plx-native

PlxNative

A fast, unofficial Plex client for LG webOS televisions. Native, not a web page — the interface is drawn straight on the GPU at 60 fps, and video plays on the TV's own decoder.

Website: plxnative.com · Install guide · Troubleshooting

In daily use on a 2019 LG set. PlxNative is an independent project and is not affiliated with Plex, Inc. or LG. The same install steps are in the repo: installation guide.

Why this exists

The official Plex app on my old LG is slow. Scrolling a shelf stutters, opening a poster takes a beat too long. It behaves like a web page because it is one: a web app running in the television's Chromium. Patching it doesn't help — the ceiling isn't the code, it's the browser.

So I threw the browser away.

PlxNative draws straight on the GPU and hands video to the same silicon the built-in apps use. No Chromium, no JavaScript, no web view. It just draws. Almost all of it is Rust, and I use it every day to watch things off my server in the next room.

What it looks like

Real captures of the app, not mockups: the same code that runs on the television, on the desktop simulator, browsing a demo library of openly licensed films (credits). make screenshots regenerates them.

Home — a rotating hero from what you're partway through and what's just landed, shelves under it.

Library — a library opens on its full poster grid, with an A–Z rail down the side and one header row for sort & filter (including unwatched-only), a Collections page and a Recommended page. The shelves live on Recommended: what you're partway through, with the time left under the focused card, and what just landed (pictured here). Settings → Libraries → Under posters also has a Sort value switch (on by default, per profile). In a movie or TV show library sorted by something other than Title or Random (its movies, shows, seasons or episodes), every card shows the value it is sorted by on one line under it (a score, a length, a date as Today, Yesterday, 27 Oct or Oct 2024), in place of the title and details line; a sort with no value to show, such as the Show order of Seasons and Episodes, keeps the usual captions. It uses the existing sort menu; other poster surfaces keep their usual captions.

Search — one query across every server you can reach, results grouped by kind.

Player — the transport with chapters and track menus, drawn over video the television decodes itself. (In this capture the frame under it was decoded by the simulator.)

What it does

• An interface that keeps up with the remote. 60 fps on the 2019 set I develop on, with frame-rate regression scenes that measure it on the television rather than trusting it.
• Sign in on the TV with an on-screen QR code and pick a Plex Home profile.
• Browse and search your libraries — on your own servers and on ones shared with you. Your servers' libraries, that is, plus the plex.tv Watchlist as its own tab, where any title can be added or removed; search covers servers only.
• Direct play H.264 and HEVC — 4K, 10-bit, Dolby Vision profiles 5 and 8, E-AC-3 Atmos, and AV1 or VP9 (10-bit VP9 only on webOS 4 sets) on televisions whose codec table lists that decoder — decided against your television's own codec table where it publishes one. Anything else the server transcodes, and you can switch a playback to Auto to follow a link whose speed changes.
• Everything you expect while watching: resume, seek and scrub, chapters, audio and subtitle tracks (including image subtitles), Skip Intro, Skip Credits, Up Next with auto-advance, and progress reported back to your server.

Will it work on my television?

It needs webOS 4.0 or newer, with two tested exceptions: a 2016 set on webOS 3.4.3 signs in, browses, searches and plays (direct play, transcodes, subtitles and seeking) through Developer Mode, and a 2018 set on webOS 3.9.3 plays direct play the same way when built from source at or after 60f99c7 — the catalogue's prebuilt v0.8.0 predates that fix (see Known issues). Other 3.x releases are untested, and anything older than 3.4 is unknown. Past that, it most likely will. I develop and test on a 2019 set, and opt-in usage reports show video playing on sets from 2018 through the newest, on webOS 11 — both direct play and server transcodes, Developer Mode installs included.

Owners' reports, set by set, are in the compatibility list.

Known issues

Where	What happens
Some 2019 sets on LG's k5lp or k3lp chip, installed through Developer Mode	Video won't play. On these sets LG's Developer Mode sandbox can withhold a device the video path needs — Kodi and Moonlight hit the same wall. The app checks for it and says so instead of crashing; other sets on the same chip play normally. On a rooted TV with Homebrew Channel, the failure screen offers Repair, which applies the Homebrew Channel fix to the sandbox (one owner fixed it this way from a root shell; the button itself hasn't been run on an affected set yet). Without root there is no fix.
2018 sets on firmware that reports platform release 3.9.3	Sign-in and browsing work. The prebuilt v0.8.0 holds a strong ELF reference to the cxx11 StarfishMediaAPIs::Feed symbol, which 3.x libplayerAPIs does not export, so on the prebuilt video never starts and no error is reported: #249. A source build at or after 60f99c7 resolves Feed with a dual-ABI dlsym and plays direct play on a 2018 C7 (W17H chassis, 3.9.3).
webOS 3.x	Seeking jumps in place through LG's public Seek, as on webOS 5 and newer (tested on platform release 3.9.3 only). The in-place path webOS 4 uses depends on the internal layout of LG's 4.x media player, which differs on 3.x, so it is not used there. A set that refuses Seek falls back to restarting the stream at the new position, as all 3.x sets did before. Menus can drop frames at 1920x1080 on these sets; Settings → System → Interface resolution trades sharper text for smoother menus.
Sets on LG's k6hp chip	A crash seen in opt-in crash reports and not reproduced here, because I have no such set: #174.

