
`entity_id`	no	`entity_id` of the client	media_player.theater_plex
`media_content_id`	no	Quote escaped JSON with `library_name`, `artist_name`, `album_name`, `track_name`, `shuffle` (0 or 1).	{ \“library_name\” : \“My Music\”, \“artist_name\” : \“Adele\”, \“album_name\” : \“25\”, \“track_name\” : \“hello\”, \“shuffle\”: \“0\” }
`media_content_type`	no	Type of media to play, in this case `MUSIC`	MUSIC

Playlist

Service data attribute	Optional	Description	Example
`entity_id`	no	`entity_id` of the client	media_player.theater_plex
`media_content_id`	no	Quote escaped JSON with `playlist_name`, `shuffle` (0 or 1).	{ \“playlist_name\” : \“The Best of Disco\” \“shuffle\”: \“0\” }
`media_content_type`	no	Type of media to play, in this case `PLAYLIST`	PLAYLIST

TV Episode

Service data attribute	Optional	Description	Example
`entity_id`	no	`entity_id` of the client	media_player.theater_plex
`media_content_id`	no	Quote escaped JSON with `library_name`, `show_name`, `season_number`, `episode_number`, `shuffle` (0 or 1).	{ \“library_name\” : \“Adult TV\”, \“show_name\” : \“Rick and Morty\”, \“season_number\” : 2, \“episode_number\” : 5, \“shuffle\”: \“0\” }
`media_content_type`	no	Type of media to play, in this case `EPISODE`	EPISODE

Video

Service data attribute	Optional	Description	Example
`entity_id`	no	`entity_id` of the client	media_player.theater_plex
`media_content_id`	no	Quote escaped JSON with `library_name`, `video_name`, `shuffle` (0 or 1).	{ \“library_name\” : \“Adult Movies\”, \“video_name\” : \“Blade\”, \“shuffle\”: \“0\” }
`media_content_type`	no	Type of media to play, in this case `VIDEO`	VIDEO

Compatibility

Client	Limitations
Any (when all controls disabled)	A stop button will appear but is not functional.
Any (when casting)	Controlling playback will work but with error logging.
Any (remote client)	Controls disabled.
Apple TV (PlexConnect)	Controls disabled. Music does not work.
iOS	None
NVidia Shield	Mute disabled. Volume set below 2 will cause error logging. Controlling playback when the Shield is both a client and a server will work but with error logging
Plex Web	None
Tivo Plex App	Only play, pause, stop/off controls enabled

Notes

At this moment, the Plex platform only supports one Plex Media Server.
It is possible to get errors that look like the following.
```
ERROR:plexapi:http://192.168.1.10:32400: ('Connection aborted.', BadStatusLine("''",))
INFO:homeassistant.components.media_player.plex:No server found at: http://192.168.1.10:32400
```
If this occurs, check the setting Server>Network>Secure connections in your Plex Media Server: if it is set to Preferred or Required, you may need to manually set the ssl and verify booleans in the plex.conf file to, respectively, true and false. See the “Setup” section above for details.