I would like to introduce to you the tentatively titled PlexMini, a new client for Mac (?!). (if anyone from Plex would like me to rename now is the time to tell me )
what is PlexMini ?
PlexMini is a 3rd party. client for Mac OS X 10.7 and later. PlexMini is not associated with Plex in any way, please do not contact them for support.
History
I work in a multi monitor environment and sometimes while working I like to have old TV shows playing in a window on one monitor just for background noise. I also like too watch films on a second screen while gaming.
To help with this I wrote Media Menu, a small app to give you quick access to your movies and TV shows from the menu bar. A little while after this I converted the rest of the house from XBMC to Plex and once you have a good Plex setup you can't really go back to anything else.
Like XBMC before the Plex client is a great HTPC but was awkward in a desktop environment. And for me it was also impossible to watch a film and play a game at the same time, so I wrote PlexMini for myself. When Plexweb was released I tried converting to that but the choice of either flash or Safari drove me back to Plexmini.
Recently someone asked me for Plex support in Media Menu, I told them that it wasn't really possible but I could release Plexmini. As they were very keen I went back and looked at Plexmini again, the version I am releasing now is almost identical to the one I have been using for a long time. The main differences are a new way of displaying the items, visually its identical but it uses up about 1/4 of the ram the old one did, and an internal player using Apples AVKit.
The first version used VLC as an external player, this worked fine for me but not perfectly. Its something I may consider enabling again as a side feature but with warnings, if people are interested. I also tested VLCKit as an embedded player, this worked well but after reading up on the licensing I took a couple of pain killers for the headache and decided to avoid it.
Features
- Movie support
- TV Show support
- Picture support
- Music support
- myPlex
- Play on other client (just right click an item)
- Remote control Plexmini from the Plex mobile apps
Future
- New Icon!
- HTTPS support
- Improve music support (I never use Plex for music so it didn't get much attention)
- Remote control other clients from Plexmini (I wrote a Chrome extension that did this so I never needed it, would anyone be interested in me releasing the extension?)
- Channel support (again not a feature I use so not something I needed)
- Improvements the player window (Media index files, details in the overlay etc)
- Sync support and act as a server for synced content (sync a film to your laptop visit a friend's house and watch that film on their tv!)
What else would you like to see?
At some point in the future (before the next major version bump) I plain to release the source, as it was only ever written for me it needs cleaning, commenting and refactoring to rename things that don't quite match up anymore.
Known issues
10.7 (Lion) has had very little testing. My only access is via a virtual machine.
There are some display niggles on 10.7 associated with changing modes, restarting Plexmini will fix them.
How can you help?
feedback, new colour schemes, bug reports, feature ideas etc
DISCLAIMER
While beta versions will always be free, and at some point the source code will also be available, I do intend put release versions onto the Mac Appstore for a very small fee. I am a freelance developer by trade and my time is my job. While I am not looking to make a profit from Plexmini it is in my nature to try and help people and add features they would like to see. Every hour I spend on Plexmini is an hour I am not earning money else where.
Betas will expire, this is just to make support easier for me, I will try to make sure there is always a valid beta available for those who can not buy the Appstore version but i can’t guarantee it.
Download
RC2b (changelog) (Report Bug)
Beta 0.9.1
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