plex-tui 0.13.3

A small standalone Plex terminal UI.

plex-tui

A terminal Plex client built for watching media, not managing servers.

There are plenty of tools for administering Plex from the command line. Surprisingly few are built for sitting down, browsing your library, and watching something without leaving the terminal.

plex-tui is a standalone Textual application that brings Plex browsing, poster artwork, collection cards, playlists, search, stream preferences, and mpv playback into a keyboard-first terminal interface.

Built for people who spend their day in a terminal and would rather stay there.

Why?

Most terminal Plex tools are built for administration, automation, or quick status checks. Those are useful jobs, but they are not the same as browsing a library, comparing options, and choosing something to watch.

Meanwhile, terminal applications got better. Tools like lazygit, gitui, btop, and modern Textual apps raised the bar for what a TUI can be: rich layouts, keyboard-first workflows, responsive interfaces, and even artwork are no longer unusual.

plex-tui exists because browsing Plex and choosing something to watch deserves that same kind of terminal-native experience.

Project Status

plex-tui is still early, but already usable. Login, server selection, library browsing, search, playlists, artwork, stream preferences, and playback are working today. Expect rough edges, but expect progress too.

Screenshots

Movie grid

Continue Watching

List view

Browse modes

Collection cards

Block renderer fallback

Features

• Plex PIN login and server selection.
• Plex Home profile switching from Settings, including PIN-protected profiles.
• Paged library browsing with automatic loading near the end of loaded items.
• Library submenu entrypoints for all items, Recommended, Collections, Playlists, and Categories. Library rows open all items by default; Space opens the browse-mode menu, and Settings can swap the primary and alternate actions.
• Current-library search and bounded global search.
• List view plus configurable-density grid view with terminal poster artwork, missing-artwork placeholders, and intentional glyph cards for collections and hubs.
• Intentional loading, empty, and Plex error states so slow or empty browse paths still show what happened and what to try next.
• External subtitle support and direct playback for embedded PGS/VOBSUB tracks.
• Audio and subtitle pickers with saved language preferences.
• Separate play-from-start, resume, and optimized-transcode actions with Plex progress reporting.
• Watched/unwatched toggling for selected playable Plex items.
• Continue Watching episode rows show their show, season, and episode context, and items can be removed from the Continue Watching view.
• Playlist management for browsing all playlists, creating playlists from one or more selected items, adding/removing items, and renaming or deleting playlists.
• Movie editions appear as distinct variants when Plex reports multiple editions for a selected movie.
• Settings screen for stream preferences, playback mode and transcode quality, artwork modes, grid density, page size, auto-load threshold, grid artwork prefetching, media view, library visibility/order, duplicate library disambiguation, library Enter behavior, Discover result type, optional sidebar entrypoints, and mpv window size.
• App diagnostics view for version, paths, mpv, Plex connection, artwork, and browsing settings.

Requirements

• Python 3.11 or newer
• mpv available on PATH
• A Plex account/server

When installing with PyPI or from GitHub, install mpv with your platform package manager:

# macOS
brew install mpv

# Debian / Ubuntu
sudo apt install mpv

# Fedora
sudo dnf install mpv

# Arch Linux / Manjaro
sudo pacman -S mpv

Installation

PyPI

pipx install plex-tui
plex-tui --smoke
plex-tui

This is the recommended cross-platform install path. It keeps Python dependencies isolated, but you still need to install mpv separately. If pipx is not installed, install it with your platform package manager first or follow the pipx installation guide.

Homebrew

brew trust --tap so1omon563/plex-tui
brew tap so1omon563/plex-tui
brew install plex-tui
plex-tui --smoke

The Homebrew formula installs mpv automatically. Apple Silicon macOS uses prebuilt bottles when available, while Intel macOS still uses Homebrew's source-build path. Homebrew 6 requires non-official taps to be trusted before loading formulae from them; plex-tui only depends on formulae from Homebrew/core, so no additional tap trust is required for dependencies.

Arch Linux

paru -S plex-tui
plex-tui --smoke

The AUR package depends on mpv. Any AUR helper can be used; paru is only an example.

GitHub

pipx install "git+https://github.com/so1omon563/plex-tui.git"
pipx install "git+https://github.com/so1omon563/plex-tui.git@v0.4.4"

Use this path for testing main before a tagged/PyPI release.

