Plex Android Update: All the new features detailed, including picture-in-picture support
An update to Plex’s Android app has brought several new features, including Picture-in-Picture, that look to improve your mobile viewing experience.
Along with an all-new User Interface, Plex will now offer its users several new features as part of an upgrade to the Android app (according to SlashGear).
This includes the Picture-in-Picture, video preview, and stretch-and-fill options. Here’s the full list of new modes, and how to access them to improve your mobile playback experience.
1. Picture-in-Picture
This mode allows you to relegate the video you’re watching to a much smaller window, and use the rest of the screen to browse your library, or even to use different apps. It’s accessible by just pressing the home button as you watch the video.
2. Video Pre-Loading
The Plex Android app will now start to buffer the next video in your playlist while the current one finishes, in order to avoid that frustrating load time that often greets you as you start a new video. Playback promises to be much smoother from now on.
3. Landscape Lock
Isn’t it annoying when you are watching a video in landscape, and a slight wrist action flips it to playing in portrait mode? Fortunately, this option allows you to lock the video in landscape, avoiding irritating accidents.
4. Fill and Stretch Modes
Rather than just viewing the video in the original size, you might want to get rid of those cavernous black bars and feel closer to the action. Now you can do this with the Plex app, by selecting a custom option under the Playback Settings in Display Mode.
5. Chapter Support
Your media library should be a lot more easy to quickly browse through, now that Plex offers Chapter Support. Rather than just fast-forwarding through an in-play video, you can skip ahead to recognised chapters within the file.
6. Scrubbing: Thumbnail Preview
When you’re seeking a particular point in the video but can’t remember the precise timestamp, you’re sometimes left to resort to a grinding process of trial-and-error. But now, scrubbing has been facilitated in Plex by the addition of a thumbnail preview, which shows a small window of the action occurring on-screen during each point in the video, enabling you to recognise exactly where you want to commence playback.
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7. Rapid Navigation
By double-tapping on the right or left-hand side of the screen, you can now skip forward and backward respectively in chunks, rather than just pressing and holding for a fast forward.
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Editorial independence
Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
