SEPTEMBER 2020 MACWORLD 101platforms. Its free flavor may offer people
everything they need for sharing music and
video, and Plex also allows photo sharing.
Its premium tier is worthwhile for a few
added features: offline storage on mobile
devices, and over-the-air recording of TV
programs with a networked tuner (I use it
for this). It’s just $4.99 a month, $39.99 a
year, or $119.99 for a lifetime subscription.
It also adds parental controls.
The one thing Plex can’t do is play
Apple-protected video content, but that’s
something that Family Sharing is quite
good at managing.
You install Plex on any computer from
which you want to share media and log in
to your account. Plex
lets you identify
folders that contain
various kinds of
media, and these can
be scattered across
drives and locations.
I have an external
8TB drive on which I
store most media,
and it’s easy to point
Plex at that, where
iTunes, Music, TV,
and other apps are
harder to target and
can’t manage
multiple locations.
Plex lets you
enable sharing by kind of media, and
then you can use that from other devices
to access your own computer servers—
and use invitations to share content with
other people in your family. They don’t
need premium subscriptions unless they
want to have offline mobile access, too.
Streaming is available without any paid
subscription.
Plex has apps for Android, iOS, Apple
TV, Amazon Fire TV, Google Chromecast,
and Roku, among other platforms and
systems. Desktop users access Plex
through a browser, which is also the best
way to manage and configure server
settings. ■Catalina offers controls within the Sharing preference pane for Home
Sharing, including choosing what you share with guests.