Let’s just be honest. If you’ve opened the Plex app on your Roku recently, you’re either a masochist or you haven’t used it long enough to realize something is horribly, horribly wrong. You’re not alone. Users are in a collective state of panic and rage, and for good reason. The latest update isn’t just an inconvenience; it’s a complete dismantling of the user experience, a middle finger to the very people who built the company up from a cool home-media project into a billion-dollar business.
This new UI is what happens when a company decides it wants to be something else, and it doesn’t give a damn what its existing customers think. The Plex that started as a personal media server, a place to organize and stream your own stuff, is gone. In its place, we have a shoddy Netflix knockoff.
It’s slower, buggier, and designed to shove Plex’s own streaming content down your throat, pushing your personal libraries to the back of the line like some kind of red-headed stepchild. The vertical sidebar, the very thing that made navigating your library a breeze, is gone. In its place is a clunky, horizontal mess that’s somehow both ugly and less functional. To make matters worse, there’s no hot fix, no rollback, no way to escape this flaming dumpster fire they’ve forced on everyone.
And this isn’t an isolated incident. This is a pattern. Just a few months ago, Plex had a security incident that forced users to reset their passwords, which is a great way to build trust, right after you tell them to go screw themselves with a bad update.
The company has been gradually pivoting toward streaming media for a while, buying up new channels every month and designing their UI to reflect this new focus. They’re trying to compete with giants like Netflix and Hulu, and they’re doing it by alienating the very people who put them on the map.
The writing has been on the wall for a while, and the new Roku app is just the latest, and perhaps most egregious, act in Plex’s slow-motion suicide. So, here’s the question you have to ask yourself: are you going to stay on a sinking ship, or is it time to look for a lifeboat?
With the rise of solid, user-focused alternatives like Jellyfin and Emby, you have options.
Plex seems to have forgotten who its core audience is, and you don’t have to keep giving them your money for a service they no longer seem interested in providing.
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