Useful CLI checks:

plex-tui --version
plex-tui --config-path
plex-tui --debug-log-path
plex-tui --diagnostics
plex-tui --smoke
plex-tui status
plex-tui status --json
plex-tui libraries
plex-tui continue-watching --limit 5
plex-tui search "blade runner"
plex-tui search "alien" --library Movies --json
plex-tui discover "matrix" --limit 5 --media-type movie
plex-tui discover-open "matrix" --index 3 --service-index 1

status, libraries, continue-watching, search, and discover are read-only helpers for quick checks and scripts. discover-open opens a selected Plex Discover availability URL in your browser. Launch plex-tui with no command for the full interactive browser, playback workflow, and sidebar Discover search with movie/show provider selection. In the TUI, press Space on the Discover sidebar row or select On Plex to browse Plex Movies & Shows VOD hubs.

Some On Plex titles are listed by Plex but cannot be played through external players such as mpv. plex-tui marks those items unavailable when Plex does not provide a playable stream, including protected streams that Plex's own clients may handle differently.

For local development:

git clone https://github.com/so1omon563/plex-tui.git
cd plex-tui
python3 -m venv .venv
source .venv/bin/activate
make install-dev
make run

First Run & Configuration

On first run, plex-tui starts a Plex browser login and asks which server connection to save. If a browser cannot be opened, use the login URL shown in the terminal.

The login flow writes a config file with the selected server URL and token. Use the Settings screen or plex-tui --config-path to find the active file.

If your Plex server has multiple libraries with the same name, use Settings to hide or reorder individual sidebar libraries. Duplicate library names show their type and Plex key in Settings so each row is identifiable.

Use Settings to switch Plex Home profiles after login. Protected profiles prompt for their PIN before reconnecting with that profile's server and account tokens.

You can also configure a server manually. macOS config path:

mkdir -p "$HOME/Library/Application Support/plex-tui"
$EDITOR "$HOME/Library/Application Support/plex-tui/config.toml"

Linux config path:

mkdir -p "$HOME/.config/plex-tui"
$EDITOR "$HOME/.config/plex-tui/config.toml"

Minimal config:

base_url = "http://127.0.0.1:32400"
token = "your-plex-token"

Environment variables also work:

export PLEX_TUI_BASE_URL="http://127.0.0.1:32400"
export PLEX_TUI_TOKEN="your-plex-token"

See config.example.toml for optional settings.

Playback

Playback is launched through mpv. By default, plex-tui opens an external mpv window so the TUI can keep showing playback status and controls.

Common playback actions:

Key	Action
p	Play the selected item from the beginning
r	Resume from the saved Plex position when available
o	Play an optimized/transcoded stream for slow-starting media
c	Pause or resume the active mpv playback
z	Seek active playback back 10 seconds
f	Seek active playback forward 30 seconds
x	Stop the launched mpv process
w	Toggle watched / unwatched for the selected playable Plex item

Playback behavior:

• Plex progress is updated in the background while playback is active.
• Pause and seek controls are sent to the active mpv process through its IPC socket after playback is launched.
• If a large file chugs or takes too long to start, press o on the selected item to request an optimized Plex transcode for that launch. This does not change the default direct-play behavior.
• Experimental terminal playback can be enabled from Settings. It prefers mpv's Kitty/Ghostty graphics output when available, falls back to TCT text video elsewhere, uses Smooth/Balanced/Sharp terminal video profiles to trade frame size and frame rate for smoother rendering, suspends the TUI, and returns after mpv exits. This mode is a novelty/experiment and will be visibly worse than the normal external mpv window.
• Saved audio/subtitle language preferences are applied when matching streams are available.
• The details pane shows the effective playback choices for the selected item.
• Choosing an audio or subtitle track while playback is active also asks mpv to switch the active track when the launched stream exposes a matching track.

Playback mode and window sizing:

• Playback mode defaults to Plex direct/default behavior.
• Settings can force Plex transcoding with Original, 1080p 8 Mbps, 720p 4 Mbps, or 480p 2 Mbps quality presets.
• The o optimized playback shortcut uses the same Transcode Quality setting for that one launch without changing the saved Playback Mode.
• The default mpv launch uses --autofit=80% so videos open at a comfortable size on modern displays.
• Settings can override the window size with values such as 90%, 1280x720, or 80%x80%.
• If an older config has an exact mpv_window_size = "1280x720" override, cycle the mpv window-size setting once to return to the Default preset.

Playlist Management

Playlist actions are available from selected playable media, the top-level Playlists sidebar row, and from inside playlist views. Use u to build a bulk selection, then use the same add/remove actions on the selected set.

