Plex’s controversial redesigned app is now rolling out to Roku TVs and streaming players. It’s still in the separate preview channel for now, but once (some of) the bugs are worked out, it should roll out to all Roku devices.

The new Plex app is a full rewrite, intended to unify the various mobile and TV Plex apps into one codebase and provide a more modern interface. After a few months of testing, it started rolling out to Android, iPhone, and iPad in March. The update was not popular with many Plex users, partially because that always happens with redesigns, and also because the update introduced many new bugs. Plex has rolled out several bug fix updates for the new mobile apps, while pushing ahead on the same update for other platforms.

Roku TVs are next in line for the redesigned app. It’s now live in the Plex Preview channel for Roku devices, which is separate from the standard Plex channel. If you want to try it out, you can enroll in the beta testing. The regular Plex channel and preview channel will stay separate on your TVs, so you can switch back and forth as needed.

The new Roku channel looks identical to the new Apple TV app. The main navigation is now at the top of the screen, like many streaming service apps, with additional pages on the left side of the screen. The main tabs are Search, Home, Libraries, Live TV, On Demand, and Discover.

I don’t use Plex often on a TV, but the most jarring change for me is the updated Libraries behavior. After I installed the preview channel and logged in with my account, the Libraries page was blank except for a ‘See All Libraries’ button. After you click that button and mark the libraries you want to see as favorites, going back to the Libraries tab will show them as tabs next to the ‘See All Libraries’ button. I hope Plex adds that selection process to the initial setup before rolling out the redesign to everyone.

The rest of the app works about as expected. The Home page has your watch history and recommendations across different libraries and sources, the Live TV page has a TV guide with your live TV sources (if you have them) and Plex’s own live channels, and the On Demand page has Plex’s free streaming library and movie rentals.

There are already a few complaints on the update’s Reddit thread, such as the removal of music library access and no usernames on libraries. Plex moved music playback out of the main app in favor of Plexamp, which is fine on mobile devices, but there’s still no Plexamp app for any TV platforms. The username issue is a bug that Plex is already investigating. There’s also at least one report of crashing, but I didn’t notice that with a few minutes of use on my Roku Express 4K+ stick, so your mileage may vary.

Hopefully, Plex gets all the bugs sorted out and releases Plexamp for TVs before rolling out the updated Roku channel. For now, the regular Plex channel on Roku still has the old design and codebase.

Source: Plex (Reddit)