Plex rebuilding its apps with slick new design and faster navigation

Digital video locker Plex has announced a full rebuild of its app suite and released a new demo for its upcoming mobile apps. The full version should be out in early 2025, but from playing with the preview for a few minutes, I’m incredibly excited to see what’s in store for the TV and desktop versions as well.

The company says betas for its TV apps are also coming soon. The Testflight is also out for iPads today, but that one doesn’t feel as visually exciting compared to the very good-looking phone app. The first change you’ll notice is that on mobile, there is an enhanced focus on titles and artwork. For now, Plex is automatically adding the titles, but a Plex employee on Reddit has confirmed that users will be able to upload their own title artwork in a future build.

The main interface has also been streamlined, and if you use the app to watch FAST channels, that section has been improved significantly, with a better-looking guide and the ability to watch a show or movie while browsing what else is on. The actor/cast pages are also revamped with better visuals, and overall, the whole app feels more modern and has better animations compared to the old version.

If you have a Plex account, you can download the Testflight beta on iOS or a preview build on Android to try out today. Be warned that this initial preview will be missing some features like casting and offline support, but the company plans to include them soon. They’ve also structured this beta as a separate app so you can run both the new and old versions side-by-side until the fully featured release hits sometime in 2025.

Plex says it’s been working on this redesign for over two years, and it’s much more than a facelift. The company is also rewriting its code base to help unify its apps and streamline a consistent experience across all of Plex’s platforms. The company said in a press release that maintaining separate codebases for all its apps significantly slowed down development and how quickly it could push out updates to all users.

The new look also helps classic Plex, PlexAmp (for music), Plex Dash (for library management) and Plex Photos all share similar design languages to help people use all of the company’s apps without feeling like they need to re-learn things for each app.

Source: Plex