Documentation
Run a movie night
Link the Plex library you already run, then start a watch party your members join from Discord — what to set up, what members see, and what happens when your machine is off.
What you need first
A Plex server you already run, on a machine that is yours — a desktop, a NAS, a home server. The bot does not host your media and never will: it is a remote control for hardware you own, so the files, the machine and its address stay yours.
If you do not run Plex, this page is not for you yet and nothing else in the bot depends on it.
Link your machine, once
Open /menu › Other › Admin › Media. Three rows:
| row | what it does |
|---|---|
| Set up | The pairing wizard. It asks whether you already run Plex, then walks you through connecting your machine |
| Status | What the bot can currently see — the machine, the library, whether it is answering right now |
| Remove | Disconnects the machine and forgets Plex, and keeps your address, rooms, history and progress |
The wizard gives you a code with a short life. You run a small companion on your own machine, it uses the code once, and the two are paired. ⚠ The code expires and dies after a limited number of wrong tries, on purpose — it is the one moment where a stranger who guessed it would reach your library.
What members do
Once it is linked, members open /menu › Community › Watch and get five ways in:
- Resume — carry on where they left off
- Browse — the library, paged
- Live TV — the channel guide, if your Plex has it
- Add New — search for something that is not there yet
- Saved — their own list
Starting something announces it, and the room fills up. Everything runs from the machine you linked.
⚠ What happens when your machine is off
The Watch door stays lit. A server that has set Watch up keeps it through any outage and draws a notice saying the machine is not answering right now — it does not quietly vanish and come back.
That behaviour exists because it once did the opposite: a companion that probed before Plex had finished starting decided the machine had no library, never asked again, and Watch disappeared from the menu for five hours. The tab going missing was how anyone found out.
Questions people actually ask
Does it upload my files anywhere? No. Nothing is copied off your machine. The bot sends commands and reads back what is playing.
Can members watch without a Plex account? They watch through the link the bot hands out — they do not need their own Plex login.
What if I stop running Plex? Press Remove. Watch turns off and the machine is unlinked; your history and progress are kept, so re-linking later picks up where you were.