Key	Where	Action
enter	Playlists sidebar row	Browse all Plex playlists
enter	Playlist row/card	Open that playlist
u	Media item	Toggle the item in the bulk selection
P	Playable media item or bulk selection	Open the Add to Playlist picker
enter	Add to Playlist picker	Add the selected media to an existing playlist
enter	New playlist... row	Prompt for a name and create a playlist containing the selected media
backspace / delete	Open playlist view	Remove the selected item or selected bulk items from that playlist
e	Playlist row/card or open playlist	Rename the playlist
D	Playlist row/card or open playlist	Confirm, then delete the playlist

The Add to Playlist picker lists New playlist... first, followed by existing Plex playlists. Playlist browsing is available from the top-level sidebar Playlists row and from a library's browse modes.

Key Bindings

Key	Action
q	Quit
ctrl+r	Reload Plex connection
/	Search the current view or library
g	Search all libraries through Plex
?	Show help
tab / shift+tab	Switch focus between Libraries and Media
l	Focus libraries
m	Focus media
d	Focus details directly
space	Run the alternate action for a selected library
v	Toggle list/grid view
pageup / pagedown	Move one page in grid view
,	Show settings
escape	Clear search, go back, or close current view
enter	Open selected item
p	Play selected item from the beginning
r	Resume selected item from the saved Plex position
o	Play selected item as an optimized/transcoded stream
w	Mark selected item watched / unwatched
P	Add selected playable item to a playlist
u	Toggle selected item for bulk playlist actions
backspace / delete	Remove selected item from Continue Watching or a playlist
e / D	Rename / delete selected or open playlist
a / s	Choose audio / subtitle preference
A / S	Clear audio preference / cycle subtitle mode
x	Stop launched mpv

Artwork

plex-tui has two artwork paths: poster rendering for real media and glyph cards for Plex objects that are not posters.

Poster rendering:

• Default mode renders portable colored block art, so it works in ordinary terminals without native image support.
• In Kitty and Ghostty, set artwork_renderer to auto to render native terminal images through Kitty Unicode placeholders.
• Set artwork_renderer to kitty to explicitly try the Kitty graphics protocol in other compatible terminals.
• Outside detected Kitty-compatible terminals, auto falls back to block art.
• plex-tui --diagnostics reports the active renderer status.

Collection-style cards:

• Collections, playlists, categories, hubs, and query shelves use geometric glyph artwork instead of pretending to be missing posters.
• Library browse-mode rows reuse that glyph vocabulary for compact wayfinding.
• Rows made entirely of those cards use roomier navigation-grid spacing.
• See docs/collection-artwork-design.md for the design notes behind that visual language.

Grid behavior and cache:

• Grid view fetches artwork for the visible page immediately.
• By default, it prepares three pages ahead in the background.
• grid_prefetch_pages can be set from 0 to 5; use 0 to fetch only the visible page on slower systems.
• Compact, comfortable, and large density modes adjust card and poster sizing.
• The artwork cache is bounded and stored in the app cache directory shown in Settings.

Diagnostics

Playback diagnostics are written to debug.log in the app config directory. Tokens are redacted from logged mpv arguments. The Settings diagnostics section can show the debug log path, recent log lines, and an app diagnostics summary for support reports.

Useful paths:

plex-tui --config-path
plex-tui --debug-log-path

Enable browsing performance timings before launch:

PLEX_TUI_PERF_LOG=1 plex-tui

This also records alphabet-jump decisions, including the current title, Plex sort title, loaded alphabet buckets, and selected target row.

To collect environment information for issue reports:

plex-tui --diagnostics

Verbose grid artwork internals are quieter by default. Include them only when debugging poster loading:

PLEX_TUI_PERF_LOG=1 PLEX_TUI_ARTWORK_LOG=1 plex-tui

Development

Common commands:

make smoke          # app construction and helper sanity check
make test           # pytest suite
make compile        # compile src and tests
make check-package  # build and validate package metadata
make check          # smoke, tests, compile, package validation

Packaging and release docs:

• docs/app-design-philosophy.md: whole-app UI direction and review checklist.
• docs/collection-artwork-design.md: geometric glyph card visual language.
• PACKAGING.md: PyPI/pipx, Homebrew, AUR, and standalone packaging options.
• RELEASE.md: release validation and tagging checklist.
• ROADMAP.md: planned follow-up work.