Libraries contain the individual items that make up your media collection. Each Library contains a single type of media (such as movies, television shows, or music) and will automatically fetch metadata such as posters, summaries, genres, and more in most cases. Without much effort from you, your Library will look great and contain tons of information about your collection.
Plex gives you a large number of tools that let you manage your content to:
- Fix incorrect matches
- Edit metadata
- Change artwork
- Much more
Edit an item
When an item is added to your Library, in most cases, information is fetched from the internet so that it can be shown when you look at that item. The information includes things like posters, background images, plot summaries, actors, crew, and more. You might wish to change or customize a particular aspect of the information such as the poster or summary. Editing the item lets you do this.
Related Page: Edit Details
Refresh an Item
Refreshing an item makes the Server grab fresh information for that item. This will replace any of the information already downloaded (unless the information has been locked).
Related Page: Scanning vs Refreshing a Library
Analyze
Media files are analyzed for various properties like the video codec, resolution, bitrate, and more. You can initiate a new analysis for Library items.
Related Page: Analyze Media
Sync
You can choose media, then a device to sync to, and the Server will prepare the media, ready to be copied to your device.
Related Page:
Optimize
Media Optimizer is a feature that lets you specify content to”pre-transcode” based on the settings you choose and saves that optimized result as a different “version” of the media.
Related Page: Creating Optimized Versions
Mark as Watched/Unwatched
Plex keeps track of what you’ve watched, and where you left off if you only partially watched an item. You can mark an item as watched or unwatched manually if you wish to do so.
Related Page: Mark as Watched or Unwatched
Fix an incorrect match
Occasionally, Plex might mismatch or a media item or not match it at all. There are a number of reasons this might happen and different things to do to match them properly.
Related Page: Your Media
Related Page: Fix Match / Match
Related Page: Rename a badly named file
Unmatch
It’s sometimes useful to unmatch an item if you’re having problems with a particular match. This will remove any current match and you can start over if you wish to do so.
Related Page: Unmatch an Item
Download
Download lets you download the original file to the computer you’re currently on. This is only available for the Server owner.
Related Page: Download Media
Media Info
It’s sometimes useful to have quick access to technical information about your media. Media Info gives you a great overview.
Related Page: Investigate Media Information and Formats
Merge
You might have several versions of the same movie such as 480p and 1080p versions. Merging items together creates a single entry for that movie in your Library. This can be useful to let Plex Apps choose the most appropriate version to use in particular situations.
Related Page: Merge or Split Items
Collections
Your library might include similarly themed movies. Perhaps all the James Bond movies or movies about a particular holiday such as Christmas. You can gather theses movies together in a Collection.
Related Page: Collections