My Plex server works fine when I’m at home, but if I’m outside my wifi network it doesn’t let me view my library. Even if I disable wifi connection on my phone and try to log in with 5G, it won’t let me log in.
I know there is an option to enable or disable remote access, but I’ve already enabled it. This issue has been coming up for months and I can’t get it fixed. It just randomly disconnects, and now its been disconnected for a month so I can watch fine at home, but if I’m traveling I can’t watch it. It used to be that if I manually disabled and then enabled remote access that would fix it, but that doesn’t fix it. I’ve tried turning off my VPN, that doesn’t help either.
When I look at my firewall settings, there are several plex options for inbound firewall permissions but none for outbound. I don’t know if that is the issue, but I’m wondering if every time Plex or windows updates (which is constantly) it blocks access outside my home network.
I don’t know enough about IT to change the settings on my router, so I’d rather not do that.
If I cannot get this figured out, is there an alternative to plex that works well outside of your wifi home network and doesn’t have the constant connectivity issues that plex does?
IIRC, Plex has always tried to make access to your Plex server on mobile devices a feature of their paid subscriptions. I had previously had some luck going to “desktop mode” in my browser, but YMMV. Of course, Plex is also moving to only allowing remote access (after years of the “please give us money model”) to actual paid subscribers, which is one of the reasons I bit the bullet a month ago and bought the $120 lifetime membership.
Otherwise, yeah, I can think of plenty of server options with Wifi over a local network, but fewer on cellular. Depending on your setup, in the past I was able to load some mp4 videos to my Amazon “Photos” (subject to the storage limits thereof) and was able to stream them from the Amazon app, but I believe that service is so enshittified these days (and required Prime) that it wouldn’t be suitable.
Again, try “desktop mode” on your mobile browser and see if it works better, but be aware of the upcoming changes to Plex anyway:
The key points:
As of April 29, 2025, we are increasing the price of our Plex Pass subscription. While this is pretty common for most subscription services, it’s not for us. We’ve held out for more than 10 years, keeping good company with AriZona Iced Tea (tall-boy legends) and Costco (we love a good deal on a hot dog and soda.) But now, in order for us to keep up with rising costs and remain committed to ensuring both Plex Pass and our support for personal media continue to thrive—it’s time.
The price increase applies to new and existing subscriptions, with the exception of existing Lifetime Plex Pass holders. The good news is that you can still purchase a Lifetime Plex Pass subscription at the current price of $119.99 USD before the increase goes into effect on April 29, 2025.*
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We are also changing how remote playback works for streaming personal media (that is, playback when not on the same local network as the server). The reality is that we need more resources to continue putting forth the best personal media experience, and as a result, we will no longer offer remote playback as a free feature. This—alongside the new Plex Pass pricing—will help provide those resources. This change will apply to the future release of our new Plex experience for mobile and other platforms.
Thank you, that kind of makes sense. However I noticed the issue starting a lot worse a month or so ago, but they say that they will end remote service in the future.
I remember there was a good deal on plex pass a few months ago, but I didn’t buy it since I never thought I’d use it. Ah well. One of the reasons I didn’t get the pass is I didn’t think I’d use it, but also it was constantly disabling remote access back then too.
Choose whatever options you like and work for you. There’s a LOT that can happen when steaming video over a cellular connection (depending on your carrier) so I wanted to focus on the Plex side. Especially because it made no sense to try to diagnose the short (?) term problem if you weren’t going to be going to paid model anyway.
My friends and I who run our own Plex servers all talked back and forth about it, and decided that over the 10+ years we’d been running our servers that we’d gotten $120 worth out of it, and thus our decision, but each person is going to be different. In this day and age of ginormous phone hard drives, it’s easy to load a solid variety of music and movies for most travel situations, so it’s also less critical in some ways.
Its not just the cellular connection. I like to have movies and TV shows I can watch on the Roku box at my dads when I visit him. Thats my main concern, that I can’t stream Plex on the roku box at my dad’s house.
A big reason I never switched to the paid model of Plex is that I didn’t see the benefit, and because it has been constantly disconnecting remote service for months. So I didn’t want to pay for a program that already wasn’t working when I left my wifi network.
Are you sure you want to stream videos from your home internet? Most home connections have much slower upload than download speed, unless you’re on fiber, so it might be a shitty stream.
As an alternative, you can rent small cloud servers called “seedboxes” for a few dollars a month, and they’ll usually have their own fast internet connections, a few terabytes of storage, and their own Plex instance.
They’re really primarily meant for pirating torrented movies, but you can also just upload your own files.
The one we use is https://ultra.cc/, but there should be others too (just search for “seedbox with plex”). These Plex ones start at $16/mo.
My upload speeds have always been sufficient. Digital media seems to run about 1.5 GB per hour, which works out to about 3-4 Mbps speeds. I sometimes get 10-20 Mbps upload.
So I discovered that the issue seems to be my laptop. When I shut down and restarted my laptop, plex started working outside my wifi. I test this by turning off the wifi on my phone and using the 5G connection to see if the Plex server is reachable. After shutting off and restarting my PC, plex became reachable on 5G again.
Any idea why my laptop randomly starts blocking Plex and why restarting it fixes it? I can’t figure it out. I thought maybe it was some security or firewall setting on my PC, but restarting it shouldn’t change those.
I think plex requires certain ports forwarded from your router to the plex box in order to stream to the internet. Is it possible your laptop is grabbing one of those ports with upnp or something? If it starts working as soon as your laptop is turned off, then that is unlikely.
Jellyfin is a free alternative to plex. It only requires port 443 (https), but it is on you to know your home IP or hostname.
My old internet was only 100/15 and I could stream full 1080p out to the internet with no issues.