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How to Make and Share Public Playlists From Your Plex Media Library

Introduction

Plex is a popular media server software that allows you to easily organize and stream your personal media library. One of Plex’s best features is the ability to create playlists – collections of movies, TV shows, or music that play sequentially. Playlists are great for themed marathons or just grouping content in a meaningful way.

In this guide, we’ll cover everything you need to know to create public playlists in Plex and share them with friends or the community.

Creating Playlists

Creating a playlist in Plex is simple. Here are the basic steps:

  1. Open the Plex app on your device or the Plex Web App.
  2. Browse to a movie, TV show episode, album, or song you want to add.
  3. Click the “Add to Playlist” icon (it looks like a “+” inside a circle).
  4. Select an existing playlist to add it to, or create a new one.
  5. Name your playlist. The name will be visible to anyone you share it with.
  6. Repeat steps 2-4 to add more items to the playlist.

You can create as many playlists as you want, and add any combination of content. Playlists aren’t limited to a single library or media type.

Making Playlists Public

By default, playlists in Plex are private – only visible to the user who created them. To share a playlist with others:

  1. Open the Plex Web App and go to Settings > Server > Libraries.
  2. Select the library that contains the playlist you want to share.
  3. Click the “Edit” button on the library.
  4. Go to the Playlists tab. All playlists for that library will be listed.
  5. Click the 3-dot menu next to the playlist and select “Share”.
  6. Enter the Plex usernames or emails of who to share with.
  7. Click “Share”.

Now when those users access your Plex server, they’ll see a new “Shared” section containing the playlist(s) you shared.

Sharing With Public Playlists

In addition to sharing playlists with specific Plex friends, you can also publish them publicly for anyone to enjoy.

To create a public playlist:

  1. Enable the “Publish Playlists” advanced server setting.
  2. Share the playlist with the special user [email protected].

Once shared, the playlist will show up on plex.tv/playlists for anyone to stream. Public playlists are a great way to showcase content and engage with the Plex community.

Managing Playlists

In the Plex Web App, you can edit playlists from the library’s Playlist tab. To add or remove items, reorder tracks, change the name, or adjust sharing settings, click the 3-dot menu next to the playlist.

On mobile devices, playlist management options are more limited but you can still view contents, play, shuffle, and download playlists for offline enjoyment.

We recommend cleaning up stale playlists periodically and double checking that shared playlists contain only content you want to distribute. You can always share an updated version if your media libraries change over time.

Conclusion

Plex playlists give you incredible flexibility to slice-and-dice your libraries while also letting friends and followers discover the best parts. Making playlists public supercharges sharing and gives you another way to delight Plex users everywhere.

With this guide, you now know how to:

  • Create playlists from your media
  • Share playlists privately with users
  • Publish playlists publicly
  • Edit and manage playlist contents

So go forth and share the entertainment! What public playlists might you create from your libraries?

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