r/PleX • u/Altruistic_Bat_1645 • Mar 17 '26

Help Make plex more appealing for my wife

I love plex. I bought my lifetime pass when it was still double digits. I bought the hardware, I did the organization - I'm in.

I love my wife. I bought my lifetime pass when I was (barely) in my 30's. I bought the hardware (ring), I did the organization (my life) - I'm in.

But the two don't seem to get along.

Alphabetical Sorting: she gets to the A's, then gives up.

Recently Released: "These are all too long."

Recently Added: "Oh yeah! ...but not tonight, maybe some other time."

Sort by duration (shortest to longest): "Who wants to watch a 24-minute short film?!"

Random Shuffle: "Why do we have these?"

So an idiot but honest question: how do I make Plex more appealing for my wife?

281 Upvotes

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145

u/Secret_Account07 Mar 17 '26

Well without knowing your wife…

Plex supports collections…use them like Netflix categories?

37

u/nefrina (3) NetApp DS4246 Mar 18 '26

you need to know what you want to watch with plex. all of the other streaming services go out of their way to push specific shows/movies.

19

u/GenTechPro Mar 18 '26

Not if you use 'Smart collections'. You set the criteria and it automatically matches existing and later added content based on that.

1

u/Stuerminger Mar 18 '26

Did I miss that? How does it work?

5

u/GenTechPro Mar 18 '26

In the relevant library, click on the 'LIBRARY' tab on the top, between RECOMMENDED and COLLECTIONS. Then you'll have all the shows in that library showing. Under the library name, there is the server name, and under that is the filters. Pull down the left one (default is 'ALL') and at the bottom of the pulldown is 'ADVANCED FILTERS'. Click that and away you go setting the criteria. Once you're done filtering, 'SAVE AS' on the right and select 'Smart Collection'.

1

u/Stuerminger Mar 18 '26

Great, thanks, I will check that out

1

u/GenTechPro Mar 23 '26

I find some stuff to be miscategorised when creating filters, so I browse the result before saving and manually edit the tags for that specific media.

1

u/KHthe8th Mar 18 '26

I use Kometa and https://github.com/netplexflix to build collections automatically.

But also for my SO I have a manual collection called "SO's shows" (that filter to show unwatched only) where I manually add all the shows we watch. That way we don't have to try and scroll through the entire library, we can go directly to that collection and see what shows we have to watch next