FYI you can definitely watch while your network is offline. You just net to tell it that you’re happy with that (it’s not activated by default for security reasons).
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In your Plex server settings, go to Network, enable “Show Advanced”.
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Near the bottom, find the textbox that says
List of IP addresses and networks that are allowed without auth -
In this field, enter the local IP address of any Plex client(s) you want to keep using if your internet (or the Plex cloud) is down.
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A example:
192.168.0.50 -
Save the setting, done.
#Important thing to be aware of:
What this setting does is tell your local Plex server to simply give any Plex client that connects from that specific IP full admin access to your Plex server, ignoring any account restrictions. This means that if you have things in place to restrict access to some libraries (kids blocked from 18+ movies etc) those restrictions will have no effect. Also if you have the option set to allow file deletion, then any client from that IP could also delete items. And they could of course change any settings in your Plex server. So your kids can watch anything on your server, if you have a guest in your network and they browse to the Plex web interface, they can mess with things.
Because of that I would recommend to limit the amount of IP’s you enter in that field to the absolute bare minimum. For example, only whitelist the “main living room device” plus one device you to admin the server, such as a laptop.
If you want to whitelist multiple devices, this is a example:
192.168.0.50,192.168.0.77,192.168.0.80
If you want to whitelist a entire network, these would be examples:
192.168.0.0/24 (this means 192.168.0.0 - 192.168.0.255)
192.168.0.0/16 (this means 192.168.0.0 - 192.168.255.255)
And of course those involved network devices should use static IPs in your home network.
Plexamp is mind blowingly good. Great UX. Perfect legibility. No discovery/ads up in your face. Just you listening to your music how you like it. Streaming is ROCK SOLID. Downloads work flawlessly. It just relies on proper metadata in Plex.