FAQ
How is this private? Plex doesn’t have per-user collections.
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 only its owner can see.
The order matters: a row is created hidden, and only made visible once the “hide this from everyone else” rules are already in place — so there’s no window where the wrong person could see it. Your existing sharing settings are saved beforehand, and Uninstall puts them back exactly.
This needs Plex Media Server 1.43.2.10687 or newer. Older versions ignore the hiding rule.
Why do I get two rows — one under Movies and one under TV Shows?
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.
Does Shortlist change sharing settings for users I haven’t enabled?
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. Nothing else in their settings is touched — Shortlist reads what’s there, adds only its own entries, and leaves the rest byte-for-byte identical. The original is saved first, and Uninstall restores all of them.
Do I get a row myself?
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.
What can the server owner see?
Everything. Plex cannot hide collections from the owner, so your Home shows every user’s row, not just your own.
If you share with other people and want a clean Home, watch on a Plex Home user and keep the admin account for admin.
Does the AI invent recommendations I don’t have?
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.
What does the AI actually do, and do I have to pay?
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 How Shortlist uses AI for the full breakdown and cost controls.
What is Exa, and should I use it?
Exa is a search engine built for AI to read rather than for people to browse. Instead of a page of blue links, it returns ranked results with the relevant text already pulled out, so a model gets straight to the useful part.
In Shortlist it powers the optional web-search source. You have three choices:
| Option | Works with | Trade-off |
|---|---|---|
| Your AI provider’s own search | Claude, GPT, Gemini only | no extra signup; unavailable on local models |
| Exa key | every provider, local included | one extra free-tier signup |
| Auto (default) | uses both when both are set up | widest coverage — they find noticeably different films |
Why we suggest adding an Exa key, even if your provider can already search:
- It’s the only option that works with a local model. An Ollama or LM Studio server on your own hardware has no way to search the internet. With Exa, Shortlist does the searching and hands the findings over — so a completely offline model can still recommend current titles.
- Your results stop depending on which AI you picked. Switch from Claude to a local model to save money and the search half stays identical. Only the choosing changes.
- The cost is predictable. Exa bills per search, not per word, and Shortlist reports those searches separately from AI usage. Results are reused for 14 days and shared across everyone on your server, so a popular film is looked up once — not once per person.
- It’s built for this job. Because the results arrive as extracted text, the model spends its effort judging films rather than wading through web pages.
It’s genuinely optional. Leave it empty and everything still works — you’d just be limited to your provider’s own search, or to no web search at all.
Will it fight with Kometa?
No. Shortlist only ever touches collections carrying its own shortlist_* label. Kometa overlays
and your own collections are detected and left alone.
What information is sent to the AI?
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.
What if I uninstall?
One flow, with a preview first. Every account’s sharing settings are restored from the copy taken before Shortlist’s first change, every Shortlist collection is deleted, and you get a report of exactly what changed. Your server ends up as we found it.
Managed users and kids’ accounts?
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.
What if a Plex update breaks label hiding?
Shortlist re-applies the hiding rules on every run, but it doesn’t watch for Plex itself regressing the feature — 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.