Media management service Plex has announced that its Plex Media Player app is now free to everyone. Previously only available to Pass subscribers, the Plex app for Mac is a home theater-style media browser and player for content stored in personal media libraries.

Plex Media Player (which is distinct from the Plex Media Server client app) now features a fullscreen desktop interface where it integrates online files and metadata to present users' media, including artwork and, optionally, movie subtitles. In the latest update, the Player also allows users to queue up movies and music.

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Maybe you pine for stuff like Plex Media Player’s silky smooth playback, complex subtitle rendering, and lightning fast seeking on your desktop. Maybe you have a lower-powered NAS server that doesn’t like to transcode. Or maybe you’d just like to rock out to some FLAC while you work. Until today, your only option was to find some place to stash a little baby Media Player window and muddle through the TV UI to queue up your background music of choice.

Well, no more: we’ve harnessed our incredibly powerful Web app and wrapped it up inside our lovely Plex Media Player shell to give you a full-fledged “desktop mode” experience right out of the box. With Plex Media Player running in a window, you can now use your mouse and keyboard as nature intended, and switching to the TV UI is as easy as going full-screen.

In addition to making Plex Media Player a free download, Plex also announced the long-awaited Plex for Kodi add-on. Kodi is a fully extensible, community driven software media center with wide support for playing a range of media content. Exclusively for Plex Pass members, the Plex add-on brings users' Plex-processed media libraries to the Kodi interface for the first time.

You can download Plex Media Player on this page by clicking the 'Get an app' button (third option).

Post updated for clarification.

Tag: Plex

Top Rated Comments

dannys1 Avatar
dannys1
97 months ago
Huh? I have always had the free player (Plex Home Theater)...Confused by this.
PHT was killed off about a year ago to be replaced by PMP (this) which has been in beta since then (for plex pass only). It's totally rewritten from the ground up and future proofed.
Score: 4 Votes (Like | Disagree)
St0rMl0rD Avatar
St0rMl0rD
97 months ago
Huh? I have always had the free player (Plex Home Theater)...Confused by this.
Score: 4 Votes (Like | Disagree)
lionel77 Avatar
lionel77
97 months ago
Plex Media Player is still missing a ton of Plex Home Theater's features and settings. Fortunately, there is an open source fork of Plex Home Theater called OpenPHT (https://forums.plex.tv/categories/openpht), which improves upon the now retired Plex Home Theater.

I switched to OpenPHT a few months ago and have been very happy with it since.
Score: 3 Votes (Like | Disagree)
timmyh Avatar
timmyh
97 months ago
Sorry guys. To clarify, the Plex Media Server has always been free for Mac users. It's a background client for serving media to your other devices, but it also lets you play media from Plex within a browser.

Plex Media Player is a different thing - a standalone media center app, as described above. You can download it from this page, by clicking on 'Download a Plex app': https://www.plex.tv/downloads/

Confusing, I know!
Score: 2 Votes (Like | Disagree)
corfio Avatar
corfio
97 months ago
I used to love Plex. Loved how it works seamlessly between my server/desktop/phone/tablet. But after I found out how people behind the Great Wall of China using the internet, I gradually phased out the Plex setup and start doing the same thing. Now I have a Mac Mini with 8TB HD connected to my TV doing nothing.
Can you please elaborate a little more? What do you use instead of Plex then? I have found that Plex works seamlessly and mostly flawlessly for average streaming needs.
Score: 1 Votes (Like | Disagree)
YegorH Avatar
YegorH
97 months ago
I still don't like the PMP, prefer Plex Home Theater, the development of which was dropped by Plex, but fortunately it continues to exist, check out OpenPHT.
Score: 1 Votes (Like | Disagree)
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