Rooted or not

No root is needed. A regular TV in Developer Mode runs everything except the k5lp/k3lp Repair above. What Developer Mode costs you is renewal: if the session lapses, LG removes the apps installed through it (how to keep them). A rooted TV with Homebrew Channel has no expiry.

If something goes wrong, check Troubleshooting first, then tell me what happened — and if you own one of the sets above, it working is as useful a report as it failing: post it under Discussions > Compatibility.

Installing

First time installing an app outside the LG Content Store? Follow the step-by-step installation guide. It starts with a regular LG webOS TV, a computer on the same network, and a Plex account with access to your own or a shared server. No root is required.

Set up LG Developer Mode and connect with webOS Dev Manager, then choose:

• Install PlxNative directly: add only PlxNative to the TV; install future .ipk updates from your computer.
• Install Homebrew Channel first: get an app catalogue on the TV, then install PlxNative and its updates with the remote.

Already have Homebrew Channel? Find PlxNative in its catalogue and select Install. Skip the computer setup.

Developer Mode needs periodic renewal. If it expires and LG disables Developer Mode, apps installed through it are removed. Installing Homebrew Channel through Developer Mode does not remove that requirement. The guide explains how to renew the session.

For manual .ipk downloads, verify the release checksum before installing. Homebrew Channel verifies catalogue downloads for you.

Nightly builds

Every day main moves, CI cuts a nightly .ipk from wherever it stands. It installs beside the regular app as "PlxNative Nightly" — its own tile, its own sign-in — so trying it never touches the release you already trust.

With Homebrew Channel: under Settings choose Add repository, enter https://plxnative.com/nightly/repo.json, then install PlxNative Nightly. Every later nightly appears there as an update. The nightly builds guide has the steps, how the versions work and what to do if something goes wrong.

Without it: each build is a prerelease, and the newest is always linked from plxnative.com/nightly/latest.json. Install it with Dev Manager; a package installed that way does not update itself.

It is not tested on a television. It passes the same automated build and packaging checks a release does, but nobody has watched it play. Each nightly is deleted 30 days after it is published, so link to a specific .ipk at your own risk.

Release candidates

Before a release, CI may publish a release candidate as a prerelease named like PlxNative 0.8.0-rc.1. It is the release build itself, so it installs as the regular PlxNative app, replacing the one you have the way an update would. It is not in the Homebrew Channel, and the Channel will not offer the final release over it either: reinstall the final by hand once it is out.

Privacy

Your library data never reaches me. The app talks to your Plex server, to plex.tv to sign in, and to discover.provider.plex.tv for cast biographies and the Watchlist (reading it, and adding or removing a title when you ask, with the active profile's plex.tv token).

Crash reports and usage analytics are off until you turn them on — two separate first-run questions, each answerable with Don't Share, both reversible later under Account → Settings → Privacy & data. No title, search term, subtitle line, server name or address can appear in any report. PRIVACY.md is the whole statement, including the schemas.

ASS/SSA subtitles render natively during direct play, including styles, positioning, overlapping signs and dialogue, karaoke, and embedded fonts. External ASS files retain their original scripts. A re-encode still burns the selected subtitle on the server; over a remux the app draws a sidecar, and an embedded track when the link is local and the Part is 1..=30000 kbps, and otherwise the server burns it.

The honest scope

I built this for how I watch, so it's narrower than Plex's:

• Movies and TV shows. No music, no photos, no live TV or DVR.
• No typing in server addresses. Servers come from your Plex account; set them up on a phone or PC and choose from what's there. Servers reached through Plex's relay, or that require an encrypted connection, are supported but haven't been watched end to end.
• One person's spare time. There will be bugs I haven't hit, because I don't watch the way you do.

If that fits, it's genuinely nice to use. If it doesn't, the official app will serve you better.

Contributing

Issues and pull requests are welcome, especially from anyone whose television or library differs from mine — docs/building.md is the build and the test loop, and says what hardware I most need help with. Feature ideas go to Discussions > Ideas. Security issues go through SECURITY.md rather than a public issue.

Acknowledgements

Error monitoring for PlxNative is sponsored by Sentry.

Licence

GPL-3.0-or-later, © 2026 Gleb Linnik. The PlxNative name and its brand artwork are excluded — see TRADEMARKS.md, which also carries the Plex and LG non-affiliation statements. Third-party components and their licences are in THIRD-PARTY-NOTICES.md and licenses/ — notably the app ships its own LGPL build of FFmpeg. Those notices and licence texts ship inside the .ipk too, so they travel with the binary and not only with this repository.

This is an unofficial client, not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Plex GmbH or LG Electronics. "Plex", "Rotten Tomatoes", "IMDb", "TMDB", "LG" and "webOS" are trademarks of their respective owners; where they appear in the app, they identify whose service or score is being shown.

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