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Plex

If your household runs a Plex media server, MaiPai Home connects to it so the Shows and Movies apps know what’s already in your library. No more paying to stream something you already own.

What it adds

  • Plex badge: when you look up a show or movie, MaiPai Home checks your Plex library and marks the titles you already have, so you can tell at a glance what’s at home versus what needs streaming.
  • On Deck and Recently Added: rails on the Shows home page pulled straight from your Plex server.
  • Two-way watchlist: add a title in MaiPai Home and it lands on your Plex watchlist too, and vice versa.
  • Watched status sync: marking something watched in MaiPai Home scrobbles it in Plex, so your progress stays the same everywhere.
  • Play here: for movies, a “Play here” button streams straight from your Plex server inside MaiPai Home, no separate app needed.

Setting it up

An admin connects the shared Plex server once, in Admin → Plex: sign in with Plex (a one-time code you approve at plex.tv) or enter a server URL and token by hand.

After that, each household member links their own Plex account in Settings → Plex. This keeps watchlists and watched status personal to each person rather than shared across the household, the same way they work in Plex itself.

Syncing your video saves into Plex

MaiPai Home can give each person their own private Plex libraries of their saved videos — one per source: YouTube, TikTok, Vimeo, Reddit, and their own creations from the Videos app. It takes a few one-time steps in Admin → Plex:

  1. Connect Plex — sign in with Plex or enter the server URL/token, as above.
  2. Link your account — each person links their own Plex account in Settings → Plex.
  3. Add a storage location — add the folder Plex can also see (a network share works best), and test access.
  4. Map it to Plex’s path — enter how Plex itself sees that same folder (its path may differ from how MaiPai Home sees it, e.g. mounted under a different drive letter or share name).
  5. Provision libraries — once the storage location and mapping are set, provision a library per source next to a linked user to create and populate it in Plex.

Once provisioned, new saves for that person keep showing up in their Plex libraries automatically — with sponsor segments already cut out of YouTube exports.

Each person then tunes their own libraries in Videos → Settings → Plex sync: keep everything, keep only the most recent videos per creator, or automatically delete a download from Plex once it’s been fully watched — just like Plex’s own downloads. Sources whose storage an admin hasn’t set up yet appear there too, with a note saying exactly what’s missing.

Your privacy

Streaming and library lookups happen between your MaiPai Home instance and your Plex server directly, over your own network if the server is local. Your Plex access token is never exposed to the browser. If Plex isn’t configured, or you haven’t linked your account, the badges and features simply don’t appear.