FAQ¶

General¶

Do I need to have a Plex account to use SyncLounge? Why?¶

Yes. SyncLounge uses your Plex account to fetch details about your Plex Clients and Media Servers to use within the app. Without this information, SyncLounge would be unable to play your selected media and sync with your friends and family. For security concerns, see the 'Security' section below.

Do the other users in my room need access to my Plex Server?¶

You don't have to share your Plex server if they have access to the same media on their own or another Plex server. If they don't have access to a Plex server with the same media, you will need to share your Plex server with them.

What clients are supported?¶

SyncLounge tries to maintain support as many clients as possible. However, changes to implementation on Plex's or the client's side can cause them to no longer work properly. Below are the supported clients and some known issues and solutions, where possible. If a solution doesn't work, an update to the Plex Client probably broke its compatibility.

Also, due to the way some of the Plex clients have been made they can only operate using HTTP. If the site is using HTTPS and allows for HTTP use, like the hosted Synclounge does, then try that to see if it will work.

Supported Clients¶

Plex Media Player: The original Plex Media Player for Windows and MacOS is, as of writing this, still supported. Follow the link and scroll down to the newest to download.
Plex Desktop app: You may encounter issues using this. Try the original Plex Media Player application above for better results.
New Plex Player: If you are using the new Plex Player on a device, Plex changed the way it operates. Try changing back to the "old player" and see if it works better for you.
Android based players (Roku, Android TV, Fire TV, etc.): These players can't remote start media properly. Some have had success starting the media and pausing it, then having the host start the media.
Plex Home Theater
OpenPHT
Rasplex
iOS (iPhone & iPad)

Unsupported or Broken Clients¶

AppleTV: A recent update broken compatibility with SyncLounge
Smart TVs
Plex Web Player (Chrome/Safari/Firefox)
Xbox
Playstation

How do I ...?¶

If you are trying to figure out how to do something when using SyncLounge, check the how-to section of the documentation. This will show you how to change hosts, user Party Pausing, etc.

If you are trying to figure out how to do something when running SyncLounge, check the how-to and Self-hosting sections. This will tell you how to setup and configure your servers.

Common Issues¶

I can't log in to SyncLounge¶

This is most likely due to Popup Blocking or an Adblocker. If you press the "Click me" button and nothing happens, make sure that your browser isn't blocking popups for the site. If you get a new window with the Plex logo, but nothing else happens, make sure that you don't have an AdBlocker or other plugin that is interfering with Plex completing the OAuth request.

My client isn't working!¶

See What clients are supported? for information.

Unable to connect to Plex Server¶

When trying to connect to your server, if you get a message of "Unable to connect" "Try disabling your adblocker" it indicates that SyncLounge was unable to connect to the server properly. Here are known reasons why the connection may be blocked or not work properly:

An adblocker, firewall, network configuration, ISP, or some other software on your computer is blocking the connection.
The server owner's firewall, network configuration, ISP, or some other software is blocking the connection.
Remote access is not enabled on the server or it isn't working properly. To enable remote access or to check if remote access is enabled succesfully, see the Plex's Remote Access article

SyncLounge Player issues and errors¶

Issue: The SyncLounge player is continually buffering
Error Message: The quota has been exceeded
Error Message: Failed to execute 'appendBuffer' on 'SourceBuffer': The SourceBuffer is full, and cannot free space to append additional buffers.

Lower the bitrate (aka streaming quality) on the client. If you are using the SyncLounge Player, you can do this by clicking the settings cog in the upper-right of the player.

Error Message: The media could not be loaded, either because the server or network failed or because the format is not supported

Turn off force transcode by going to the menu in the top left > synclounge settings > force transcode

Error Message: Failed to find a compatible copy of <MEDIA_NAME>. If you have access to the content try manually playing it.

SyncLounge is unable to retrieve information for the currently selected media on the server the user has access to. This is usually caused by the user not having access to the media that the host is playing. See Do the other users in my room need access to my Plex Server? for more information.

Security¶

Won't you have access to my username, password?¶

No. SyncLounge uses Plex's OAuth to log in, so your username and password are never seen by SyncLounge.

Won't you have access to my Plex Account?¶

All details provided by Plex are stored client side (in your browser). Absolutely none of your confidential data is sent to our server. You can verify this by inspecting the Network tab within Chrome developer tools. If you would like, you can host SyncLounge yourself.

What is sent then?¶

When you've connected to a SyncLounge room, a few details are sent back and forth to the SyncLounge Server to enable syncing. The data sent contains the following:

Plex Username
Plex User Thumbnail URL
Content playing title (Eg. Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring)
Current timestamp (Eg. 00:35:02)
Maximum timestamp (Eg. 03:48:18)
Host content ratingKey
Host machineIdentifier
Playerstate (Eg. paused, stopped, playing)
Client response time (Ping time between you and your Plex Client)
SL Server address, SL Server Room and SL Server Room Password are sent to the WebApp when you join a room to create shortened invite links.

What about the public server provided by SyncLounge? Is my data safe?¶

As noted above, SyncLounge gets none of your confidential data and we log absolutely nothing to disk. Data is kept within the room instance until you leave or the server restarts. We have enabled SSL on our public servers but if privacy is a concern for you we strongly suggest running your own server.

Speaking of SSL, why isn't the site served over HTTPS?¶

By default SyncLounge is served via HTTP. While we do offer HTTPS, doing so forces modern browsers in to blocking all HTTP connections. This effectively stops all communication with some Plex Clients that only operate using HTTP.