Plex is my favorite service for storing all of my media in one place. All my music, tv shows and movies, and even photos are in one place and can be accessed across many devices. No matter if I’m at home or away I can always stream any movies or download any show for offline use. Now Plex is announcing a more customizable experience in its mobile apps for individual control. Along with that Plex is announcing support for podcasts, storing and streaming. Which reminds me, I need to start working on my podcast.
For the new redesign of its app, Plex has focused on three main things: customizable home screen, more natural top-level design, effortlessly cross server boundaries. For your home screen, you can now reorder or add any sections (such as “Recently Added” or “On Deck”) for ease of access. There are also new tabs at the bottom of the app to navigate between different media types quickly. The tabs are also customizable as well, so if you only do movies and tv shows, you don’t have to have music or photos shown.
Lastly, the default source for each media type can be customized as well. Which means if you listen to your music, but watch a friend’s movie from their server, that’s perfectly fine. Alternatively, do you listen to podcasts from the web, that’s ok too.
Speaking of which, YES!, After many years of requesting, Plex has brought podcast support to its service. Now you can stream podcasts from a variety of sources and add them to your content library. Podcasts can also use features such as On Deck, synched view state, rich metadata, and all other Plex media features.
With bringing podcasts into the mix, Plex has also updated it media player as well to support variable speed playback and quick skipping backward and forwards. There’s also rich search support to discover any specific podcast by name, genre, or popularity. Plex has machine learning support to offer similar podcasts as well, once you start listening to one that you like a lot. Best of all, podcast support, even though it’s in beta, is free for anyone! No media server or Plex pass is needed.
More feature with podcasts are coming soo. If you know anything about Plex, then you know they are always adding features to the service. Be sure to update your apps on Android and Android TV to receive all of these new features now! You can find out more on Plex’ blog, linked below. Now I need to find a dark, quiet corner, and have some intimate time with my microphone….