Plex is something many of us use on a regular basis to access our media; be they photos, videos, music collections or more. It’s one of the best ways that I’ve found to share your media around your house, to stream it to your laptop, your TV, your kids iPad, or even to your tablet half way around the world while you’re on holidays.
The Android experience hasn’t always been great, but the developers have clearly been burning the midnight oil in recent months, bringing update after update with large improvements. Version 4.2 isn’t a complete overhaul, but it does introduce a number of tweaks to the user interface to make it a bit easier to use.
Discover Mode is a new addition to help you browse the content in your library, particularly if you’ve got a lot of media in there. A panel at the bottom of the navigation display allows users to toggle between the traditional navigation mode, and discover mode.
Previously, while Plex supported multiple users, the preferences weren’t separated, so the changes one of your users might make would affect others and vice versa. Now, users can save their own Account, Experience and Video preferences, without messing it up for everyone else.
Here’s the full changelog straight from Plex:
NEW:
- Add ‘Discover’ mode for libraries, a smart way to browse your content.
- The ‘Video’, ‘Experience’ and ‘Account’ preference categories are now saved separately for each user.
- Improve active player dialog with better UI and new ‘open remote controller’ option.
FIXES:
- Improve efficiency of server / player discovery.
- Fix a memory leak when casting media to another device.
- Fix crash during Google Play purchase flow.
- Fix an Airplay crash when media was about to start.
- Better library management in navigation menu when switching servers.
- Rearrange library picker items for consistency with other clients.
- Change album and photo thumbnails to make them square as in other platforms.
- Upgrade Experimental player to resolve memory leaks.
Plex for Android is free on the Play Store, but if you feel like supporting the great work behind the app (and the service), you can buy a Plex Pass which unlocks some extra features and gives you a feel-good feeling.
Loving this latest update on my Nexus 7 and Chromecast. Also run Plex on an iPhone, AppleTV, Sony Bravia and two iPads. Needless to say it’s a big hit in my household. It’s hard to remember what Pre-Plex life was even like 🙂
Agreed Simon. Can’t remember media consumption before Plex made it so easy.
Plex + chromeCast = <3 of my life 🙂