| title | FAQ: per-user Plex collections and privacy |
|---|---|
| description | How Shortlist makes a Plex collection visible to only one user, what the server owner can see, whether it conflicts with Kometa, and how to uninstall cleanly. |
| heading | FAQ |
It does, indirectly. Plex lets you hide things from someone by label, so Shortlist gives each person's row a label of its own and tells every other account to hide that label. The result is a row for that person, hidden from other supported accounts using Plex sharing filters.
The order those steps happen in is what makes it safe, and it is the same every run:
{% include privacy-order.html %}
Your existing sharing settings are saved beforehand. The in-app Uninstall flow previews restoring that saved copy and reports any accounts it cannot restore.
This needs Plex Media Server 1.43.2.10687 or newer, and Plex Pass on the admin account, because the hiding rule is a Pass feature. Older versions ignore it.
Because a Plex collection can only live in one library, and Plex applies its hiding rules per library. Someone who watches both films and TV gets one row in each, both carrying the same label.
This isn't cosmetic. A row containing the wrong type for its library matches neither hiding rule, which would make it impossible to hide from anyone.
Your row size is the budget across both: a library with at least one pick gets a row, a library with none gets nothing.
Yes, and it has to. Plex shows a collection to anyone who isn't explicitly told to hide it, so if Shortlist only touched the accounts you gave rows to, everyone else would see those private rows.
So it adds hide-this-label rules to every account your server is shared with — unless you've asked it to leave one alone, which you can do per person if their own Plex restrictions clash with Shortlist's. Nothing else in their settings is touched. Shortlist reads what's there, adds only its own entries, and leaves the rest exactly as they were. The original is saved first; the in-app Uninstall flow previews restoring the saved settings and reports failures.
Yes. Plex's allow list shows only what it names, and a Shortlist row is labelled with that person's own Shortlist label, so on its own the allow list would hide their row. Shortlist adds that one label to their allow list, and nobody else's. It also builds their row only from titles their restrictions let them see, so the row isn't half-empty. Everything else their restrictions hide stays hidden, inside the row too.
Yes. Plex's user list never includes the server's own owner, so Shortlist adds you separately,
badged owner. Switch yourself on and you get a row built from your own history, which is the
whole point on a one-person server.
Everyone's rows — but not on your Home screen. Plex keeps "on the owner's Home" and "on a friend's Home" as two separate switches, and Shortlist only ever sets a person's row on their own side, so nobody else's row lands on your Home.
Where you do see them all is the library's Collections tab, and its Recommended shelf if you leave Everyone else → Recommended shelf on for a row. Rows are hidden from other people through the share each of them has with your server, and you have no share with yourself, so there is nothing for Plex to hide them behind. There is no Plex setting for this.
Shortlist walks you through the three options under Users → You see everyone's rows: take the rows off the library shelf, leave it alone, or move your own watching to a separate Plex Home account. That last one copies your watch history across exactly — the same episodes of each show, your rewatch counts, and anything you are part-way through, back where you left it. See the reference.
It can't. The AI only ever chooses among titles already confirmed to exist in your library and unwatched by that person. Anything else it suggests is discarded and logged. With the provider set to None, no AI is involved at all.
No. Shortlist runs fine with no AI, and no key. Most titles come from the free TMDB sources, and the final choosing and ranking is ordinary code with no per-title cost.
The AI has exactly one paid job: an optional web search for what to watch next, which finds well-reviewed titles TMDB simply doesn't return. It's off by default.
See AI and cost for the full breakdown and cost controls.
The optional web-search source can search in three ways, and you pick one in Settings → Connections → AI & Web search:
| Option | Works with | Trade-off |
|---|---|---|
| Your AI provider's own search (default) | Claude, GPT, Gemini only | no extra signup; unavailable on local models |
| Exa key | every provider, local included | one extra free-tier signup; billed per search |
| SearXNG | every provider, local included | free and fully self-hosted; you run and maintain it |
The two external backends are the only options a local model can use, because an Ollama or LM Studio server on your own hardware cannot reach the internet by itself. They also keep your results the same when you switch AI providers. AI and cost compares the two and covers the one SearXNG setting you have to turn on.
It's genuinely optional. Leave it empty and everything still works. You would just be limited to your provider's own search, or to no web search at all.
Shortlist changes the contents, names and artwork only of collections carrying its own shortlist_* label. Placing its rows can move other shelves while preserving their relative order. Kometa overlays
and your own collections are detected and left alone.
They also solve different problems. Kometa's collections are the same for everyone; Shortlist's are different for each person.
Titles, and nothing else: a short list of what someone recently enjoyed, so it can search for what to watch next. No usernames, no account IDs, no genres, no viewing times.
Open Settings → System → Danger zone → Uninstall before removing the container. Review the preview, then confirm the cleanup. It restores the saved sharing settings and deletes Shortlist's collections, with a report of what succeeded and what needs attention. Deleting the Docker container alone does not remove its rows or sharing filters from Plex.
An account that has since left your server cannot be restored. Shortlist can no longer reach a departed account's settings on plex.tv, so there is nothing there to put back — the report names those accounts rather than quietly counting them as restored, and the uninstall finishes regardless.
You can also rehearse the whole thing before trusting it: start the container with
SHORTLIST_DRY_RUN=1 and every run logs exactly what it would change while writing nothing to
Plex.
Supported, both as test accounts and as people who get rows. Their parental controls are never modified. Shortlist only ever merges label rules into sharing settings.
Shortlist re-applies the hiding rules on every run, but it doesn't watch for Plex itself regressing the feature, so a broken update wouldn't be caught automatically.
That's why the minimum is Plex Media Server 1.43.2.10687: older builds ignore the rule entirely. Stay on that build or newer, and watch the README for advisories.
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It produces no Google rich result. Google retired the FAQ rich result and removed the feature: its own documentation page for FAQPage now 301s to /search/updates#removing-faq-rich-result (checked 2026-09-05), and FAQPage is absent from the current structured-data gallery. It stays here for the same reason as the SoftwareApplication block in head.html: AI crawlers and other indexes read schema.org types to work out what this software is. Do not describe it as ranking work. {% endcomment %}
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